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 Theologizing Race: James H. Cone, Liberation, and the Theological Meaning of Blackness

J. Kameron Carter

in Race: A Theological Account

At the center of the intellectual program called a black theology of liberation, as spearheaded by James Cone, has been unmasking the superstructure of whiteness as rooted in a problematic ... More

At the center of the intellectual program called a black theology of liberation, as spearheaded by James Cone, has been unmasking the superstructure of whiteness as rooted in a problematic Christology.This chapter does two things. First, it shows how the early work of Cone broke ground in uncovering the theological structure of modern racial reasoning. Cone's deepest insight here was that modernity's racial imagination, its gaze of whiteness, is tied to Christianity's modernist quest to overcome its Jewish roots or for Christian supersessionism. Second, it shows how a discourse of black cultural nationalism, “ontological blackness,” eventually sabotaged this early insight, thus causing the logic of modern racial reasoning to reenact itself inside of black theology. The chapter sketches a Christian theology of Israel as the way to press forward Cone's deepest insight for redressing the racial‐theological constitution of modernity.Less

“Let My People Go”: Exodus in the African American Experience

David W. Kling

in The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times

This chapter focuses on the Book of Exodus in the history of African-American Christians. It surveys the biblical exodus and then turns to various African-American understandings and expressions of ... More

This chapter focuses on the Book of Exodus in the history of African-American Christians. It surveys the biblical exodus and then turns to various African-American understandings and expressions of exodus themes in the context of slavery, emancipation, migration, the civil rights movement, and black liberation theology.Less

Contextuality of Black Experience and Contributions to a Wider Debate

Anthony G. Reddie

in Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa

This chapter locates this larger book project within the broader framework of Contextual Theology. It outlines the basic features and methodological points of departure in contextual theology, ... More

This chapter locates this larger book project within the broader framework of Contextual Theology. It outlines the basic features and methodological points of departure in contextual theology, analyzing the seminal work of the Euro-American, Catholic theologian Stephen Bevans. It critiques Bevans’ typology driven, systematic approach to Contextual Theology, arguing that this method fails to appreciate the highly contested and politicized nature of the subject. The chapter concludes by highlighting the socio-political intent of black churches and Christianity across the world, demonstrating how this text seeks to problematize and articulate the dialectical nature of this growing phenomenon.Less

In Search of a Transforming Public Theology: Drinking from the Wells of Black Theology

Nico Koopman

in Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa

This chapter challenges Public Theology to draw on the emphasis within Black Theology on the involvement of God in the affairs of this world, and specifically the notion that God reveals Godself as ... More

This chapter challenges Public Theology to draw on the emphasis within Black Theology on the involvement of God in the affairs of this world, and specifically the notion that God reveals Godself as the God who is identifying primarily, though not exclusively, with the poor and the wronged. The second crucial emphasis of Black Theology is the confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ over all dimensions and sectors of life - from the most intimate and personal to the most public, global and cosmic. To be a transforming and liberating Public Theology the vision, aim and methodology need to be informed by central convictions about God’s bias in favor of the wronged and against oppression, and about the Lordship of Jesus Christ within a world pervaded by a spirit and structures of empire.Less

Tribal Talk:: African Ancestral Spirituality as a Resource for Wholeness

Will “Esuyemi” Coleman

in Teaching African American Religions

This chapter discusses the text, Tribal Talk. Topics covered include Black theology, the use of broken English in the narrative, hermeneutics, African-derived religions in the Americas, and ... More

This chapter discusses the text, Tribal Talk. Topics covered include Black theology, the use of broken English in the narrative, hermeneutics, African-derived religions in the Americas, and African-American religious history.Less

Black South African Christian Response to Afrophobia in Contemporary South Africa

Rothney S. Tshaka

in Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa

This chapter argues that the apologetics of black theology of liberation, evidenced by its wrestling with method, produced an obsession. This obsession resulted in the alienation of this alternative ... More

This chapter argues that the apologetics of black theology of liberation, evidenced by its wrestling with method, produced an obsession. This obsession resulted in the alienation of this alternative hermeneutics in black communities and created a rift between itself and its interlocutors. Preoccupation with method hampered black theology of liberation from dealing with burning issues. Since black theology of liberation in some instances failed to critically engage Western hegemonies and power, it was incapable of dealing with issues that could have rolled back the flight from the black self. The willingness by the oppressed to participate in their own oppression remains a painful pathology related to scandalous social ills such as Afrophobia. Violence against the black other is ill-informed and should rather be directed at the hegemonic powers of capitalism and neoliberalism. We need a theology that is willing to listen earnestly to its interlocutors.Less

Are Afro-Latins Black?: The Construction of Blackness in Black Theology

Michelle A. Gonzalez

in Afro-Cuban Theology: Religion, Race, Culture, and Identity

This chapter examines the rhetorical construction and discursive function of blackness in Afro-Cuban and womanist theologies. It provides an overview of Afro-Cuban theology and discusses the ... More

This chapter examines the rhetorical construction and discursive function of blackness in Afro-Cuban and womanist theologies. It provides an overview of Afro-Cuban theology and discusses the construction of Afro-Cuban identity within black theology. It also explores the notion of blackness operating in womanist theology and concludes by engaging several signal voices within Afro-Cuban theology that offer internal critiques of its limited construction of blackness.Less

Shape-Shifting: Cultural Hauntings, Contested Post-Racialism, and Black Theological Imagination

Walter Earl Fluker

in Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa

This chapter proposes a reconfigured Black Theology based on the contemporary context of the Black Church in the US in a contested post-racial, post-American world. In that context, Black churches ... More

This chapter proposes a reconfigured Black Theology based on the contemporary context of the Black Church in the US in a contested post-racial, post-American world. In that context, Black churches are besieged by the “cultural hauntings” of race, in all of its shifting shapes and reinventions. This reference to shape-shifting is a form of critical signification on Black Church traditions. Historically, the Black Church has taken its metaphors, its parody and transformation of Western stories and ideas too literally and has mistaken these rhetorical devices for preordained things, essences. Shape-shifting is a form of postmodern self-reflexive critique of all signs which claim to be Absolute, including race, blackness, and theological metaphors. The chapter recommends, therefore, that the Black Church remain open to revisability of language and remember its own tradition of shape-shifting, signifying, reinterpreting in preaching, liturgy, and playing on words.Less

White Theology amidst White Rhetoric on Violence

Cobus van Wyngaard

in Contesting Post-Racialism: Conflicted Churches in the United States and South Africa

This essay explores contemporary South African white (and especially Afrikaner) rhetoric on violent crime as an expression of what can be described as a quasi-soteriology of the laager. It presents ... More

This essay explores contemporary South African white (and especially Afrikaner) rhetoric on violent crime as an expression of what can be described as a quasi-soteriology of the laager. It presents this rhetoric on violent crime as a continuation of white rhetoric on the Day of the Vow and the Anglo-Boer War, which describes Afrikaners as being under threat and salvation being found by withdrawal into a segregated existence. The presentation of white Afrikaners as being specifically targeted by violent crime is presented as a deliberate rhetorical option which should be read within this soteriological logic. In response to this soteriological problem the challenge of a soteriology which finds salvation in the wholeness of the entirety of society and the end of racist structures is presented as a challenge to the White Church.Less

“Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands unto God”: The Problem of History in Black Theology

in In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America

The black theological project was an extraordinary but flawed effort on the part of theologians such as James Cone to recast Christianity as essentially a religion of black liberation. This chapter ... More

The black theological project was an extraordinary but flawed effort on the part of theologians such as James Cone to recast Christianity as essentially a religion of black liberation. This chapter addresses what it calls the “problem of History” informing much of the work of black liberation theologians, beginning with a brief sketch of three trends within black theology, with a particular focus on the work of Cone. It then examines ways in which the historical experiences of African Americans are used to ground some theological claims and the problems that arise from this use. More specifically, the book locates black theology in its historical moment as a response to the secular rants of black power, arguing that black theology has constituted a form of apologetics insofar as it has sought to justify its relevance to various forms of black militancy. The chapter also contends that its version of pragmatism offers the most appropriate way to answer the problematic invocations of history by some black theologians.Less

Narrating Black Theology

Kristopher Norris

in Witnessing Whiteness

Employing the theology of James Cone as a representative of black liberation theology, this chapter analyzes the narrative basis of his ecclesiology as a vision of the church untethered from ... More

Employing the theology of James Cone as a representative of black liberation theology, this chapter analyzes the narrative basis of his ecclesiology as a vision of the church untethered from whiteness. The analysis demonstrates the ways Cone’s ecclesiology contrasts and refines Hauerwas’s. It attends specifically to the ways his narrative theology offers more promising resources for rightly telling the story of white Christianity and offering better witness to our whiteness. This chapter identifies the three conceptual elements of an ethic of responsibility in his thought—memory, particularity, and concreteness. Then, drawing on womanist engagement with his work, argues that Cone offers the concept of “narrative blackness” that invites white theologians and Christians to a form of conversion he calls “becoming black.”Less

Introduction

Vincent W. Lloyd

in Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology

Malcolm X introduced a distinction between the black masses, “field Negros,” and black religious elites, “house Negros.” This essay argues that black secularists occupy the role once filled by black ... More

Malcolm X introduced a distinction between the black masses, “field Negros,” and black religious elites, “house Negros.” This essay argues that black secularists occupy the role once filled by black religious elites. Drawing together the insights of secularism’s critics and the best insights of black theologians, this essay suggests that new energy could be infused into black theology if black secularism is directly addressed and criticized. It outlines the new task of black theology: to unapologetically embrace blackness and religion.Less

Cone

Vincent W. Lloyd

in Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology

James Cone is broadly recognized as the founding figure of black theology, but the chapter argues that Cone’s work after the early 1970s takes a subtle secularist turn. In his earliest, most powerful ... More

James Cone is broadly recognized as the founding figure of black theology, but the chapter argues that Cone’s work after the early 1970s takes a subtle secularist turn. In his earliest, most powerful writings, Cone embraces paradox. Blackness is at once empirical reality and ontological symbol. Hope is at once this-worldly and other-worldly. The agent of historical change is at once the human and God. These and many other paradoxes echo the central paradox of Cone’s work: Jesus Christ is at once human and divine. This chapter argues that Cone’s early work proposes for black theology an aesthetics of paradox that short-circuits both white supremacy and secularism. However, as the conversation about black theology expanded, and as Cone’s work itself developed, paradox was abandoned in a misguided effort at inclusiveness. As black theologians saw parallels between anti-black oppression and other forms of oppression, and as they explored the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, migration, and other issues, black theology became tethered to worldly concerns. This chapter ponders whether it might be possible for black theology to be responsive to multiple and intersecting oppressions while also embracing a decidedly theological idiom that takes paradox as its heart.Less

Meeting Beyond These Shores: Black Pentecostalism, Black Theology, and the Global Context

Dale T. Irvin

in Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture

This chapter examines the intersection between black Pentecostal theology and black liberation theology within a global context. It laments the lack of a fuller dialogue between black theology and ... More

This chapter examines the intersection between black Pentecostal theology and black liberation theology within a global context. It laments the lack of a fuller dialogue between black theology and Afro-Pentecostalism, suggesting that the discourse between the two disciplines is still in its infancy because the potential benefit of such dialogue often has been overlooked. It argues that both black Pentecostalism and black liberation theology have something specific to offer, not only to each other but also to the global Christian community. The chapter outlines several ways that black Pentecostal theology and black theology can serve to mutually critique and correct each other, while highlighting the specific contributions each makes to contexts that are “beyond the shores” of Western theology. It insists that such a discourse need not be physically located in spaces outside North America, and in fact can be carried out in geographical terrains within the West.Less

Race, Religion, and the Race for the White House

Dwight N. Hopkins

in The Obama Phenomenon: Toward a Multiracial Democracy

This chapter examines the controversy surrounding Obama's former, prophetic pastor Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. One of the fascinating developments in the 2008 presidential election has been the ... More

This chapter examines the controversy surrounding Obama's former, prophetic pastor Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. One of the fascinating developments in the 2008 presidential election has been the insertion of black religion and black theology into the discourse. For instance, on February 10, 2007, Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the White House. Shortly after, the New York Times published an article suggesting that Obama was beginning to distance himself from his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and that Obama might be linked to a radical form of black Christianity. The chapter argues for a need for a nationwide conversation on black religion, the black church, and black liberation theology.Less

Introduction

Anthony B. Pinn

in Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book attempts to give some shape to the claim that the body (metaphor and material) has profound theological importance. ... More

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book attempts to give some shape to the claim that the body (metaphor and material) has profound theological importance. It explores the ways in which this claim effects and influences the form, content, and tone of black theological thought. However, this book should be seen as a work in progress because it does not provide a full articulation of the complex body in/as theology, and in some cases readers will likely point to the manner in which the chapters talk about the body rather than represent theologizing from the body. The goal here is to simply point to the importance of such as a move toward embodiment and to provide examples of how this might occur.Less

For What Are Blacks to Hope?

Vincent W. Lloyd

in Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology

Recent theorizing in black studies, under the label Afro-pessimism, argues that hope for ending racial injustice is misguided. Racism is deeply woven into the metaphysics, or onto-theology, of the ... More

Recent theorizing in black studies, under the label Afro-pessimism, argues that hope for ending racial injustice is misguided. Racism is deeply woven into the metaphysics, or onto-theology, of the West—an argument that is made both through readings of philosophical texts and through empirical observation, contrasting the conditions faced by blacks with other ethnic groups. This challenge has not been substantially addressed by black theologians, who often romanticize the hope implicit in, for example, slave spirituals. This chapter points to theological responses to secularization as offering a model for black theological responses to racial injustice. According to Edward Schillebeeckx, secularization purged theology of false hopes while also orienting theologians to the future. This chapter explores what it might mean for Afro-pessimist insights to purge black theology of false hopes, and it asks what might remain of Christian hope after this purgation.Less

Visualizing Christ Our Redeemer, Man Our Brother

Kymberly N. Pinder

in Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago

This book explores the visualization of religious imagery in public art for African Americans in Chicago between 1904 and the present. It examines a number of case studies of black churches whose ... More

This book explores the visualization of religious imagery in public art for African Americans in Chicago between 1904 and the present. It examines a number of case studies of black churches whose pastors have consciously nurtured a strong visual culture within their congregation. It features examples of religious art associated with some of Chicago's most historically significant black churches and art in their neighborhoods. It considers how the arts interact with each other in the performance of black belief, explains how empathetic realism structures these interactions for a variety of publics, and situates public art within a larger history of mural histories. It also highlights the centrality of the visual in the formation of Black Liberation Theology and its role alongside gospel music and broadcasted sermons in the black public sphere. Finally, the book discusses various representations of black Christ and other black biblical figures, often imaged alongside black historical figures or portraits of everyday black people from the community.Less

Black Liberation Theology, Black Power, and the Black Arts Movement at Trinity United Church of Christ

Kymberly N. Pinder

in Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago

This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity ... More

This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” with a painting of a Jesus with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, his arms outstretched around a smiling African American family. This image of a black Christ was Evans's vision of being black and Christian. In the 1970s Evans joined TUCC, where the pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., promoted Black Liberation Theology and recommended specific texts and sermons for the artist to study that transformed his conception of Christ. This chapter first considers black theology and pan-Africanism at TUCC before discussing the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the muralist William Walker on Chicago. It also assesses the impact, in terms of style and content, of the murals on Chicago's South Side on Evans's work and concludes with an overview of TUCC's stained glass program.Less