6 - Black Theology in American Religion

Black Theology in American Religion
By James H. Cone

"It was the 'African' side of black religion that helped African-Americans to see beyond the white distortions of the Gospel and to discover its true meaning as God's liberation of the oppressed from bondage. It was the 'Christian' element in black religion that helped African-Americans to re-orient their African past so that it would become useful in the struggle to survive with dignity in a society that they did not make."

MORE than eighty years ago, W.E.B. DuBois wrote the following in The Souls of Black Folk, his classic statement of the paradox of black life in America:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.¹

The "two warring ideals" that DuBois described in 1903 have been at the center of black religious thought from its origin to the present day. They are found in the heated debates about "integration" and "nationalism" and in the attempt to name the community-beginning with the word "African" and using at different times such terms as "Colored," "Negro," "Afro-American," and "Black."

In considering black religious thought, let us give clearer names to the "two warring ideals"-clearer, that is, from the point of view of religion. I will call them "African" and "Christian." Black religious thought is not identical with the Christian theology of white Americans. Nor is it identical with traditional African beliefs, past or present. It is both-but reinterpreted for and adapted to the life-situation of black people's

James H. Cone is Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary in New York. The author of numerous seminal works on black theology, his article, "Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Theology-Black Church," appeared in THEOLOGY TODAY, Jan. 1984. This present essay carries that analysis further and comes, appropriately, in celebration of the newly proclaimed National Holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Jan. 20, 1986). The new emphasis in many quarters, especially in the Third World, on non-Western and non-discursive approaches to theology is one of the most provocative trends in contemporary religious thought and life.
¹ W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Premier Book, 1968), pp. 16-17. Originally published in 1903.

7 - Black Theology in American Religion

struggle for justice in a nation whose social, political, and economic structures are dominated by a white racist ideology. It was the "African" side of black religion that helped African-Americans to see beyond the white distortions of the Gospel and to discover its true meaning as God's liberation of the oppressed from bondage. It was the "Christian" element in black religion that helped African-Americans to reorient their African past so that it would become useful in the struggle to survive with dignity in a society that they did not make.

Although the African and Christian elements are found throughout the history of black religious thought, the Christian part gradually became dominant. Though less visible, the African element continued to play an important role in defining the core of black religion, thus preventing it from becoming merely an imitation of Protestant or Catholic theologies in the West.

Of course, there are many similarities between black religious thought and white Protestant and Catholic reflections on the Christian tradition. But the dissimilarities between them are perhaps more important than the similarities. The similarities are found at the point of 4 common Christian identity, and the dissimilarities can best be understood in light of the differences between African and European cultures in the New World. While whites used their cultural perspective to dominate others, blacks used theirs to affirm their dignity and to empower themselves to struggle for justice. The major reason for the differences between black and white reflections on God is found at the point of the great differences in life. As white theology is largely defined by its response to modern and post-modern societies of Europe and America, usually ignoring the contradictions of slavery and oppression in black life; black religious thought is the thinking of slaves and of marginalized blacks whose understanding of God was shaped by the contradictions that white theologians ignored and regarded as unworthy of serious theological reflection.

I

The tension between the "African" and "Christian" elements acted to reorder traditional theological themes in black religion and to give them different substance when compared to other theologies in Europe and America. Five themes in particular defined the character of black religious thought during slavery and its subsequent development: justice, liberation, hope, love, and suffering.

No theme has been more prominent throughout the history of black religious thought than the justice of God. African-Americans have always believed in the living presence of the God who establishes the right by punishing the wicked and liberating their victims from oppression. Everyone will be rewarded and punished according to their deeds, and no one-absolutely no one--can escape the judgment of God, who alone is the sovereign of the universe. Evil-doers may get by for a time,

8 - Black Theology in American Religion

and good people may suffer unjustly under oppression, but "sooner or later,… we reap as we sow."²

The "sooner" referred to contemporary historically observable events: punishment of the oppressors and liberation of the oppressed. The "later" referred to the divine establishment of justice in the "next world" where God "gwineter rain down fire" on the wicked and where the liberated righteous will "walk in Jerusalem just like John." In the religion of African slaves, God's justice was identical with the punishment of the oppressors, and divine liberation was synonymous with the deliverance of the oppressed from the bondage of slavery-if not "now" then in the "not yet." Because whites continued to prosper materially as they increased their victimization of African-Americans, black religious thought spoke more often of the "later" than the "sooner.³

The themes of justice and liberation are closely related to the idea of hope. The God who establishes the right and puts down the wrong is the sole basis of the hope that the suffering of the victims will be eliminated. Although African slaves used the term heaven to describe their experience of hope, its primary meaning for them must not be reduced to the "pie-in-the-sky," otherworldly affirmation that often characterized white evangelical Protestantism. The idea of heaven was the means by which slaves affirmed their humanity in a world that did not recognize them as human beings.⁴ It was their way of saying that they were made for freedom and not slavery.

Oh Freedom! Oh Freedom!
Oh Freedom, I love thee!
And before I'll be a slave,
I'll be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.

Black slaves' hope was based on their faith in God's promise to "protect the needy" and to "defend the poor." Just as God delivered the Hebrew children from Egyptian bondage and raised Jesus from the

² A concise statement of the major themes in black religious thought, during and following slavery, is found in a 1902 sermon of an ex-slave and Princeton Theological Seminary graduate, Francis J. Grimke: "God is not dead,-nor is he an indifferent onlooker at what is going on in this world. One day He will make restitution for blood; He will call the oppressors to account. Justice may sleep, but it never dies. The individual, race, or nation which does wrong, which sets at defiance God's great law, especially God's great law of love, of brotherhood, will be sure, sooner or later, to pay the penalty. We reap as we sow. With that measure we mete, it shall be measured to us again." (See C. G. Woodson, ed., The Works of Francis J. Grimke, 1, 1942, p. 354.) Grimke's statement was undoubtedly influenced by the slave song, "You shall reap jes what you sow."
³ For an interpretation of the slaves' idea of justice and liberation, see my The Spirituals and the Blues (New York: Seabury, 1972), especially chap. 3. See also Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Vincent Harding, There Is A River (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981); and Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, rev. ed., 1983).
⁴ For a fuller discussion of the idea of heaven in slave religion, see my The Spirituals and the Blues, chap. 5. See also John Lovell, Jr., Black Song (New York: Macmillan, 1972), especially pp. 310-312, 315-374.

9 - Black Theology in American Religion

dead, so God will also deliver African slaves from American slavery and "in due time" will bestow upon them the gift of eternal life. That was why they sang:

Soon-a-will be done with the trouble of the world;
Soon-a-will be done with the trouble of the world;
Going home to live with God.

Black slaves' faith in the coming justice of God was the chief reason why they could hold themselves together in servitude and sometimes fight back, even though the odds were against them.

The ideas of justice, liberation, and hope should be seen in relation to the important theme of love. Theologically, God's love is prior to the other themes. But in order to separate black reflections on love from a similar theme in white theology, it is important to emphasize that love in black religious thought is usually linked with God's justice, liberation, and hope. God's love is made known through divine righteousness, liberating the poor for a new future.

God's creation of all persons in the divine image bestows sacredness upon human beings and thus makes them the children of God. To violate any person's dignity is to transgress "God's great law of love."⁵ We must love the neighbor because God has first loved us. And because slavery and racism are blatant denials of the dignity of the human person, God's justice means that "He will call the oppressors to account."⁶

Despite the strength of black faith, belief in God's coming justice and liberation was not easy for African slaves and their descendants. Their suffering created the most serious challenge to their faith. If God is good, why did God permit millions of blacks to be stolen from Africa and enslaved in a strange land? No black person has been able to escape the existential agony of that question.

In their attempt to resolve the theological dilemma that slavery and racism created, African-Americans turned to two texts-the Exodus and Psalm 68:31.⁷ They derived from the Exodus text the belief that God is the liberator of the oppressed. They interpreted Psalm 68:31 as an obscure reference to God's promise to redeem Africa: "Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God." Despite African-Americans' reflections on these texts, the contradictions remained between oppression and their faith.

II

The withdrawal of the black church from politics and its alliance with the accommodation philosophy of Booker T. Washington created the conditions that gave rise to the civil rights movement: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909,

⁵ Works of Grimke, p. 354.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ For an interpretation of these texts, see Albert J. Raboteau, " 'Ethiopia Shall Soon Stretch Forth Her Hands': Black Destiny in Nineteenth-Century America," The University Lecture in Religion at Arizona State University (Jan. 27, 1983).

10 - Black Theology in American Religion

the National Urban League (NUL) in 1911, and the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. These national organizations, and similar local and regional groups in many parts of the country, took up the cause of justice and equality of blacks in the society. They were strongly influenced by ideas and persons in the churches. Civil rights organizations not only internalized ideas about justice, liberation, hope, love, and suffering that had been preached in the churches; they also used church property to convene their own meetings and usually made appeals for support at church conferences. The close relations between the NAACP and the black churches has led some to say that "the black church is the NAACP on its knees."

Due to the de-radicalization of the black church, progressive black ministers found it difficult to remain involved in the internal affairs of their denominations. Baptist ministers, because of the automony of their local congregations, found it easier than Methodists to remain pastors while also being deeply involved in struggle for black equality in the society. Prominent examples included Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. and Jr., father and son pastors of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York. Adam, Jr., made his entree on the public stage by leading a four-year non-violent direct-action campaign, securing some ten thousand jobs for Harlem blacks. In 1944, he was elected to Congress.

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., embraced that part of the black religious tradition that refused to separate the Christian Gospel from the struggle for justice in society. In his influential Marching Blacks, he accused white churches of turning Christianity into "churchianity," thereby distorting the essential message of the Gospel which is "equality" and "brotherhood."

The great loving heart of God has been embalmed and laid coolly away in the tombs we call churches. Christ of the Manger, the carpenter's bench, and the borrowed tomb has once again been crucified in stained-glass windows!⁸

Other influential thinkers of this period included Howard Thurman and Benjamin E. Mays. Thurman wrote twenty-two books and lectured at more than five hundred institutions. He also served as dean of Rankin Chapel and professor of theology at Howard University; the dean of Marsh Chapel and minister-at-large of Boston University; and as minister and co-founder of the interdenominational Fellowship Church of San Francisco. His writings and preaching influenced many, and Life magazine cited him as one of the twelve "Great Preachers" of this century. Unlike most black ministers concerned about racial justice, liberation, love, suffering, and hope, Thurman did not become a political activist; he took the "inward journey" (the title of one of his books), focussing on a "spiritual quest" for liberation beyond race and ethnic

⁸ Adam C. Powell, Jr., Marching Blacks (New York: Dial Press, 1945; rev. ed. 1973), p. 194.

11 - Black Theology in American Religion

origin. He was able to develop this universalist perspective without ignoring the urgency of the political issues involved in the black struggle for justice.⁹

Benjamin E. Mays, ecumenist and long-time president of Morehouse College, also made an important contribution to black religious thought through his writings and addresses on the black church and racism in America. He chaired the National Conference on Religion and Race in 1963.¹⁰ Mays was an example of a black religious thinker who found the black church too limiting as a context for confronting the great problems of justice, liberation, love, hope, and suffering. Like Thurman and Powell, Mays regarded racism as anti-Christian, an evil that must be eliminated from the churches and society.

No thinker has made a greater impact upon black religious thought or even upon American society and religion as a whole than Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that many white theologians can write about American religion and theology with no reference to him reveals both the persistence of racism in the academy and the tendency to limit theology narrowly to the academic discourse of seminary and university professors.

Much has been written about the influence of King's graduate education upon his thinking and practice, especially the,, writings of George Davis, Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, Edgar S. Brightman, Harold DeWolf, G. W. Hegel, Walter Rauschenbusch, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr.¹¹ Of course, these religious and philosophical thinkers influenced him greatly, but it is a mistake to use them as the primary basis for an interpretation of his life and thought. King was a product of the black church tradition; its faith determined the essence of his theology.¹² He used the intellectual tools of highly recognized thinkers to explain what he believed to the white public and also to express the universal character of the Gospel. But he did not arrive at his convictions about God by reading white theologians. On the

⁹ Some of Howard Thurman's most influential writings include Deep River (1945), The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death (1947), Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), and The Search for Common Ground (19 1).
¹⁰ For an account of that conference, see Mathew Ahmann (ed.), Race: Challenge to Religion (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1963). Influential works by B. E. Mays include (with Joseph W. Nicholson) The Negro's Church (1933), The Negro's God (1938), Seeking To Be Christian in Race Relations (1957), and Born To Rebel (1971)
¹¹ See especially Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, Jr., Search For The Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Valley Forge: Judson, 1974); John J. Ansbro, Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Making of a Mind (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1982).
¹² The importance of the black religious tradition for King's theology has not received the attention by scholars that it deserves. See my "Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Theology-Black Church," THEOLOGY TODAY, Jan. 1984. See also the important essay of Lewis V. Baldwin, "Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Church, and the Black Messianic Vision," Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center (forthcoming). David, Garrow's definitive biography on King is soon to be published under the title Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955-1958. It will show the important role of the black church tradition in his life and thought.

12 - Black Theology in American Religion

contrary, he derived his religious beliefs from his acceptance of black faith and his application of it to the civil rights struggle.

In moments of crisis, King turned to the God of black faith. From the beginning of his role as the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott to his tragic death in Memphis, he was a public embodiment of the central ideas of black religious thought. The heart of his beliefs revolved around the ideas of love, justice, liberation, hope, and redemptive suffering. The meaning of each is mutually dependent on the others. Though love may be appropriately placed at the center of his thought, he interpreted it in the light of justice for the poor, liberation for all, and the certain hope that God has not left this world in the hands of evil people.

King often used the writings of Tillich, Niebuhr, and other white thinkers to express his own ideas about the interrelations of love and justice. But it was his internalization of their meaning in the black church tradition that helped him to see that "unmerited suffering is redemptive." While the fighters for justice must be prepared to suffer in the struggle for liberation, they must never inflict suffering on others. That was why King described non-violence as "the Christian way in human relations" and "the only road to freedom,"13

III

To understand King's thinking, it is necessary to understand him in the context of his own religious heritage. His self-description is revealing:

I am many things to many people; Civil Rights leader, agitator, troublemaker, and orator, but in the quietness of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher. This is my being and my heritage for I am also the son of a Baptist preacher, the grandson of a Baptist preacher, and the great-grandson of a Baptist preacher. The Church is my life, and I have give my life to the church.¹⁴

The decisive impact of the black church heritage upon King can be seen in his ideas about justice, liberation, love, hope, and suffering. He took the democratic tradition of freedom and combined it with the biblical tradition of justice and liberation as found in Exodus and the Old Testament prophets. Then he integrated both traditions with the New Testament idea of love and suffering as disclosed in Jesus' cross. And from all three, he developed a theology that was effective in challenging all Americans to create the beloved community in which all persons are equal. While it was the Gandhian method of non-violence that provided the strategy for achieving justice, it was, as King said "through the influence of the Negro church" that "the way of non-violence became an integral part of our struggle."¹⁵

¹³ See Martin Luther King, Jr., "Non-Violence: The Christian Way in Human Relations," Presbyterian Life, Feb. 1958; "Non-Violence: The only Road to Freedom," Ebony, Oct. 1966.
¹⁴ King, "The Un-Christian Christian," Ebony, Aug. 1965, p. 77.
¹⁵ See his "Letter From Birmingham Jail," in his Why Can't We Wait (New York: Harper, 1963), pp. 90-91.

13 - Black Theology in American Religion

As a Christian whose faith was derived from the cross of Jesus, King believed that there could be no true liberation without suffering. Through non-violent suffering, he contended, blacks would not only liberate themselves from the necessity of bitterness and the feeling of inferiority toward whites, but would also prick the conscience of whites and liberate them from a feeling of superiority. The mutual liberation of blacks and whites lays the foundation for both to work together toward the creation of an entirely new world.

In accordance with this theological vision, he initially rejected black power because of its connotations of hate, and he believed that no beloved community of blacks and whites could be created out of bitterness. King said that he would continue to preach non-violence even if he became its only advocate. It is significant that he softened his attitude toward black power shortly before his assassination and viewed its positive elements as a much needed philosophy in order to eradicate self-hate in the black community, especially as revealed in the riots in the cities.¹⁶ He began to speak of a need to "teach about black culture" (especially black philosophers, poets, and musicians) and even of "temporary separation,"¹⁷ because he realized that without self-respect and dignity, black people could not participate with others in creating the beloved community.

A similar but even more radical position was taken in regard to the war in Vietnam. Because the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Bill (1965) did not significantly affect the life-chances of the poor, and because of the failure of President Johnson's "War on Poverty," King became convinced that his dream of 1963 had been turned into a nightmare.¹⁸ Gradually, he began to see the connections

¹⁶ The best sources for King's affirmative emphasis on black power and pride are his unpublished speeches on the "Pre- Washington Campaign," recruiting persons for the Poor People's March to Washington. See especially his addresses at Clarksdale, Miss. (March 19,1968), p. 7; Eutaw, Ala. (March 20,1968), p. 3; Albany, Ga. (March 22,1968), pp. 5f. In Albany, he said: "We are somebody. We're going to teach our young people something about their heritage. We're going to let them know that Plato and Aristotle were not the only philosophers that came through history, but W.E.B. DuBois, a black man was a political philosopher." Most of King's unpublished papers, addresses, and sermons are found at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia.
¹⁷ In an interview article, King said: "I must honestly say that … there are points at which I see the necessity for temporary segregation in order to get to the integrated society…. Often … the Negro is integrated without power…. We want to be integrated with power…. And this is why I think it is absolutely necessary to see integration in political terms, to see that there are some situations where separation may serve as a temporary way-station to the ultimate goal which we seek." "Conversation with Martin Luther King," Conservative Judaism, Vol. XXII, no. 3, Spring 1968, pp. 8, 9.
¹⁸ On many occasions, King talked about his dream of 1963 being turned into a nightmare. The most informative reference in this regard is his "Christmas Sermon on Peace," delivered in Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Dec. 24, 1967. In that sermon, he said: "In 1963 … in Washington, D.C. . . I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess … that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful … Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream

14 - Black Theology in American Religion

between the failure of the. war on poverty and the expenditures for the war in Vietnam. In the tradition of the Old Testament prophets and against the advice of many of his closest associates in black and white communities, King stood before a capacity crowd at Riverside Church in New York and condemned America as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."¹⁹

He proclaimed God's judgment against America and insisted that God would break the backbone of American power if this nation did not bring justice to the poor and peace to the world. Vicious criticisms came from blacks and whites in government, civil rights groups, media, and the nation generally as he proclaimed God's righteous indignation against the three great evils of our time-war, racism, and poverty.

During the severe crises of 1966-68, King turned, not to the theologians and philosophers of his graduate education, but to his own religious heritage. It was the eschatological hope, derived from his slave grandparents and mediated through the black church, that sustained him in the midst of grief and disappointment. This hope also empowered him to "master [his] fears" of death and to "stand by the best in a evil time."²⁰ In an unpublished sermon, preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, he said:

I've decided what I'm going to do; I ain't going to kill nobody … in Mississippi … and … in Vietnam, and I ain't going to study war no more. And you know what? I don't care who doesn't like what I say about it. I don't care who criticizes me in an editorial; I don't care what white person or Negro criticizes me. I'm going to stick with the best…. Every now and then we sing about it: "If you are right, God will fight your battle." I'm going to stick by the best during these evil times.²¹

It was not easy for King to "stand by the best," because he often stood alone. But he firmly believed that the God of black faith had said to him:

turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw my black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage … turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched the war in Vietnam escalating, and as I saw so-called military advisers, 16,000 strong, turn into fighting soldiers until today over 500,000 Americans boys are fighting on Asian soil. Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes." (See King, The Trumpet of Conscience [New York: Harper, 1967], pp. 75-76.) See also similar comments at an Operation Breadbasket Meeting, Chicago Theological Seminary (March 25, 1967), and also during his appearance on Arlene Francis Show (June 19, 1967). (King Center Archives.)
¹⁹ See Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam," a pamphlet published by Clergy and Laity Concerned, 1982 reprint of his April 4, 1967, speech at Riverside Church in New York, p. 2.
²⁰ The most reliable sources for King's theology are the unpublished sermons at the King Center Archives. They include: "A Knock at Midnight," All Saints Community Church, Los Angeles (June 25, 1967); "Standing By The Best In An Evil Time," Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta (Aug. 6, 1967); "Thou Fool," Mount Pisgah Baptist Church, Chicago (Aug. 27, 1967); "Mastering Our Fears," Ebenezer (Sept. 10, 1967).
²¹ Standing By The Best In An Evil Time," p. 7.

15 - Black Theology in American Religion

"Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world."²²

King combined the exodus-liberation and cross-love themes with the message of hope found in the resurrection of Jesus. Hope for him was not derived from the optimism of liberal Protestant theology, but rather was based on his belief in the righteousness of God as defined by his reading of the Bible through the eyes of his slave foreparents. The result was the most powerful expression in black history of the essential themes of black religious thought from the integrationist viewpoint.

Centuries ago Jeremiah raised a question, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician?" He raised it because he saw the good people suffering so often and the evil people prospering. Centuries later our slave foreparents came along and they too saw the injustices of life and had nothing to look forward to, morning after morning, but the rawhide whip of the overseer, long rows of cotton and the sizzling heat; but they did an amazing thing. They looked back across the centuries, and they took Jeremiah's question mark and straightened it into an exclamation point. And they could sing, "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sinsick soul."²³

IV

From the time of its origin in slavery to the present, black religious thought has been faced with the question of whether to advocate integration into American society or separation from it. The majority of participants in black churches and the civil rights movement have promoted integration, and they have interpreted justice, liberation, love, suffering, and hope in light of the goal of creating a society in which blacks and whites can live together in a "beloved community."

While integrationists have emphasized the American side of the double consciousness of African-Americans, there have also been nationalists who rejected any association with America and instead have turned toward Africa. Nationalists contend that blacks will never be accepted as equals in a white racist church and society. Black freedom

²² Thou Fool," p. 14. This quotation is taken from King's account of his "conversion experience," that is, his existential appropriation of the faith he was taught during his childhood. There is no doubt that the "kitchen experience," as it might be called, was the turning point in King's theological development. During the early stages of the Montgomery bus boycott, the constant threats of death to him and his family (about 40 telephone calls per day) eventually caused him to admit that he was "weak, . . . faltering, [and] . . . losing [his] courage." In that crisis moment when the fear of death engulfed him, he said: "I pulled back on the theology and philosophy that I had just studied in the universities, trying to give philosophical and theological reasons for the existence and reality of sin and evil, but the answer didn't quite come there" (p. 13). The answer came in his dependence on the God of black faith. "Don't be a fool," he said in his climactic conclusion to this sermon. "Recognize your dependence on God. As the days become dark, and the nights become dreary, realize that there is a God, who rules above. And so I'm not worried about tomorrow. I get weary every now and then, the future looks difficult and dim, but I'm not worried ultimately because I have faith in God" (p. 14).
²³ This is an often-used conclusion of many of King's sermons. This quotation is taken from "Thou Fool."

16 - Black Theology in American Religion

can be achieved only by black people separating themselves from whites - either by returning to Africa or by forcing the government to set aside a separate state in the United States so blacks can build their own society.²⁴

The nationalist perspective on the black struggle for freedom is deeply embedded in the history of black religious thought. Some of its prominent advocates include: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the A.M.E. Church; Marcus Garvey, the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association; and Malcolm X of the religion of Islam. Black nationalism is centered on blackness, a repudiation of any value in white culture and religion. Nationalists reversed the values of the dominant society by attributing to black history and culture what whites had said about theirs. For example, Bishop Turner claimed that "we have as much right biblically and otherwise to believe that God is a Negro, . . . as you . . . , white people have to believe that God is a fine looking, symmetrical and ornamented white man."²⁵ Marcus Garvey held a similar view:

If the white man has the idea of a white God, let him worship his God as he desires…. We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God-God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, the One God of all ages."²⁶

The most persuasive interpreter of black nationalism during the 1960s was Malcolm X, who proclaimed a challenging critique of King's philosophy of integration, non-violence, and love. Malcolm X advocated black unity instead of the "beloved community," self-defense in lieu of non-violence, and self-love in place of turning the other cheek to whites.²⁷

Like Turner and Garvey, Malcolm X asserted that God is black; but unlike them be rejected Christianity as the white man's religion. He became a convert initially to Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam and later to the world-wide Islamic community. His critique of Christianity and of American society as white was so persuasive that many blacks followed him into the religion of Islam, and others accepted his criticisms even though they did not become Muslims. Malcolm pushed civil rights activists to the left and caused many black Christians to re-evaluate their interpretation of Christianity.

²⁴ For an excellent introduction to black nationalism, see Alphonso Pinkney, Red, Black, and Green: Black Nationalism in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). See also John H. Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick (eds.), Black Nationalism in America (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).
²⁵ Edwin S. Redkey (ed.), Respect Black: The Writings and Speeches of Henry McNeal Turner (New York: Arno Press, 197 1), p. 176.
²⁶ Amy Jacques-Garvey (ed.), Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, (New York: Arno Press, 1968), p. 44.
²⁷ The best introduction to Malcolm X's philosophy is still The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley (New York: Grove Press, 1965).

17 - Black Theology in American Religion

Brothers and sisters, the white man has brainwashed us black people to fasten our gaze upon a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus! We're worshiping a Jesus that doesn't even look like us! Now, just think of this. The blond-haired, blue-eyed white man has taught you and me to worship a white Jesus, and to shout and sing and pray to this God that's his God, the white man's God. The white man has taught us to shout and sing and pray until we die, to wait until death, for some dreamy heaven-in-the-hereafter, when we're dead, while this white man has his milk and honey in the streets paved with golden dollars right here on this earth!²⁸

During the first-half of the 1960s, King's interpretation of justice as equality with whites, liberation as integration, and love as non-violence dominated the thinking of the black religious community. But after the riot in Watts (Los Angeles), August 1965, some black clergy began to take another look at Malcolm's philosophy, especially in regard to his criticisms of Christianity and American society. Malcolm X's contention that America was a nightmare and not a dream began to ring true to many black clergy as they watched their communities go up in flames as young blacks shouted in jubilation, "burn, baby, burn."

It was during the James Meredith "march against fear" in Mississippi (June 1966, after Malcolm's assassination in February 1965) that some black clergy began openly to question King's philosophy of love, integration, and non-violence. When Stokely Carmichael proclaimed "black power," it sounded like the voice of Malcolm X. Though committed to the Christian gospel, black clergy found themselves moving slowly from integration to separation, from Martin King to Malcolm X.

The rise of black power created a decisive turning point in black religious thought. Black power forced black clergy to raise the theological question about the relation between black faith and white religion. Although blacks have always recognized the ethical heresy of white Christians, they have not always extended it to Euro-American theology. With its accent on the cultural heritage of Africa and political liberation "by any means necessary," black power shook black clergy out of their theological complacency.

V

Separating themselves from King's absolute commitment to nonviolence, a small group of black clergy, mostly from the North, addressed the black power movement positively and critically. Like King and unlike black power advocates, black clergy were determined to remain within the Christian community. This was their dilemma: How could they reconcile Christianity and black power, Martin King and Malcolm X?

Under the influence of Malcolm X and the political philosophy of black power, many black theologians began to advocate the necessity for

²⁸ Ibid., p. 222.

18 - Black Theology in American Religion

the development of a black theology, and they rejected the dominant theologies of Europe and North America as heretical. For the first time in the history of black religious thought, black clergy and theologians began to recognize the need for a completely new starting point in theology, and they insisted that it must be defined by people at the bottom and not the top of the socio-economic ladder. To accomplish this task, black theologians focused on God's liberation of the poor as the central message of the gospel.²⁹

To explicate the theological significance of the liberation motif, black theologians began to re-read the Bible through the eyes of their slave grandparents and started to speak of God's solidarity with the wretched of the earth. As the political liberation of the poor emerged as the dominant motif, justice, suffering, love, and hope were re-interpreted in its light. For the biblical meaning of liberation, black theologians turned to the Exodus, while the message of the prophets provided the theological content for the theme of justice. The Gospel story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus served as the biblical foundation for a re-interpretation of love, suffering, and hope in the context of the black struggle for liberation and justice.

As black theologians have re-read the Bible in the light of the struggles of the oppressed, the idea of the "suffering God" has become important in our theological perspective. Our theological imagination has been stirred by Jürgen Moltmann's writing about the "Crucified God" as well as Luther's distinction between the "theology of glory" and the "theology of the cross." But it has been the actual suffering of the oppressed in black and other Third World communities that has been decisive in our reflections on the cross of Jesus Christ.

As Gustavo Gutierrez has said: "We cannot speak of the death of Jesus until we speak of the real death of people." For in the deaths of the poor of the world is found the suffering and even the death of God. The political implications of Luther's insight on this point seemed to have been greatly distorted with his unfortunate emphasis on the two kingdoms. Many modern day Lutheran scholars are even worse, because they turn the cross of Jesus into a theological idea completely unrelated to the concrete historical struggles of the oppressed for freedom. For most Lutheran scholars, the theology of the cross is a theological concept to be contrasted with philosophical and metaphysical speculations. It is a

²⁹ For an account of the origin of black theology, see my For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church (Maryknol): Orbis, 1984). See also Gayraud S. Wilmore and James H. Cone (eds.), Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1966-1979 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1979). The best narrative history of black theology by one of its creators is Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Maryknoll: Orbis, rev. ed., 1983). My Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Seabury, 1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970) were the earliest published books on black theology. They were followed by J. Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971) and Major Jones, Black Awareness: A Theology of Hope (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971).

19 - Black Theology in American Religion

way of making a distinction between faith and reason, justification by faith through grace and justification by the works of reason.

But when the poor of North America and the Third World read the passion story of the cross, they do not view it as a theological idea but as God's suffering solidarity with the victims of the world. Jesus' cross is God's election of the poor by taking their pain and suffering upon the divine person. Black slaves expressed this theological point in such songs as "he never said a mumblin' word" and "were you there when they crucified my Lord,"

They nail my Jesus down,
They put him on the crown of thorns,
O see my Jesus hangin' high!
He look so pale an' bleed so free:
O don't you think it was a shame,
He hung three hours in dreadful pain?

Modern-day black theologians make a similar point when they say that "God is black" and that "Jesus is the Oppressed One." Our rejection of European metaphysical speculations and our acceptance of an apparently crude anthropomorphic way of speaking of God are black theologians' way of concretizing Paul's saying that "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are" (I Cor. 1:27-28).

Another characteristic of black theology is its de-emphasis, though not complete rejection, of the Western theological tradition and its affirmation of black history and culture. If the suffering of God is revealed in the suffering of the oppressed, then it follows that theology cannot achieve its Christian identity apart from a systematic and critical reflection upon the history and culture of the victims of oppression. When this theological insight impressed itself upon our consciousness, we black theologians began to realize that we have been miseducated.

European and North American theologians have stiffed the indigenous development of the theological perspectives of blacks by teaching us that our own cultural traditions are not appropriate sources for an interpretation of the Christian Gospel. Europeans and white North Americans taught us that the Western theological tradition as defined by Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher is the essential source for a knowledge of the Christian past. But when black theologians began to concentrate on black culture and history, we realized that our own historical and cultural traditions are far more important for an analysis of the Gospel in the struggle of freedom than are the Western traditions which participated in our enslavement. We now know that the people responsible for or indifferent to the oppression of blacks are not likely to provide the theological resources for our

20 - Black Theology in American Religion

liberation. If oppressed peoples are to be liberated, they must themselves create the means for it to happen.

VI

The focus on black culture in the light of the black liberation struggle has led to an emphasis upon praxis as the context out of which Christian theology develops. To know the truth is to do the truth, that is, to make happen in history what is confessed in church. People are not poor by divine decree or by historical accident. They are made poor by the rich and powerful few. This means that to do black liberation theology, one must make a commitment, an option for the poor and against those who are responsible for their poverty.

Because black theology is to be created only in the struggles of the poor, we have adopted social analysis, especially of racism, and more recently of classism and sexism, as a critical component of its methodology. How can we participate in the liberation of the poor from poverty if we do not know who the poor are and why they live in poverty? Social analysis is a tool that helps us to know why the social, economic, and political orders are arranged as they are. It enables us to know not only who benefits from the present status quo, but what must be done to change it.

In our struggle to make a new start in theology, we discovered, to our surprise and satisfaction, that theologians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were making similar efforts in their contexts .³⁰ The same was true among other ethnic minorities in the First World and among women in all groups .³¹ Black theology has been challenged to address the issues of sexism³² and classism in a global context, and we have challenged them, especially Latin Americans and feminist theologians

³⁰ For an account of black theologians' dialogue with theologians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, see Black Theology: A Documentary History, pp. 445-608; and For My People, pp. 140-156. See also my essays in the volumes that have been published from the conferences of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians: "A Black American Perspective on the Future of African Theology," in Sergio Torres and Kofi Appiah-Kubi (eds.), African Theology en Route (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1979); "A Black American Perspective on the Search for Full Humanity," in Virginia Fabella (ed.), Asia's Struggle for Full Humanity (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1980); "From Geneva to Sao Paulo: A Dialogue Between Black Theology and Latin American Liberation Theology," in Sergio Torres and John Eagleson (eds.), The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll: Orbis, 198 1); "Reflections from the Perspective of U.S. Blacks," in Virginia Fabella and Sergio Torres (eds.), Irruption of the Third World: Challenge to Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1983); "Black Theology: Its Origin, Method, and Relation to Third World Theologies," in Sergio Torres and Virginia Fabella (eds.), Doing Theology in a Divided World (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985).
³¹The dialogue between black theology and other ethnic theologies in the U.S. has taken place in the context of the Theology in the Americas dialogue. For an interpretation of this dialogue, see For My People, chap. vii; see also Sergio Torres and John Eagleson (eds.), Theology in the Americas (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1976), and Cornel West, Caridad Guidote, and Margaret Coakley (eds.), Theology in the Americas: Detroit Il Conference Papers (Maryknoll: Orbis-Probe, 1982).
³²See especially Black Theology: A Documentary History, pp. 363-442; Cone, My Soul Looks Back (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982); and For My People, chap. vi.

21 - Black Theology in American Religion

of the dominant culture, to address racism. The focus on liberation has been reinforced and deepened. What many of us now know is that a turning point has been made in the theologies of black and Third World communities as radical as were Luther, Schleiermacher, and Barth in the sixteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries in Europe.

Let us hope that the revolution in liberation theology will change not only how we think about God, but more importantly what we do in this world so that the victims might make a future that is defined by freedom and justice and not slavery and oppression.