The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery

A bold rereading of Augustinian thought for a world still haunted by slavery   Over the last two decades, scholars have made a striking return to the resources of the Augustinian tradition to theorize citizenship, virtue, and the place of religion in public life. However, these scholars have not sufficiently attended to Augustine’s embrace of the position of the Christian slaveholder. To confront a racialized world, the modern Augustinian tradition of political thought must reckon with its own entanglements with the afterlife of the white Christian master.   Drawing Augustine’s politics and the resources of modern Black thought into extended dialogue, Matthew Elia develops a critical analysis of the enduring problem of the Christian master, even as he presses toward an alternative interpretation of key concepts of ethical life—agency, virtue, temporality—against and beyond the framework of mastery. Amid democratic crises and racial injustice on multiple fronts, the book breathes fresh life into conversations on religion and the public square by showing how ancient and contemporary sources at once clash and converge in surprising ways. It imaginatively carves a path forward for the enduring humanities inquiry into the nature of our common life and the perennial problem of social and political domination.

About the Author :
Matthew Elia is assistant professor of theology, race, and environment at Saint Louis University. Born in the Mississippi Delta, he now lives upriver in Saint Louis, MO.

Review :
“A trenchant critique. . . . Elia has made a significant contribution to Augustinian studies, and he has done so in a way that elevates voices that Augustine himself failed to hear.”—Andrew C. Stout, Englewood Review of Books 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