‘Black Theology is taking Christianity back to its origins’

By his own admission, it was never Anthony Reddie’s ambition to become an academic. 

He was a community worker with a gift for words, who dreamt of making it as a playwright or a comedy writer. But today – three decades into a career in academia that has seen him lecture all over the world – he has made history by becoming the University of Oxford’s first-ever professor of Black Theology.

Born in Bradford to Jamaican parents, Reddie grew up in a household where church attendance was mandatory, and faith – particularly his mother’s – a huge influence. His first encounter with racism occurred on his very first day of school; he arrived to start in Reception, only to be shunted to a centre for newly arrived immigrant children. “It took them three days to realise that I was born in Bradford!” he recalls.

“I don’t remember much about the centre, apart from being asked questions to which I already knew the answers – including whether or not I could speak English.” 

After graduating in the late 1980s, Reddie worked across Birmingham on a number of Methodist Church youth and community projects. He utilised the ideas of the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire, in particular Freire’s concept of “conscientization” (helping people to become politically self-aware), which he combined with the theories of the pioneering African American theologian James H Cone. “Within a few months…I knew I’d found my vocation,” he says.

The job inspired Reddie to undertake a PhD in education and practical theology, later becoming a research fellow at the Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham, funded by the Methodist Church. But after twelve years, that position came to an abrupt end when he was made redundant. 

“I remember the [Methodist] connexional officer saying to me: ‘Well, lay people lose their jobs all the time,’” he says. “It was a huge blow, because I thought I’d been doing God’s work.”

It took Reddie eight years to find another academic role that resonated with him; the kind which, as he describes it: “tries to wrestle with the big intellectual questions, but also tries to make a difference with ordinary people”. That was in 2020, when he became director of the Oxford Centre for Religion & Culture at Regent’s Park College. 

“It’s a part-time job, but it has reconnected me once more to the vocation I felt so strongly that I’d found back in the 90s,” Reddie says. “But also, because it’s at Oxford, it has restored what I was doing, amplified it and ramped it up even more. Being in Oxford, you’re right in the middle of the establishment. You’re right in the middle, essentially, of entitlement and privilege.” 

Last September, Reddie received an email from the vice-chancellor saying that his application to be a professor had been granted. He had become, with immediate effect, the first-ever professor of Black Theology in Oxford university’s 900-year history. The appointment also made him the first Black professor in Oxford’s theology department.

“It’s been a long journey and there are times I thought I’d never make it to anywhere like this,” he says. “That probably makes it even more enjoyable, actually: thinking that it’s never going to happen, and then suddenly it does.”

Embracing difference

Reddie has written prolifically throughout his career. His first book, Growing into Hope (Methodist Publishing House), is a two-volume curriculum for predominantly multi-ethnic churches, while Theologizing Brexit (Routledge) looked at Britain’s departure from the EU through an intercultural theological lens. The book can be summed up by what became Reddie’s most popular post on X: “Brexit is the shingles to the chickenpox of Empire.” He explains: “Chickenpox usually infects the body in childhood and then disappears. But it doesn’t go; it just incubates. If there’s some sort of crisis in adulthood, the virus can re-emerge as shingles – only more potent than before. Brexit was fuelled by nostalgia for [the] Empire, when Britain was a great power with complete sovereignty in the world.”

Ethnic and cultural differences are a gift to embrace, not a problem to solve

“Ethnic and cultural differences have always been a gift to embrace, not a problem to solve,” Reddie says. “The issue isn’t that such differences exist; it’s the values we give them that is the crucial point. We can celebrate ethnic, cultural and religious differences without assuming that some are more important or legitimate than others. If our differences are a threat to our existence, then ultimately that’s God’s fault, because our diversity is a gift God gave us.”

All of which brings us to his current role at Oxford. What exactly is Black Theology? Is it a genuine discipline the whole Church can benefit from, or just another example of liberal ‘wokeness’ gone mad?

White entitlement

“Black Theology has some practical things it’s trying to do,” Reddie says. “One is to wrestle the legacies of race that still work on the presumption of white superiority or entitlement on the one hand, and marginalisation and demonisation of particular peoples on the other. Just to be clear, I’m not saying every white person is racist. It would be ridiculous to say that. But we do live in a country that has habitually been susceptible to these ideas of white people feeling that they’re losing out to other people. That could be Margaret Thatcher in 1978, saying that Britain was being swamped by an alien culture. I’m still trying to work out how two or three per cent of people swamp 97 per cent! From Enoch Powell through to Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, we’re still having the same debate. The question is: how do we challenge those mythologies that whiteness still works on, which have no basis in fact, about needing to hold on to and protect one’s land and culture and traditions, when actually they’re not losing anything at all?

“Another thing Black Theology is trying to do is rehabilitate Christianity; to take it back to its origins where the Jesus we follow is not on the side of the establishment and power, but on the side of the marginalised and oppressed.”

Legacy

Reddie has now been in post for nearly a year. With his 60th birthday just a few weeks away, he finds himself at a significant point in his life, both personally and professionally.

“The key thing for me now is, what’s your legacy?” he says. “Obviously, I won’t be here forever; this is a great role, but in terms of working life, I’m probably nearer the end of mine. So, what is it I want to leave behind? What I would like to leave are some deep footprints that guide others coming into this space at Oxford; to say that we can make this our home and we can bring our culture, experiences, work, traditions and the things that are important to us, put them on the agenda and say: these are worth studying and engaging with.

“One of the things I’m doing at the moment is mentoring a group of younger Black scholars. Part of that is me saying to them: ‘I’ve arrived here, but it has taken a long time. So hopefully, if there’s a shortcut that you can take, I’ll help you to do that.’ I have no regrets about the journey I’ve taken, but if I knew then what I know now, I’d have taken some different steps.”