This side of heaven

¶ … Heaven

Priest, Robert J. & Alvaro Nieves. (2006). This Side of Heaven. Oxford University Press.

Race and religion are two of the most taboo topics in American society. This Side of Heaven attempts to tackle both of these thorny issues within its covers. It does not provide an answer as to how to reconcile the difficulties that arise because of racial and religious differences in America and around the globe. It does suggest a strongly social constructivist view of identity can help heal some of the divisions caused by race in history. Most of the contributing authors believe that racism and race are ideas, not biological realities, and unlike faith, race is an idea that is of the world, not for all time.

The book takes the form of a compilation of scholarly essays upon the intersection of race and religion in American society. The book as a whole attempts to address the impact of race in America's churchgoing life today, from a variety of sociological and political perspectives. Martin Luther King Jr. once famously observed that the most segregated time in America was Sunday morning, and the book attempts to explore why this is so. Given that Christianity began as an inclusive religion, encompassing a wide variety of religious faiths, it may seem surprising that race has divided, for example, Latino Catholics from Irish Catholics, Southern white Baptists from black Baptists, and Northern white Protestants from black congregations living only blocks away. But no religious community is immune to the impact race has played in society. "God made humanity with rich diversity, but people made the categories which we make sense of that diversity," in both positive and (too often) negative ways (20).

Jenell Williams Paris observes in it is essential to "develop churches that do not conform to the racialized patterns of this world" (30). Although the focus of the book is on the United States, Carlos Pozzi also notes how race creates prejudices that exist within groups all over the world, such as discrimination against darker-skinned Latinos (47). Even though race itself is a biological fiction, as discussed in Eloise Hiebert Menses' essay on the subject, it is a powerful fiction with a seismic historical impact, with reverberations still being felt today.

The book thus contains recent anthropological theory about the biology of race as well as issues specifically pertinent to theological discussion. It encourages the reader to engage in critical self-reflection about his or her view of 'otherness' in racial terms as quite often, when we see 'the other' we merely see ourselves, and our projections of our fears. Westerners have often seen 'the other,' for example, as less than human as "part of the animal kingdom" rather than as "children of God" (103). This 'other' is not particularly biologically distinct from ourselves, but our preconceived notion of race and culture cause 'us' to see 'the other' as 'them,' or 'it.'