Book Review: A Black Theology of the American Empire by Karl W. Lampley

In 2013, Karl W. Lampley published his doctoral dissertation A Theological Account of Nat Turner: Christianity, Violence, and Theology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) as part of the Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice series, focusing on the theology of Nat Turner and, in particular, on questions concerning the legitimacy of (his) violence from a Christian perspective. Over a decade later, in 2024, Lampley—now a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University—returned to the same series with a new volume entitled A Black Theology of the American Empire. Once again, he engages Black theology at the intersection of oppression, politics, and power in the American context—this time with a distinct focus on the concept of ‘empire’.

The central aim of Lampley's book is to examine the American Empire in its present form, to reveal how it continues to oppress Black people, and to trace the theological frameworks that have historically served—and continue serving—to legitimize this oppression. Yet his project extends beyond critique: Lampley also seeks to develop a constructive vision of what the American Empire could become. He explores how Black theology might contribute to reimagining and transforming the Empire into a more just, humane, and morally accountable global power.

In the opening chapter, Lampley outlines the core assumptions of his project, beginning with a definition of empire as ‘the overwhelming military, political, economic, and social might, force, and global leadership of unparalleled and unmatched American power in the international arena that has emerged since World War II’ (p. 2). He then introduces his two main theological interlocutors: Reinhold Niebuhr and James Cone. This choice is striking, as their approaches are often viewed as fundamentally divergent—Niebuhr as a representative of so-called ‘Christian realism’, emphasizing responsibility within a fallen world and the necessity of engaging with ‘realpolitik’; Cone as the foundational voice of Black theology, articulating a radical critique of social and political institutions that perpetuate racism and oppression.

In chapters 2 and 3, Lampley then undertakes a dual analysis of the American Empire. Chapter 2 approaches the topic historically, tracing how the emergence and expansion of the American Empire have been deeply intertwined with colonialism and the oppression of Black people. His analysis moves from the Treaty of Paris (1783) through figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, ultimately mapping the trajectory of US imperial power up to the Cold War and the Bush Doctrine of 2001. Chapter 3 then shifts the focus to theology. Starting from the premise that empires require ideological scaffolding to endure, Lampley explores how American imperial ideals have been intertwined with Christian theological narratives. He critically engages concepts such as American exceptionalism, divine providence, the ‘city on a hill’, and the moral dichotomy of ‘good versus evil’, showing how these ideas have been framed in religious terms to legitimate imperial dominance, while consistently subjecting the entanglement of theology and empire to sustained critique.

Chapter 4 sharpens the theological critique by confronting the American Empire with the radical claims of Black theology. Lampley argues that colonialism and the systemic oppression of Black people constitute the ‘original sin’ (p. 97) of the American Empire—wounds that continue to shape and haunt it to this day. These unresolved injustices, he warns, threaten the Empire's future: unless it undergoes a fundamental transformation, both internally and in its global posture, it risks ‘imploding from within due to its glaring hypocrisy, social injustices, and unfaithfulness to its highest theological ideals and beliefs’ (p. 117). In response, Lampley presents Black theology as a constructive path forward: a liberative theological tradition that could help the American Empire ‘become a nation that promotes freedom, democracy, and international human rights first and foremost above even its own narrow self-interest and strategic desires for global dominance’ (p. 117).

In the final chapter, Lampley outlines a constructive theological vision and proposes ten recommendations for how the theology of the American Empire itself might be ‘blackened’. This theological reorientation, he argues, could help the United States become a nation more faithful to its own American Creed and to the global standards of human rights. What stands out in this chapter is the underlying set of assumptions, which bear the unmistakable imprint of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism. While Lampley offers a sharp critique of the current form of the Empire—calling it racist and fundamentally out of step with its own ideals—he nevertheless insists that the United States, as ‘the sole global superpower in the contemporary context’ (p. 133), not only will continue to exist as an empire but in fact should. That is because, in Lampley's vision, America's ‘unrivaled worldwide dominance, authority, and hegemony’ (p. 133), along with its capacity ‘to intervene anytime and anywhere in the world’ (p. 133), endows it with the moral responsibility:

to cultivate international diplomacy, free trade, cross-cultural communication, and world-wide cooperation, to care for all the peoples and nations of the world including enemies and rogue states, to nurture the entire planet and the whole created order, to lead with genuine empathy, benevolence, and compassion, and to preserve freedom, democracy, and human rights for all human beings especially poor peoples of color in the Third World and poor indigenous peoples in the Fourth World. (p. 140)

One of the book's greatest strengths lies in the scope of its theological imagination. In just under 150 pages, Lampley manages to articulate a sweeping vision for America's global role—grounded in the transformative potential of Black theology. The clarity and conciseness with which he lays out this ambitious program are impressive in their own right.

A second strength lies in Lampley's ability to bring two seemingly divergent theological traditions into meaningful and sustained conversation. The way he brings together the rather contrasting approaches of Reinhold Niebuhr and James Cone—not only placing them in conversation, but weaving them into a coherent framework without flattening their distinctiveness or subordinating one to the other—is impressive and holds considerable potential for further theological reflection.

Finally, the most provocative and potentially productive move in the book is Lampley's attempt to rethink the very notion of empire. Across a wide range of critical debates, ‘empire’ is commonly treated as a per se negative category—a structure to be resisted, rejected, or overcome. This premise shapes influential strands of political philosophy, most notably Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (Harvard University Press, 2000), as well as a broad spectrum of theological critiques developed within postcolonial, liberationist, and contextual traditions, including the work of Miguel De La Torre (Latina/o Social Ethics, Baylor University Press, 2010), Munther Isaac (Christ in the Rubble, Eerdmans, 2025), Kwok Pui-lan (Postcolonial Politics and Theology, Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), or Néstor Míguez, Joerg Rieger, and Jung Mo Sung (Reclaiming Liberation Theology, SCM Press, 2009). Lampley, by contrast, seeks a theologically constructive engagement with the concept of empire itself. While this move may unsettle established patterns of critique, it opens up new possibilities for reimagining power, responsibility, and global ethics in ways that are deeply rooted in the Black theological tradition.

Whether Lampley's constructive reframing of empire ultimately convinces is open to debate. His argument rests on the assumption that the United States continues to occupy the position of the world's sole superpower. Yet this claim appears increasingly tenuous in light of China's rapid rise as a global force with its own imperial ambitions—and even more so given the recent political shifts under Trump and his administration.

More fundamentally, Lampley's vision of a morally renewed American Empire risks idealizing imperial power while downplaying its structural costs. Empires do not endure by goodwill alone. The American Empire is sustained by enormous military spending—hundreds of billions of dollars annually—at the expense of education, healthcare, and social welfare. Recent legislation, such as the so-called ‘big beautiful bill’, has deepened these disparities by further cutting support for the most vulnerable. Moreover, maintaining imperial dominance entails the global export of violence—violence that affects not only ‘bad actors and rogue nations’ (p. 137), but also civilian populations (Andrews, The New Age of Empire, Penguin, 2021), as daily media reports make clear. Yet Lampley neither seriously addresses these realities nor explains how a theologically and morally renewed American Empire could avoid reproducing such harms. This omission raises concern: without confronting the violence and structural inequality that sustain imperial power, any attempt to rehabilitate empire theologically risks appearing not only naïve, but maybe even ethically compromised.

In this sense, A Black Theology of the American Empire is a highly thought-provoking work. Its critical analyses are compelling, and its theological impulses offer valuable contributions to ongoing conversations about race, power, and moral responsibility. At the same time, its constructive vision calls for careful scrutiny—and perhaps even a measure of skepticism. The book is best read not as a definitive roadmap for the future of American Empire, but as a bold and provocative theological intervention that invites further debate.