I recently wrote a column about the Barack Obama/Jeremiah split.  I wrote about the historic prophetic tradition of the black church and the role that Black Liberation Theology played in that tradition. Not surprisingly, myriad pop theologians, I suspect fueled by the immediacy of their emotions, offered their analysis by penning Letters to the Editor, many in dissent of my column.  What I did find surprising were the number of responses that classified Black Liberation Theology as some form of separatist hate speech.   Subsequently, I have heard similar references offered by many conservative radio talk-show hosts.  And in our current YouTube culture truth at times is measured not by the accuracy of the data, but by the number of times a statement is repeated.

 

It can be said that the emergence of Black Theology in America has informal and formal beginnings.  The informal beginning was 1619 with the arrival of African slaves to Jamestown, Virginia.  Black Theology's formal beginning was 1969 with the publication of James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power.

 

According to Cone, Black Theology must refuse to embrace any concept of God, which makes black suffering the will of God.  If God has made a world in which black people must suffer, and if God is a God who rules, guides and sanctifies the world, then God is a murderer.  To be the God of black people, then God, must be against the oppression of black people.  

 

The historical struggle for liberation and dignity of black people in America provides meaning and purpose in the face of exploitation by whites on the basis of skin color alone. George Cummings describes this historical struggle under six headings:

Black Theology's informal beginnings must be understood against the backdrop of racist attitudes and values, along with the unique social, religious, cultural and historical consciousness of African peoples, who found themselves in a foreign land called the New World.  Gayraud Wilmore, in Black Religion and Black Radicalism, affirms that from the beginning, black resistance in the New World was directly opposed to white racism and to its ideological partner, white supremacy, and that it argued the need for African peoples to maintain their own peculiar culture, religion, values and life-styles despite the impositions of the white world. The radicalism of informal Black Theology is born out in two fundamental ways: first,  in the formation of the "Invisible Institution," and second, through several slave revolts.

 

On August 30, 1800, a slave named Gabriel Prosser led an unsuccessful revolt in Virginia.  It is believed that religion played a significant role in Prosser's revolt. According to Cummings, "the genesis of the revolt occurred in the context of religious meetings where Prosser's brother, Martin, was reputed to have utilized biblical text to affirm the success of their plot." Prosser was captured, tried and executed on October 7, 1800.

 

Denmark Vesey, who led a rebellion in South Carolina in 1822, led a local African Church and used spiritual texts to win supporters for the insurrection.  The following is a deposition accusing Vesey of linking religion to antislavery: "His general conversation was about religion which he would apply to slavery, as for instance, he would speak of the creation of the world in which he would say all men had equal rights, black as well as whites- all his religious remarks were mingled with slavery. "

 

In 1831 the bloodiest revolt in the history of the United States took place under the leadership of Nat Turner, whose reputation as a prophet and preacher was well known.  When Turner was questioned about his motives, he replied that God, through the scriptures and visions, directed him to lead the slaves to revolt.  During this same period, there were a handful of individuals providing a written critique of slavery that bears elements of radicalism.  David Walker provides one of the most important written critiques on slavery in the radical tradition.  Gayraud Wilmore writes: "Walker's appeal is steeped in biblical language and prophecy. It is certainly one of the most remarkable religious documents of the Protestant era." Walker challenged the hypocrisy of white Christianity and challenged blacks to stand up for the freedom inherent in the message of the Gospel.  It was a truly radical statement given its time period. In addition to slave revolts and the powerful  critiques of people such as David Walker,  the formation of the "Invisible Institution" displayed the radicalism of Black Theology's  informal beginnings.

 

Dwight Hopkins, in his book Shoes that Fit Our Feet writes: "Enslaved African Americans creatively forged their own understanding of God, Jesus Christ, and the purpose of humanity." Hopkins argues it was the slaves structural religious world view of God, Jesus and human purpose that sustained them against racist assaults.  Though slaves did not have direct access to the specifics of their former African religious practices and beliefs, they did have access to some aspects of African religion.

 

Enslaved Africans fused together their knowledge of African religious tradition with their understanding of the Christian faith to create the Invisible Institution.  Slaves would sneak off and have church their own way.  Because of their distrust for the slave master's brand of religion,  African slaves were defiantly compelled to speak to God in their own medium as they saw fit.  Speaking to God was essential to the African slave worship experience. Ex- slave Emily Dixon comments: "Us could go to de white folk's church (in a segregated section), but us wanted ter go whar us could sing all de way through an' hum 'long, an shout-yo' all know, jist turn loos lack."

 

The Invisible Institution demonstrated that the slave's defiant spirit, along with slave revolts, made up the informal beginning of Black Theology.  James Cone has argued that African slave's religious thought reflected on the meaning of their faith but did not necessarily have the tools that are associated with the discipline of theology.  Therefore, it would inaccurate to define these early traditions as Black Theology. James Cone points out:

 

Theology as "rational reflection" about God was foreign to the intellectual and religious sensibilities of African salves.  Most could not read or write, and few who could were almost forced to apply what they believed about God to the survival and liberation of their people rather than to consider it systematically.

 

While I agree with Cone's assertions that these informal beginnings could not be called systematic theology as this term is used today, there is a disparity between Cone's critique and the liberation process that I find troubling. I would argue that the informal beginnings provide deep underpinnings for the constructive theology known today as Black Theology.  Perhaps the importance of these acts, as a systematic theology, are not as important as their contribution to the liberation process.

 

The conclusion of the Civil War did not bring an end to the racism suffered by former African slaves.  A number of black leaders concluded that the only alternative was to embark on an exodus to Africa.  This is the beginning of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.  As George Cummings writes: "Their commitment to returning to the African continent was based on their theological critique of the institutional racism in the United States." Martin Delaney, Alexander Crummel, and Edward Blyden were three African American clergy whose theological reflection contributed to the development of a prophetic tradition.

 

Alexander Crummel, an Espicopalian priest, espoused black self- determination and support for black nationalism.  Crummel identified self-love as an important aspect of the Christian principle of love.  Crummel argued that oppressed blacks must affirm their selfhood in the process of being viewed as equals in the broader society. Crummel's analysis would later provide the foundation for the twentieth century black nationalist movements of Marcus Garvey and Elijah Mohammed.

The formal beginning of Black Theology cannot be discussed apart from the Civil Rights Movement.  The Civil Rights Movement was led by Martin Luther King, Jr., a preacher, theologian and activist who utilized Christian faith, a world view analysis, along with closely held American values (i.e. the Constitution and Declaration of Independence), as the motivating force in the struggle for African American liberation.

 

From the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955) to his assassination (1968), King was the leader of a movement that demonstrated the radical nature of Christian faith.  Though it differed from the violence of the slave revolts, it did possess the radical confrontation style dating back to Jesus of Nazareth. King recognized the need for religion to address the practical relevance of human existence.  In his book, Stride Toward Freedom, King writes: "Any religion that professes to concerned with the souls of men and women and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry as dust religion."

 

While the significance of the Civil Rights Movement cannot be diminished, many within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were growing frustrated with the slow pace of integration.  If the goal of the Civil Rights Movement was integration and equal rights, the younger faction within SNCC were more interested in black self determination and self love.  The black nationalist rhetoric of Alexander Crummel, Marcus Garvey, and Elijah Mohammed was crystallized by Malcolm X. 

 

The uncompromising rhetoric of Malcolm X began to resonate with a portion of SNCC's leadership.  George Cummings argues that Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement had more influence in the formation of Black Theology than the Civil Rights Movement. It was the preaching and teaching of Malcolm X's (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) brand of self love, the human right of self defense, black unity, black nationalism, as well as critique on Christianity as the "white man's religion" caught the attention of SNCC's leadership.  This latter point is a significant distinction between Malcolm X and Martin King.  Where King Christian beliefs led him to work for equal rights and justice, Malcolm X regarded King's belief system as a part of the oppression that black people suffer.  The ability of Malcolm X to critique white racist as well as white liberals, while simultaneously bringing stinging critiques on black leadership, was embraced by younger factions within the Civil Rights Movement who yearned for a more confrontational style. Malcolm X' language was also embraced by urban poor who had their own set of issues, but felt left out of the Civil Rights Movement.

 

While initial use of the phrase "Black Power" is in dispute, many attribute the phrase to Harlem Congressman and Pastor of the Abbysinian Baptist Church, Adam Clayton Powell.  Powell said in an address at Howard University commencement on May 19, 1966:  "Human rights are God given, civil rights are man made.  Our life must be purposed to implement human rights....to demand God given rights is to seek black power."

 

On the heels of Powell's speech the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and SNCC were sponsoring a joint March in June of 1966.  SNCC leader Stokley Carmichael (known later as Kwame Toure) would use this occasion to proclaim the slogan Black Power. While Black Power had a multiplicity of interpretations it generally took on the definition of the need for blacks to be proud of their heritage and utilize that proud past as motivating force in the liberation struggle.

 

With the growing militancy of advocates of black revolution and Black Power as expressed in race riots, counter violence, bombings, marches and demonstrations, radical black clergy found themselves searching for theological and ethical guidelines for their actions.

 

What did the Gospel have to say about Black Power?  What did the love ethic of Jesus Christ mean for black advocates who called the church into struggle?  Was it appropriate to utilize the church sanctuary as a haven and meeting place for those who advocated violence? 

 

In response to the appeals of white clergy to reject Black Power and accept love as the greatest principle of faith, along with the SCLC's inability to respond effectively to black radicalism; black clergy met in July 1966 in New York City.  The purpose of this meeting was to draft a statement outlining their response to Black Power and black radicalism.   In a statement affirming Black Power they asserted:

“The fundamental distortion regarding Black Power is rooted in a gross imbalance of power and consciousness between Negroes and white Americans.  It is this distortion, mainly which is responsible for the widespread assumption that white people are justified in getting what they want through power, but that Negro Americans must either nature or circumstance make their appeal through conscious.”

 

These clergy persons affirmed that although they did not condone violence, they nevertheless supported the freedom struggle.  This group of clergy later became known as the National Conference of Black Churchmen (NCBC).  With the assistance of James Cone, they issued a statement on black theology. That statement essentially defined black theology as an interpretation of the Black Power movement such that those who struggle would know that such a posture was not only consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is the essence of it.

 

When we engage the concept of liberation theology in this society, it is usually done within the context of selected African American clergy in the United States.  America's three hundred plus years of oppression against people of African descent forced black clergy to examine the meaning of Christian faith within the context of egregious violations of their human rights.

 

Using race as its primary point of departure, Black Theology  emerged asking:  What does the Gospel of Jesus Christ say to human suffering?  Liberation theology is born out of the realities of oppressed people in their struggle for political, economic, cultural, and social justice.

Black Theology as Praxis 

Black Theology emerged as a theology of liberation dedicated to religio-cultural, socio-economic and political liberation of the African American poor, but it did not explicate a comprehensive understanding of linkage between these diverse dimensions of the African American struggle for liberation. As a result, Black Theology emphasized the political and religious and political aspects but failed to provide an analysis on the economic order. Though Black Theology failed to emphasize economics in any comprehensive way, this failure does not suggest there was no commitment to economic liberation.  By engaging with Latin American theologians, Black Theology recognized that ones political and theological commitments could flow from ones economic and class position.  Perhaps Black Theology's greatest contribution was it break with White Theology and its affirmation of black religion.

 

Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power , marked the official break with so-called white theology, as Cone declared that the Black Power Movement represented God's active engagement in the liberation struggles of the black oppressed in America. Cone rejected the traditional white interpretations of theology in favor of a theology articulated by oppressed black people.  For Cone, Black Theology and Black Power meant the right of self-determination for black people, the right to shape their own future and destiny. The furthering of Cone's break with white theological interpretations was his redefinition of Christ: "If Christ was not to found in black peoples struggle for freedom, if he were not found in the ghetto's with rat bitten black children, if he were in rich white churches and their seminaries, then I wanted no part of him."

 

While the black condition is the starting point of Black Theology, it does not reduce theology to the sum total of black oppression. The core of Black Theology remains Christ-centered.  This is why Black Theology seeks to explicate the meaning of Jesus Christ in light of black suffering.

In Jesus Christ, African American Christians see God not only as the creator; but as liberator, redeemer and savior.  God the Father is seen in Jesus Christ making redemption possible for His creatures. 

 

No point in black theology is more central than that of Jesus as liberator.  Perhaps the reason Jesus as liberator carries such a wide degree of acceptance is due to the necessity of the black theologian's quest to make theology relevant to black reality.

 

God is related to human history calling us to examine who Jesus was as a historical person and how He related to God.  If God is our salvation, and if Jesus is conceived as being one with God, then we must know Jesus in His relationship to God, in order to accept Him as our ultimate means of knowing God.  To know Jesus is to know God.  Therefore, Black Theology's chief interest in Christology lies in the question, "What is God attempting to achieve for Black people through Jesus Christ?" 

 

Jesus Christ is a living reality, fully identifying with the suffering of Black people.  Jesus' understanding is due to his own suffering in the world. 

 

God entered into battle through Jesus, and extended to Him the power to liberate and provide the oppressed with a reason to hope.  Jesus as the Black messiah is key to understanding Black Christology. 

 

This symbolic definition as the Black messiah demonstrates how Jesus identifies with those on the margins of society.  Jesus can be the Black messiah while simultaneously providing liberation and hope for other groups.  Jacquelyn Grant, a womanist theologian states: "Christ found in the experience of Black women, is a Black woman." She adds, "the significance of Christ is not His maleness but His humanity."  

 

Black theology, raised from the community of the oppressed, is a theology of redemption.  The Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith are fused through the passing down of oral history, testimonies, literature, spirituals and sermons, creating a fusion of two realities.  Therefore, Black symbolism, unique to the Black experience, is the ability to see Jesus as ebony hued with nappy hair, fully participating with black people in the quest for redemption. 

 

The blackness of Jesus is not so much a question of physical skin color. Rather, it is the illumination of the stance Jesus assumed in regard to the power structure.

 

Jesus' blackness, which historically reveals Jesus' identification with the poor, serves today to empower African Americans and other communities on the underside to struggle for justice.  The witness of Jesus Christ provided black people with the strength and determination necessary to face persecution as they confront the powers that be.  This is why James Cone asks:

“What is it that keeps the community together when there are so many scars and hurts?  What is it that gives them the will and the courage to struggle in hope when so much in their environment says that fighting is a waste of time?  I think the only “reasonable” and "objective" explanation is to say that people are the right when they proclaim the presence of the divine power.”

 

The black interpretation of God's experience in Jesus Christ is not meant to reduce the divine nature of God.  Simply stated, Black Christology must be studied from the vantage point of black interpretation of the scriptures. 

 

The Christ event must disclose the involvement of God in the black experience.  Black Christology insists on the human and divine characterizations of Jesus.  This allows humankind also to partake of God.

Black Theology sees power as an essential ingredient for human dignity.  To have dignity is to be able to determine one's destiny and to have a voice within society;  it is to be a subject in history, not an object or victim.  According to Cone, "Black Power. . . is the black person's attempt to affirm his or her being, his or  her attempt to be recognized as a Thou.” To live without power is to live in absurdity.  As Cone notes:

 

Absurdity arises when a black people seek to find their place in the white world.  Black people do not view themselves as absurd; they view themselves as human.  But as they meet the white world and its values they are confronted with an almighty No and are defined as things.  This produces the absurdity.

 

Black theology seeks to fill a void for an oppressed group largely ignored by white theologians.  Black theology stands on the side of those who have been victims of racism and oppression, those who possess the greatest potential for dismantling the current system because they do not benefit from the largess of society.   

 

If Black Theology represents God's active engagement in the liberation struggles of the black oppressed in America, then there is a gulf between Black Theology and its implementation at the congregational level.  While one could argue there are a myriad of reasons for the division between the academy and the church, I contend there are two overarching reasons Black Theology is more popular in the halls of universities and seminaries than in the streets of Harlem, Chicago's South Side, South Central Los Angeles, and East Oakland. 

 

African American theologians writing and critiquing the black church do not engage themselves in the life of the church.  I am not suggesting there are no African American theologians engaged with the church. Many, including Dr. George Cummings, Dr. Dennis Wiley, Dr. Cheryl Sanders and others, serve academic as well as pastoral roles.  However, too many black theologians continue to sit at the periphery of church life.  The academic setting with its demands often discourages theologians from active involvement in church life.

 

I contend the critiques and observations of the African American theologian would be embraced far more enthusiastically if the theologian involved him or her self more in the church. The language of the academy must meet the language of the community; or as my grandmother so often  says: "If you want me to drink from your well, put it in a cup I recognize."

 

This is not to suggest the work done by black theologians is invalid.  Black Theology is critical to the African American experience.  But can Black Theology continue to identify itself as a theology of liberation if it is not grounded in the communities it claims it represents?    If one of Black Theology's main goals is to break with traditional white theological interpretations and affirm a theology articulated by oppressed black folk, how does its disconnection from low-income African American communities shape its theological reflections of that community in pursuit of liberation?  Furthermore, if Black Theology is not connected to the black community, how does it differ from the white theological interpretations that its architects sought to debunk?

 

The formal and informal beginnings of Black Theology have served to help African Americans make sense of their odd existence in this land.  Though Black Theology has long recognized the need to provide critique beyond race, it has failed to do so in any comprehensive way.  Race alone cannot account for the fact that approximately one third of the African American population continues to live in poverty.  Race alone cannot account for the specific issues of women, Gay and Lesbian people, those who are physically challenged and also happen to be African American.  Such limitations force groups to make choices with their identifications.

 

The additional harm that race as a sole primary point of departure provides is the limit it places on  identifying allies.  In addition to its need to be linked in the communities it claims to represent, for Black Theology to be a theology of liberation it must ask the question: what similarities does it have with others who are on the margins of society?  The amorphous enemy of African Americans does not allow the cry of racial injustice to smother it.  I am not advocating for Black Theology to become a theology of collaboration; rather, I am advocating that it provide a more comprehensive approach to the issues plaguing African Americans.  Such analysis would make the recognition of allies easier, thus having the potential of furthering its own liberation project.

 

I suspect that not even Cone would argue that Black Theology represents Nirvana, but it is a valid attempt to make sense theologically of centuries of absurdity.  It is understandable that those outside could reach different conclusions, but Black Theology is hardly hate speech.