This article is the fuller version of the 2021 ‘Feanley Hartley Lecture’ that was given on 17 May. This paper is drawn from more current research and a reappraisal of my earliest post-doctoral scholarship, dating back twenty years, in order to assess the theological challenge of systemic racism and the socio-cultural, economic and political challenge of ‘Whiteness’. Utilising the scholarship of Willie James Jennings’