The Problem of the Christian Master

2024 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

“With beautiful prose and keen analysis, Matthew Elia has intervened into the problem of mastery—the desire to control peoples, bodies, and worlds—embedded in western thought and life, especially that which is born of colonial Christianity with its racial reasoning. Anyone thinking about political theology must now begin with this book.”—Willie James Jennings, author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race

“In prose as meditative as it is urgent, Matthew Elia exposes the dominance of the Christian master in Augustinian tradition. In the lingering shadows cast by racialized slavery, Elia reimagines constructive theology as a fugitive practice.”—Jennifer A. Glancy, author of Slavery in Early Christianity

“This is a brilliant and important book. By staging a conversation between Augustine and Black Studies, Matthew Elia helps us recognize the extent to which Christian political thought has aligned itself with ‘the Master,’ and then uses it to help us see some of the current iterations and ramifications of that alignment. This is not the end of the story, however, for Elia also uses this conversation to show us some more hopeful possibilities. Again, then, the net result is a brilliant, important, and lively book.”—Kevin Hector, author of Christianity as a Way of Life

“This is a remarkable, original, and provocative book. Elia wears his deep learning lightly, with stylish and engaging prose that makes for a vivid encounter between Augustinianism and racialized modernity.”—Eric Gregory, author of Politics and the Order of Love