By Tyler White | Staff Writer
Dr. Anthony Reddie, professor of Black theology at the University of Oxford, will be in residence at Baylor for three weeks in November. During his time here, he will speak to groups across Baylor’s campus and present a public lecture on Nov. 15.
Reddie, who has been fascinated by the Black theology movement for the last 25 years, began his career as a youth and community worker, working with the young community in the church. As he moved on to university, he continued to be involved in the church and had the opportunity to further his studies.
“My first degree was in church history, so not straight theology obviously,” Reddie said. “So I had a chance to do some extra … studies at a nearby seminary at Queens. And they had just started a new course on Black theology, so I was one of the guinea pigs who did it, and I literally fell in love with it. It just completely transformed my life.”
With his expertise in Black theology, Reddie has the opportunity to share his experience with the Baylor community and bring his own understanding and teaching to Waco. He said he wants to be able to provide the community with his context so that they can apply it to their own context as necessary.
“What I would like to do is to share something of the British experience, something of the work I’ve been doing, and why it’s relevant in my context primarily,” Reddie said. “And then secondly … that might then cast a kind of mirror on your context, of the American context.”
Dr. Greg Garrett, professor of English, said Reddie’s visit to Baylor is a great opportunity for the community to learn about Black theology from an expert. He said it would allow the Baylor community to continue to make progress in discussions of racism in the church and discussions of theology on campus.
“This is an opportunity for the Baylor community to learn from one of the leading Black theologians in the world and Oxford’s professor of Black theology,” Garrett said. “So, it’s an opportunity for us to hear what we can learn from the Black church, and it fits really nicely into the ongoing conversations we’ve been having at Baylor thanks to the February conference on racism in the church.”
Reddie said that one thing he wants to accomplish with his lecture is propose the idea of rethinking whiteness, drawing upon the ideas of theologian Willie James Jennings. He said he wants to share his context and share it within the context of American thinking to allow the Baylor community to potentially rethink and focus on these issues as they arise.
“We need to rethink these things because part of our problem about all the issues that exist, all the isms in our world, tend to … come down to issues of power, that comes down to who is normalized and who can be a full human being, and who then has to make adaptations or concessions or always told that they need to be different in order simply to turn up and sit at the table,” Reddie said.
Reddie said he encourages everyone to come to his lecture so they can learn something about his context that they could apply in their own personal contexts. He said he wants to provide people with the opportunity to learn from others and then take that opportunity to make a change.
“I’m not here to attack anyone,” Reddie said. “I’m genuinely here to share my experience and to encourage people to engage with that on the basis that the enemy for me is not other people; the enemy is injustice, and hopefully all people who are genuinely humanitarians and care about others should therefore be caring about justice.”
Garrett said that Dr. Reddie’s time at Baylor will be an opportunity to continue to grow in understanding Baylor’s past with the church. It will allow the community to look toward the future while learning how to reckon with the past and move forward in a positive manner.
“We are able to tell the truth about our history, where we come from, and where we might be going,” Garrett said. “And it feels to me like Professor Reddie coming this fall could be a really important piece of Baylor’s continuing to reckon with our slaveholding past with racism and with the idea of repair and how we might move forward together.”
