Disordered - by Jessica Wai-Fong Wong (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Archetypes of race loom large within the Western imagination. The Black population, in particular, has often been pictured as inherently disordered, and their presence thought to have a disordering effect--indeed, their presence has been seen as a threat to civilized society. It is this perceived threat of blackness that has fueled America's long history of discrimination and oppression.

At the heart of this racialized way of seeing is a significant theological assertion: that one's internal state can be discerned through the external attributes of the body. In the Byzantine era, the holy icon was thought to reflect the proper order of God; those who rejected the icon rejected God's order. The supposedly deficient bodies of those who rejected the holy order of God functioned as a warning sign. Using the framework of icon theology, Disordered explores the relationship between non-white, as well as non-masculine, bodies and civilized society at key moments in the development of modernity. Jessica Wai-Fong Wong demonstrates how the archetype of (male) whiteness has come to define proper social order. The veneration of the white man as holy ideal wields significant power over the formation of subjects and the shaping of society. In this case, worship of whiteness in general, and white masculinity in particular, functions as the sacred ground upon which the oppressive structures of Western society are built.

The iconic reading of race offered here not only creates an opportunity for analysis but also opens up a space for constructive christological intervention that confronts the troubled practices at the heart of racialized sight. Jesus invites all people into a different way of seeing, one that shatters the distorting and destructive assumptions embedded within the dominant racial logic. By learning to see Jesus, the true icon of God, we learn to see rightly. And, when we see rightly, the order defining our identity and relationality is redeemed.

Review Quotes

Wong's book is a delightful contribution to the emerging conversation on the intersectionof religion and race in North America. Not only for scholars, teachers and studentsof theological education, but also for ordained and lay church leaders, Wong'sdeeply theological account of western Europe and North America's long history andpractice of racial discrimination make it a must-read, especially for white readers.

Wong's invitation is for Christians to resist justifying secular racist ideas using Christian doctrines, and instead to consider an embodied Jesus, grounded within his particularity as a Jewish Palestinian man. The reason why Disordered is so compelling is that Wong herself is also embodied in her narrative, as she makes explicit where she is coming from as a biracial woman from Texas, and threads her identity struggles through her argument.

About the Author

Jessica Wai-Fong Wong is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Azusa Pacific University.