J. Kameron Carter

J. Kameron Carter is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where he engages in theological scholarship with a particular focus on race, structural injustice, and Christian theology. His work bridges academic theology with urgent social concerns, particularly the black experience in America and the theological implications of structural racism.

Carter's research centers on the theological construction of race, examining how Christian doctrine has been historically mobilized to create and sustain racial hierarchies. He explores the relationship between structural injustice and theological imagination, particularly how Christian theology has midwifed what he terms 'the racial world.' His work investigates concepts of black misery versus white melancholy, structural racism versus individual prejudice, and the theological implications of Jesus' incarnation as a critique of structures of domination. He argues that the logic of ownership undergirds racialized structures, where 'property and war are the same thing,' requiring what he calls 'major imaginative renovation' of Christian theology.

His influential book Race: A Theological Account argues that race is not merely a social construct but a theological problem rooted in Christian supersessionism. He is currently working on Black Rapture: A Poetics of the Sacred, which continues his exploration of black theological imagination and resistance. Carter's scholarship challenges conventional understandings of atonement theology, proposing that Jesus' life represents 'life without remainder' that critiques structures producing misery for some to secure comfort for others. He has also taught theology at Duke Divinity School, emphasizing how Christianity must 'move against itself' to break free from complicity in racial hierarchies.