In her endorsement of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Toni Morrison invoked one of America’s most astute cultural observers: “I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.”
Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity collects powerful and often quite personal essays on Between the World and Me. Most of the contributions circle around two questions: What does one do with Coates’s dismissal of Christianity? And how should one take the book’s seeming hopelessness? Almost all of the authors agree that the two questions are related, and they work hard to think through one of the central moral issues that arises for Christians today: Can Christian hope survive the onslaught against black life?
The second is Prince Jones Jr., who was Coates’s classmate at Howard University. Prince was also killed by a cop, his exemplary character and accomplishments unable to save him from a fate that befalls so many African American men. At Prince’s funeral, Coates puzzles over the way Mabel Jones, Prince’s mother, clings to Christian hope even in the face of obvious reasons for despair.
How might a Christian respond to Coates’s stance toward Christianity without (as Jennifer Harvey puts it) trying to persuade Coates “to embrace religion or god,” or “hold him responsible for making visible a more complicated understanding of religious thought and practice”? This question takes on added weight if, as Harvey observes, “the religion Coates rejects is a particular type . . . one that emerges from traditions best described as escapist,” where “god is conceived as solution to unending crisis, a ‘go to’ as an explanation of the incomprehensible.”
What a great way to conclude yesterday, hearing from thee Ta-Nehisi Coates. ♥️ pic.twitter.com/jh44jVPEUf
— Ayanna Thompson (@AThompson360) October 27, 2019