On White Theology … and other Lies: Redemptive Communal Narrative in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Abstract

Toni Morrison’s Beloved can be read as a decidedly theological work, particularly in its expression of redemptive communal unity through narrative re-telling. Morrison’s imagined community in Beloved moves from fragmented isolation to liberative solidarity with each other, dramatically exemplifying a postcolonial theological vision, which draws from African traditional cultures. Although often rejected by some theological interpreters as ‘pop-gnostic’, Toni Morrison’s Beloved rejects a theological worldview of coloniality and offers instead a hybridised approach to theological meaning. In dispelling the racial ‘othering’ that frequently occurs in both literature and theology, Morrison crafts a theological narrative that retells the sinful past in the hope of transcending guilt for the sake of a harmonious future. Thus, the theological insight of Beloved is found in a syncretic cosmology that does not perpetuate colonial ontological categories but forges a communal narrative that is non-possessive and open to a future free from the shackles of the past. Morrison’s Beloved equips the theologian with pertinent questions, ones that wrestle with the presence of God within a suffering and oppressed community; these are timely questions that must be posed to the Christian tradition in order to transcend the lies of white theology.