Legislating Innocence: Theology and the Politics of Guilt in Contemporary America

In light of the proliferation of legislation against DEI, choruses abound across liberal news outlets about how critical race theory is really about understanding and empathy rather than blame, shame, or guilt. There is a temptation to defend our pedagogies by claiming that we are not teaching about guilt. In response, this paper asks: What might an articulation of sin’s inheritance offer contemporary Christians and the broader American public to challenge the racism, sexism, colonialism, and transphobia perpetuated by such legislation? I use Friedrich Schleiermacher and James Cone to explore this question. I highlight the ambivalence of sin’s inheritance. On the one hand, sin teaches us there is something devastatingly wrong with a world in which we disavow our guilt as we enact quotidian and systemic violence. On the other, the history of sin also exemplifies just how guilty we, as Christian theologians, are.