To mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, this year’s Dudleian Lecture will feature a presentation on the movement’s connection to modernity.
Paul C.H. Lim, Associate Professor of the History of Christianity and Associate Professor of Religious Studies Vanderbilt University, will deliver the 2017 Dudleian Lecture on Thursday, September 28, at 5:15 pm, in the Sperry Room.
Titled “Reformation and Racial Taxonomies: An Underexplored Narrative of Modernity,” Lim will explore the connection between Reformation and modernity through the lens of how the racial and religious “others” were scrutinized, classified, and categorized by looking at a crucial juncture in post-Tridentine Catholicism and late-seventeenth century Anglicanism.
Lim will also take part in a workshop with HDS Professors Michelle Sanchez and David Hall to discuss the special Andover-Harvard Theological Library exhibit “Reformation: Dialogue and Identity,” on Friday, September 29, at noon, in the Common Room of the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Below, Lim discusses some of the themes he will examine during his upcoming talk.
HDS: In what ways did the Reformation have to do with the construction and consolidation of racial categories that abide with us, even to this day? That does not seem like a typical story line concerning the Reformation.
Paul Lim: In this lecture we will broaden the geographical, chronological, and analytical categories so that we will go beyond Wittenberg and Geneva to Valladolid, Spain, and Barbados in terms of geography. Regarding chronology, we traverse the period from 1520 to about 1690; and perhaps most unexpectedly, we will talk about the emergence and intensification of the Other: whether Religious or Racial Other during this early modern period of religious reform and political reconfiguration. Whether one acknowledges or not, the Reformations—of Catholic and Protestant types—ushered in a period of Wars of Religion that necessitated the Peace of Augsburg, Edict of Nantes (and the revocation thereof), Treaty of Westphalia, the Regicide, and the Edict on Toleration, inter alia.
Traditional Reformation historiography had very little discussion on the emergence of European empires and their colonial enterprise and how it was influenced profoundly by the convictions regarding theological anthropology. This talk is designed to fill the historiographical lacuna, hopefully. Whether we look at figures such as Luther, Las Casas or Morgan Godwyn, they spoke directly about the impact divine grace inevitably had on our anthropological perspectives. More on it anon!
HDS: How does that affect one’s ontological and sacramental status? Can that person be baptized? If so, wouldn’t that make that baptized person a “brother and sister” in Christ?
PL: That’s right! Going all the way back to some strands within early Christianity, some had strong resistance to getting baptized until they absolutely must since they were worried about post-baptismal sins, of commission and omission. We come to the early modern period, and the growth of Anabaptists also speaks powerfully about the way sacramental realities were taken to be of utmost significance.
Consequently, whether we realize it or not, sacramental actions had indelible ontological effects. This issue shows up in the Las Casas—Sepúlveda debate at Valladolid in 1550 since the latter was not persuaded at all that the Amerindians were capable and fit recipients of that baptismal, sacramental action. The question of what I would call “identity alteration” as a result of the sacramental act emerges with greater urgency and poignancy in the treatises written by the Anglican missionary Morgan Godwyn in the late seventeenth-century. He excoriates his compatriots and co-religionists for failing to see the powerful, boundary-broadening and barrier-breaking act that could be theirs for the taking if they would allow their slaves to be baptized, and follow that action to its theo-logical conclusion. Just as St. Paul urges his friend Philemon to take back the erstwhile slave and present runaway Onesimus by saying that Philemon should take Onesimus back “no longer as a slave” but as a “beloved brother,” both the planters who refused to baptize their slaves and Godwyn and his colleagues who understood the implications of this powerful sacramental action knew that baptism was to be taken with utmost seriousness, for it signaled and communicated an ontological status change.
HDS: In what possible ways is Charlottesville, Virginia, of 2017 connected with Valladolid, Spain, of 1550?
PL: Upon first blush, the answer is…“Nothing!” However, as one looks beyond the surface, one is struck by the ironic juxtaposition of Valladolid and Charlottesville. Both Valladolid of 1550 and Charlottesville of 2017 show—with crystal clarity—that religion and religious doctrines exert a tremendous influence in the way one thinks about one’s identity: individual, religious, and national. The avowed defense of Spanish imperialism in the sixteenth century and the corresponding ideology of racial taxonomy and hierarchy at Valladolid in the time of Las Casas speak powerfully about the need to speak truth to power. Fast forward to 2017, to Charlottesville, Virginia. What happened? Among others, it means that through the various labyrinthine pathways, the pernicious myth of racial and cultural superiority that some early modern Christians believed ran deeper than one would immediately recognize. Again, I plan to elaborate on this a bit further in person.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to Dean David Hampton, Professor David Hall, and other faculty members at HDS for engaging me in a conversation and challenging me to think more critically about my own theological assumptions and historiographical commitments.
—by Michael Naughton