AN APPROACH TO THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AND IMPLICATIONS FOR LIBERATION

by

Michael “M. A.” Bell

Bachelor of Science, Wiley College, 1972

Master of Divinity, Howard University, 1976

Master of Arts, University of Texas, 1981

A Doctoral Dissertation

submitted to the faculty of

Interdenominational Theological Center in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of

Doctor of Ministry

1985 ABSTRACT

The purpose of this project is quadrilateral: (1) to critically engage the doctrine of God as preached in

Blackamerican pulpits and as perceived by those who frequent the pews of the Black Church, (2) to identify, report, and address the dissonance emanating from the

Black Church’s social activistic rhetoric and course of action and the disliberating theological posture assumed by the Black Church, (3) to raise questions and fuel debate within the indigenous (Black) church relevant to the liberating currency of its present theological position,

(4) to propose a viable liberating alternative in primer form, to be utilized in a continuing education program designed for parish clergy0

It should be clear from the outset that this paper is intended as a prolegomenon. Because of the dearth of materials by Black or other Third World authors on some of the topics addressed herein, hermeneutical materials from

“outside the camp” are employed when relevant. In fact, much of the conceptual backdrop for this study is drawn from contemporary European theologies. This is not to suggest that any new theological direction for the Black

Church must necessarily be manacled to paradigms espoused

11 by White theologians. It does suggest, however, that truth is not racialistic. Those thinicers whose works have helped to contour the ideological and theological bent of this study have done so only by way of influence.

Data for this project were obtained from questionnaires, library research, and interviews. The questionnaires, simple random samples, were used to barometer the idea of

God presently held by a selected sampling of preacher- pastors across denominational lines. Respondents for the questionnaires were selected at random from nine states,

Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Tennessee, Maryland,

South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, plus the

District o±~ Columbia. Interviews were held with preacher- pastors in small group encounters and with lay-persons on a one—to-one basis. Library research was instrumental in properly cataloguing, documenting, and articulating the information relevant to this work. The accumulated data were recorded, reported, analyzed, and interpreted. This paper combines historical and descriptive research.

Chapter One introduces the problem which prompted this study, plumbing its nature and scope. A list of terms appear at the end of the chapter to add to the cohesiveness of the theme discussed.

Chapter Two gives a brief review of the beginnings of the Black Church and the origins of its theological perspective. The latter part of the chapter reviews the idea of ~od among premodern and modern Blacks.

11]~ Benjamin May’s volume, The Negro’s God, is pertinent to the identification and definition of the problem to which Chapter One points. Chapter Three organizes, analyzes, interprets, reports, and reviews the findings of the simple random sample. Chapter Four engages the paper’s threshold question: Is classjcaj. theism disliberatjve? The findings support the paper’s hypothesis that a dilemma of dissonance under mines the Black Church’s social conscience. This chapter identifies the pervasiveness of the problem and demonstrates that the discrepancies are indeed real and disliberating. Chapter Five examines historical alternative to classi cal theism culminatjn~ with the Nation of Islam. These alternatives are documented to underscore the scope of the dissonance problem. Chapter Six proposes a liberative doctrine of God. In the effort to formulate a liberating theism, an approach is proposed which weds relevant aspects of Charles Hartshorne’s critique of historic orthodoxy’s doctrine of God with Walter Bru.eggemann’s anthropology, as impacted by various liberation theologies. This study concludes with a primer designed for use in continuing education programs tailored for parish clergy.

iv DEDICATION

This project is dedicated to three remarkable persons without whose love, direction, and counsel I would not have had the heart to reach beyond the level of the everyday. They are Mrs. Louise “Aunt Lou” Johnson, Mr. C. J. “Gran daddy” Houston, and Dr. Reva P. Houston Bell. Though Aunt Lou and Grandaddy are deceased, their spirits challenge me at every corner and crossroad. My mother, Reva P., has been and is still a parent and a friend. Through the low places and the hill country of my walk she has never forsakened me. When my foot slipped, she was there to caution and to care. Her confidence and support have never wavered. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

One writer has confided that “we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” Another writer has recorded that at a crucial moment in Jesus’ biography “ there appeared an angel from heaven, strengthening him. “ Though these writers wielded their pens in different contexts, the images of “a great cloud of witnesses” and “a strengthening angel” are consonant with my experiences. While the contexts these images are couched in may be as dissimilar as chalk and cheese, in an existential sense these insights go together like red, black, and green. Throughout my studies I have been encircled by “a great cloud of witnesses” cheering and urging me to press forward. The exhortations of these “witnesses” have been complemented by the assistance of various “strengthening angels.” Both, the serried cloud of witnesses and the strengthening angels appeared at crucial moments in my biography. Their help made the journey less cumbersome, and it is those persons I wish to thank. To Dr. George Thomas who never frowned regardless of the unseemly hours I phone for counsel and the number of impromptu visits to his office for direction, and who opened his pulpit to me that I might preach. I appreciate and respect his love for Africa and all of Africa’s off spring. To Dr. Edward Wheeler for his thoughts and insights. To Dr. Telly Miller for pushing me beyond mediocrity. To Rev. Jacquelyn Grant, the chairperson of my doctoral committee, for her willingness to chair this effort in spite of an already overloaded calendar of obligations. To Ramona E. Jackson, my sister, for typing this work. To Mary Louise Bell for reading, editing, and lending a big hand toward the completion of this work. To Tracy Madden for her editorial assistance. To Dr. Leon Wright for showing me a nobler way. To three friends, Revs. Joe Foster, Stephen Nash, and Roger Wayne Jackson, whose openness prompted me to take a hazard. To John Bell, my father, for showing me that there are more than three sides to a coin. To Dr. Reva P. Houston Bell for reading and critiquing this paper. To Rev. Frank Wilson, a friend in deed. To Trina Madden for breaking the monotony. To my children for being themselves. To the Cosmic Ultimate, who calls us to be Christs in the global village. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

DEDICATION ACKNO WLEDGEV1ENTS

PREFACE vii

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM

The Problem The Need For A Solution The Task of the Theologian The Identification And Definition of Terms

II. HISTORICAL: THE THEOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE BLACK CHURCH 18

A Divided House Segregated Church, Integrated Theology The Idea of God in the Pre modern and Modern Black Church III. RESEARCH: THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE FO STMO DERN BLACK CHU RCH 32

Background of the Study Description of the Study Sample Review of Research Findings and Interpretations IV. ANALYSIS: IS CLASSICAL THEISM DISLIBERATING

Historic Orthodoxy: Formative Influences The Attributes of Orthodoxy’s God: A Critique Orthodoxy’s Christ: Some Conclusions.

V V. ALTERNATIVES: TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING 63

Historical Alternatives A Liberating Theism Conclusions VI. PRIMER 89

VII. NOTES 110

VIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY 123

vi PREFACE

The purpose of this project is quadrilateral: (1) to critically engage the doctrine of God. as preached in Black- american pulpits and as perceived by those who frequent the pews of the Black Church, (2) to identify, report, and address the dissonance emanating from the Black Church’s social activistic rhetoric and course of action and the disliberating theological posture assumed by the Black Church, (3) to raise questions and fuel debate within the indigenous (Black) church relevant to the liberating currency of its present theological position, (4) to propose a viable liberating alternative in primer form, to be utilized in a continuing education program designed for parish clergy.

vii CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE AND SCOPE

OF THE PRO BLEM

The Problem

This dissertation is born of suspicion. I had com pleted my seminary studies at Howard University’s School of Religion with most of my theology intact and unscathed by a seemingly endless parade of theological perspectives. But, four years after seminary, I became suspicious of the theology I had come to call my own. Justo Gonzalez and Catherine Gonzalez have rightly said that “most of us began with a theological naivete. We believed not only that what the Bible said was true, but also that the Bible actually said what our mentors and the traditions before them told us that it said. Then, through a series of episodes, we became conscious of the structures of oppression around and above us, and tried to do something about them.” The dissonance inherent in the Black praxis of the dominant culture’s brandO of Christianity, European theological orthodoxy, became more and more apparent to me as I engaged those to whom I ministered at the visceral level. Historic orthodoxy as a redemptive and liberative perspec tive was like a narrow bed with too short covers. It

1 2 spawned images and symbols which belied the intentionality of the religion of Jesus, the man of Nazareth, and. foisted a cosmology, anthropology, and theology incompatible with the liberation of the oppressed. Rosemary Ruether, in one of her less patronizing writings, addresses the contradictions inherent in the pres ence of traditional images and symbols in the Black Church. Ruether more than broaches the truth when she writes: the black church has been ambivalent in its heritage. It has imitated the styles of white Christianity. It has often suppressed its indigenous tradition for the more “proper” style of the white church. It has largely failed to bring art from black people into the churches. The pictures in the Sunday School books and the Biblical figures that paraded down the walls and stained glass windows were uniformly Caucasian in features and coloring. There was little sense of the incongruity of this, not only in the self-image of the worshippers, but in terms of Biblical history itself I In short, the black church, as an expression of a suppressed people, has often overvalued the dominant culture and under valued and even despised its own tradition and self-expression. 2 Though on target, Ruether’s observation only skirts the dilemma of dissonance at its periphery. The problem transcends the mere mirroring of the dominant culture’s style, symbols, and images by the Black Church. The central issue which threatens the Black Church’s integ rity has to do with its embracement of the entire corpus of a Hellenistically-oriented gospel that promotes the very evils it inveighs against. It would be misleading to sug 3 gest that the mythology of the dominant culture’s faith perspective has not undergone some tailoring by the Black Church. Even so, this author does contend that the tailoring has not sufficiently altered the “corpus” in a way that would induce a more liberative perspective. Cecil Cone argues that “politics is not the starting point of black religion. Rather, God ist”3 J. Deotis Roberts, who was my major advisor at Howard and taught me at both Howard and Columbia Theological Seminary, has stated repeatedly that the Black Church does not question Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God.” This unquestioning assumption may be the reason for the lack of inventiveness in the field of Black theology. Even William R. Jones’ interrogative, “Is God a white racist?”, which is also the title of his book, is predicated upon the idea of God as postulated by classical theism (colonialist theology). This study suggests that there is a different avenue which our thoughts about God ought to take. So then, we will begin with God, “the starting point of Black religion,” rather than with the symbols and styles which emanate from a doctrine of God. It should be noted that this paper does not discount the veracity of historic orthodoxy as a valid faith perspective for the oppressed simply because it is the faith-perspective of the dominant culture. This would, of course, be trivialization. On the contrary, this study 4

refutes historic orthodoxy as, at bottom, no more than a deputized partner of racial. oppression, therefore, funda mentally inept. To borrow a sentence (though I do not accept the contextual intent) from Cecil Cone, “The primary focus is God, not white people.”4 But, not a God who is so big that humankind is reduced to a mere zero, as Cone maintains.

The Need For A Soultion

Theology is, at its center, the logos or the reasoning about theos (God and. divine things). Blackamericans have for too long failed to consciously and deliberately ask and address questions about theology’s central concept and core problem, the idea of God. James Cone reasons: Blacks did not ask whether God existed or whether divine existence can be rationally demonstrated. Divine existence was taken for granted, because God was the point of departure of their faith. The divine question which they addressed was whether or not God was with them in their strug gle for liberation.5 Cone’s rationale may be applicable to an earlier generation of Blacks, but it has no currency for postmodern Black americans. Blacks are no longer slaves, in the antebellum sense, working in the fields from sun-to-sun. Slave religion was, more or less, survival religion, which offered the faithful hope for a brighter and better day beyond their inhuman treatment at the hands of callous slaveowners. We are today in the midst of a newer, deleterious racial- 5

istic stratagem. Writing in the foreword of a book entitled, What Color Is Your God?, Congressperson Walter Fauntroy, The Congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, observes: At the height of American slavery in the early and midnineteenth century the Bible and Christianity were the tools of White planta tion owners to oppress and suppress the legi timate human aspirations of Black slaves. The Whites hypocritically preached that God and Christ supported the subjugation of a group of people because of the color of their skin. Today the religious hypocrisy has taken on a different form and sophistication. It no longer directly and forthrightly argues a perverted Christian doctrine of White suprem acy and Black inferiority. Instead, the new hypocrisy lambastes those who support abor tion, while lauding reductions in food stamps that feed hungry children; it clamors for private, church—supported schools, while condemning federal aid to public schools-- the primary educational hope for poor and disadvantaged youngsters; it espouses the vir tues of family life, but eschews support for programs which help the elderly, the homeless, and jobless. This new religious hypocrisy mounts its charge in contravention to our Lord’s inaugural address: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has annointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are op pressed” (Lk 4:18). This religious hypocrisy is important to note because it is a part of a growing trend in America that incorrectly and naively purports that American racism is almost dead and there fore there is little or no prejudice against Blacks, Hispanics, Asians or poor people because of their race or social standing. And it is dangerous, because it has persuaded well-meaning Christians to support its narrow, selfish point of view.6 In a nutshell, what Fauntroy is saying is that our foes, 6 those who oppose the liberation of the oppressed, are more subtle today than in premodern times. Kyle Haselden, commenting on President Lyndon Johnson’s remark to 177 religious leaders who were gathered in the East Room of the White House, in the spring of 1964, writes: First, the President implied that the racial problem in the United States lies outside the religious community and that the solution of the problem must come from within the religious community. The facts do not support this conclu sion. The religious community in American society produced and sustained-- sometimes on biblical grounds--the anti-Negro bias which has permeated the American mind from the beginning of the nation until the present day. Out of the nation’s religious community came biblically and doctrinally supported theories of racial inferiority, and from the same source came immoral ethical codes which justified the exploitation of the Negro and demanded that the white man hold himself in sancti fying aloofness from the Negro. Moreover-—as I believe was proved unques tionably in my The Racial Problem in Christian Perspective—-the patterns of segregation which divide the common life of the country ra cially had their beginning in the church before they found their perfection in the secular city.? The seat of present day oppression hasn’t really changed radically from the centuries prior to the Civil War. The names have been changed (to dupe the innocent) but the seat of oppression remains where it was. Call it the Moral Majority, the Jaycees, or call it “Redneck Religion”8, the seat of oppression in America is still the White Church and its brand of subChristianity, historic orthodoxy. 7

This author contends that Congressperson Fauntroy’s assertion, that this new religious hypocrisy is dangerous because it has co—opted well-meaning Christians, even the oppressed, to support its d.isliberating perspective, does not exaggerate the nature and. scope of the problem con fronting postmodern Blackamericans. A Black Californian pastor, one of this country’s most respected clerics, has, more than once, preached at Liberty Baptist Church, where Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell pastors, without a hitch. Another prominent Black cleric, the author of a couple of publications, who leads a church in Dallas, Texas, even today, openly militates against the Black Church’s role in the civic arena. Black Methodists can merge with White Methodists and form the United Methodist Church without having to contour the gospel they preach because their gospel merely parrots the party line of the dominant culture’s faith-perspective. The presiding Bishop of the Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas, headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, presided over the Annual Conference of three districts, which convened at the Zion Fire Baptized Holiness Church, in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 1984, and the pabulum preached in that conference could easily have been preached by Jimmy Swaggart or Kenneth Hagin. This author was in attendance when one of Atlanta’s leading pastors, a figure known statewide, issued an altar call for the willing and 8

charged that those who were unemployed owed their circum

stances to “a lack of faith.” The Black Church, though well—meaning, is an unwitting accomplice in the religious shenanigans of the White Church because of its prima facie endorsement of colonialist theology’s imagery of domination and submission. Much of contemporary Black preaching gives only cursory notice to biblical images of aggressiveness, self assertedness, and nonconformity, encouraging churchgoers to be “meek and lowly like Jesus; he never said a mumbling word.” To entertain doubt is frowned upon. God is portrayed as an archaic Other. Static and unyielding. Punishing the entire human race for one man’s sin. Human kind is fallen, incapable of wholeness (salvation) apart from the expiatory work of a broker (Jesus). God is King, Master, Judge, and Shepherd. We are, in turn, subjects, servants, defendants, and sheep. Jesus is a divine-human enigma victimized by the will of God; a throwback to the days of human sacrifice. J. Deotis Roberts’ contention that “we’re separated from the white churches primarily for social reasons rather than theological reasons”9 underlines the urgency of the task this paper interfaces.

Mervyn A. Warren writes: The Negro church is the superstructure of the Black preaching event. It is the very first institution which Blacks themselves developed and controlled. It must be noted, however, that 7

This author contends that Congressperson Fauntroy’s assertion, that this new religious hypocrisy is dangerous because it has co—opted well-meaning Christians, even the oppressed, -to support its disliberating perspective, does not exaggerate the nature and scope of the problem con fronting postmodern Blackamericans. A Black Californian pastor, one of this country’s most respected clerics, has, more than once, preached at Liberty Baptist Church, where Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell pastors, without a hitch. Another prominent Black cleric, the author of a couple of publications, who leads a church in Dallas, Texas, even today, openly militates against the Black Church’s role in the civic arena. Black Methodists can merge with White Methodists and form the United Methodist Church without having to contour the gospel they preach because their gospel merely parrots the party line of the dominant culture’s faith-perspective. The presiding Bishop of the Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas, headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, presided over the Annual Conference of three districts, which convened at the Zion Fire Baptized Holiness Church, in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 1984, and the pabulum preached in that conference could easily have been preached by Jimmy Swaggart or Kenneth Hagin. This author was in attendance when one of Atlanta’s leading pastors, a figure known statewide, issued an altar call for the willing and 8 charged -that those who were unemployed owed their circum stances to “a lack of faith.” The Black Church, though well-meaning, is an unwitting accomplice in the religious shenanigans of the White Church because of its prima facie endorsement of colonialist theology’s imagery of domination and submission. Much of contemporary Black preaching gives only cursory notice to biblical images of aggressiveness, self assertedness, and nonconformity, encouraging churchgoers to be “meek and lowly like Jesus; he never said a mumbling word.” To entertain doubt is frowned upon. God is portrayed as an archaic Other. Static and unyielding. Punishing the entire human race for one man’s sin. Human kind is fallen, incapable of wholeness (salvation) apart from the expiatory work of a broker (Jesus). God is King, Master, Judge, and Shepherd. We are, in turn, subjects, servants, defendants, and sheep. Jesus is a divine-human enigma victimized by the will of God; a throwback to the days of human sacrifice. J. Deotis Roberts’ contention that “we’re separated from the white churches primarily for social reasons rather than theological reasons”9 underlines the urgency of the task this paper interfaces. Mervyn A. Warren writes: The Negro church is the superstructure of the Black preaching event. It is the very first institution which Blacks themselves developed and controlled. It must be noted, however, that 9

while the institution, per Se, has continued its development there has been scant, if any, indication of an attempt to change basic teachings and. doctrines of Christianity. From their study Kardiner and Ovesey reported: “We do not find any evidence that the Negro has in any way altered Christianity to his specific needs. If we find any such evidence it will not be in the churches of the upper and middle classes. We cannot expect to find, it anywhere but in the cults and lower classes.”0 There is a lack of hard evidence to refute Warren’s conten tion that “there has been scant, if any, indication of an attempt to change basic teachings and doctrines of Christianity” as framed by the dominant culture. Warren observes that “The term, Black preaching, at once embodies

an anomaly and a reality.”11 This schizophrenia underlines and underscores the seriousness of the dissonance besetting

Blackamerican religion. Consequently an uncertain sound, a confusion of tongues, is emanating from the altars of the Black Church. Authentic Black preaching must be informed by an authentically liberative theology, one that is veritably transformative. A theology bold enough to engage the con tent of what has heretofore been marketed as “Christian theology.” A theology of liberation which moves beyond being “plantation theology” in blackface. Authentic liberation theology must be transformative theology. Much of what is called “liberation theology” or “Black theology” today is supplementary theology, that is, it only supplements the prevailing system of thought. Authentic liberation 10 theology must ask questions about God, Jesus of Nazareth, the nature of sin.and salvation, heaven and hell, death and judgement. It must “discover a configuration of method, structure, and thought which together constitutes a unique phenomenon capable of rigorously commending itself as a new form of ‘God tallc:’--a new theology as one commonly under stands the term.”12 Authentic Black preaching must be predicated upon a liberation theology committed to radical recommencement. I agree with Brueggemann that Black theology, which should be, at its heart, liberation theology, must “articulate a radical discontinuity” with historic orthodoxy.

The Task Of The Theologian

In light of the foregoing, what is the task of the theologian who declares, as Leon Wright did in a conver sation with this author, that historic orthodoxy as a valid faith-perspective is dead? James Cone defines the task of the theologian as fivefold: exegete, prophet, teacher, preacher, and philosopher.13 As exegete, the “task of the theologian is to probe the depths of Scripture exegetically for the purpose of relating that message to human existence.”14 As prophet, the theologian “must make clear that the gospel of God stands in judge ment upon the existing order of injustice.”15 As teacher, the theologian is an “instructor in the faith, clarifying 11. its meaning and significance for human life.”6 As preacher, the theologian is the proclaimer of the good news first proclaimed by the man, Jesus of Nazareth. As philosopher, the theologian “is a keen observer of the alternative interpretations of the meaning of life. ~17 Cone’s list, however, is not conclusive. There are two other roles which should be added to Cone’s list. First, there is the theologian as giver and interpreter of meaning. As giver of meaning, the theologian must redefine old terms, disperse with those words whose meanings have become vague with overuse, liberate that part of our vocabulary which has been held hostage by those who have proffered and proliferated atheology--the fundamentalists, civil religionists, et al. Words such as incarnation, salvation, redemption, liberation, democracy, Christian, to name a few, need de-idealizing and redefining. It is the theologian’s task to lead persons in the naming of that which we encounter and that which encounters us. The theologian must lead persons in significating (imbuing with sigriifi cance) and giving meaning to that which we engage in our environs. This role of the theologian could properly be called “mythmaker.” Because the theologian is interpreter and giver of meaning (mythmaker), hiser role as definer of reality is

presumed. To give meaning involves redefining, reinter preting, and redeeming the language of reality. As definer 12 of reality, the theologian decodes the double-speak, the highly politicized jargon of the oppressors, uncovering and revealing reality. This task is akin to what Jones calls “gnosiologicaJ. conversion.” Jones writes: I conclude that the initial task of the black theo— logiari is to liberate the black mind from destruc tive ideas and submissive attitudes that checkmate any movement toward authentic emancipation. It is to effect what I term the gnosiological conversion of the black people. Conversion here means the fundamental recon struction and reorientation of the individual’s present world view and life style. It involves a Conscious renunciation of one’s present posi tion as wrong, and seeks to replace the old beliefs with a more realistic picture of man and reality, and the anachronistic attitudes and actions with those capable of producing the ideal humanity. Gnosiologicaj. here means the shift is primarily one of concepts and beliefs; it relates to one “knowledge.” Thus the object of the theologian’s analysis should be what his black sisters and brothers believe to be true about themselves and the universe of nature and society, for it is this knowledge that regulates their actions.18 Though Jones is speaking to a localized context, however important, we can transpose what he says here to a more catholic context. To universalize Jones, theology “must provide persuasive grounds for removing the sanctity and hallowed status from those segments of the culture it seeks to”9 transform. Furthermore, the theologian must be an iconoclast. Hesh must militantly engage the icons and idols, desanc-. tifying and d.eidealizing the isms and ologies which lie at the bedrock of oppression. 13

A truly liberative theology presupposes an expositor, the theologian, incarnating these roles and assuming the iconoclast disposition. It is only when the theologian acts in the roles of exegete, prophet, teacher, preacher, philosopher, mytbmaker, and definer of reality that hesh is equipped to properly postulate a systematic discourse concerning God and Godself ways.

The Identification And Definition Of Terms

Certain terms are used in this study which warrant explication and clarification. Already the reader has encountered the phrases “postmodern Blackamerican.” For the purpose of continuity this paper segments the history of Blackamericans into three epochs: premodern, modern, postmodern. The premodern epoch refers to a period which extends from 1619, when Blacks were first forcibly introduced to the North American mainland and sold by a Dutch trader as indentured servants to some inhabitants of Jamestown, Virginia, to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, when the Supreme Court rejected the “separate but equal” argument it had endorsed over a half century earlier in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896. This period is identified as “premodern” by this writer for two reasons.

First, until this time, 1954, the de facto and the de jure domestic policy of the United States regarding the issue of race were congruous, one of institutional support for 14 militant segregation. Secondly, until this time Black- americans were wrestling with the same problem which beset the confused man of Gadara, a man who admittedly was puzzled as to his identity. The movie”Irnitation of Life” in which a Black female is ashamed of her biography captures the spirit of the latter portion of this epoch. The modern period refers to the interval from December 5, 1955, when Black seamstress Rosa Parks decided that she would not adhere to a time-worn custom which required Blacks to yield bus seats to White customers, to the 196~8 election of Richard Nixon. The modern period witnessed the birth of “Black Power” which played midwife to Black pride and Black self-affirmation. During this time the announced institu tional policy of the United States was integration. The third epoch, the postmodern period, began with the inauguration of Richard Nixon on January 20, 1969, and continues unto today. The institutional emphasis shifted from civil rights to “law and order,” “Detente,” “peace with honor,” OPEC, and the Middle East. The de jure domestic policy regarding race relations became one of “benign neglect” (same as the official external policy toward Africa). Integration was replaced by assimilation as the institutional priority.

This author argues that during the modern epoch the Black Church failed to alter its theology from supplementary theology to transformative theology, from orthodoxy-in- 15 blackface to the religion of Jesis~ The Black Church’s

rhetoric was contemporaneous wit1~ the marches, boycotts,

and sit-Ins, but the symbols, images, and theological

corpus remained the same~ It wasn’t until the postinodern

period that Black theologians began to reflect upon

orthodoxy and attempted to construct a Black theology.

Mind you, during the modern period the Black Church was criticized vehemently as irrelevant and out of touch~. So,

then, by the time Black theologians did come thro’igh with

a useful dialogue on the theology of the Black Church, it

was a case of ~‘too little, too late~’~

Albert Cleage, of the Shrine of the Black Madonna,

Detroit, in an attempt to blunt the sharp criticism of the

Black Church by those within the indigenous community,

tried to reformulate Christianity. James Cone, of the Union

Theological Seminary faculty, New York, became the major

voice in Black theology. Others followed suit but none

mounted a frontal assault on orthodoxy’s content, which by

now had become encrusted. The strength of historic ortho

doxy in the Black Church is the major reason for the scant

notice Black theology receives from the Black pulpit and

pews Roberts has admitted that Black theology’s audience

in 1984 is skimpy at best and, that the arguments of its

articulators are not known to the majority of Black preacher

pastors~ Interviews with Black clergy by this author verifies Roberts’ assertion. Efforts to formulate a traxis 16 formative liberation theology is further hampered by the anti-intellectual and anti-theological bias inherent in historic orthodoxy. The reader should understand that this writer uses the term liberation theology to mean “theology done from the perspective of those who have been traditionally powerless in society and voiceless in the church.”21 Liberation theology “is not a theology about liberation which is then content to leave all the other theological themes to traditional theology. On the contrary, it is convinced that its insights have a bearing on every single doctrine of the Christian faith, and that it is therefore a legitimate theology.”22 It should be noted that this paper uses inclusive lan guage pronouns that deal fairly with male-female references. These are taken from a booklet by Ben Johnson entitled Skills For Communicating Good News For Daring Disciyleshiy.23 The words used are: hesh (he/she), hiser (his/her), himer (him/her), and himerself (himself/herself). Additionally,

Gordon Kaufman’s use of “Godself“ in the place of masculine feminine pronouns whenever appropriate has been adapted to compensate for the limitations of the English language regarding male-female reference terms. This writer uses the term “integrated theology” to give expression to the acceptance of the dominant culture’s faith-interpretation by the Black Church. The word “inte 17 grated” is given the same connotation accorded it in the overall context of American culture. Therefore, it has nothing to do with “equal footing.” By employing the term “liberating theism”, I mean to indicate an emancipative belief in God which, at once, frees God to be God and liberates the idea of God from the pertinacious design of conventional theology. For the sake of clarity, the reader should take note of this paper’s use of interchangeable terminology. The Black Church is, from time to time, referred to as the indigenous church. The White Church is often referred to as the encrusted or mainstream church. Black theology is sometimes coined as indigenous theology. White theology is frequently referred to as the mythology of the dominant culture, plantation theology, colonialist theology, and, of course, historic orthodoxy.24 Other appellations which are used interchangeably are easily discerned within their context. CHAPTER II HISTORICAL: THE THEOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE BLACK CHURCH

A Divided House

History bears witness to the commitment of the Black Church to full human liberation. The Black Church was the seedbed of Black autonomy and the avant-garde of the anti- segregation and desegregation movements. It was, and contin ues to be, the one place where those who have been system atically shut out from mainstream Americana are assured that they are indeed “God’s children.” E. Franklin Frazier affirms in his classic, The Negro Church in America, that the early Black Church provided Blacks with whatever semblance of cohesion was possible given the context of their fractured and fragmented existence. The Black Church, ironically, was born of segregation. Marvin McMickle, speaking at the opening communion service for the 1983~814. academic year at Princeton Seminary, was on target historically when he asserted that “there would have been no black church at all, if white Christians had not turned our ancestors away from the doors of their churches.”1 The Christian Church in the United States is indeed a divided house. But this has not always been the case. 18 19

In August 1619, the history of Blacks in America began when twenty Africans were sold as indentured servants to some settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America. These Africans and others who followed fast on their heels were not bereft of religious belief prior to their arrival, as some would have us to believe. According to Lerone Bennett, Jr., “Religion, to the African, was life. Every event was suffused with religious significance. With the increase in the worldwide demand for tobacco and. cotton, arid the accompanying proliferation of planta tion-sized units to meet this demand, the labor problem was exacerbated. Indentured servants had contracts which expired after a specified period. This was unpopular with the rulers of the early American colonies. The attempt to enslave Whites and Indians failed. It was the Blacks who appeared to be the answer to the labor problem. John Hope Franklin gives a couple of reasons why Blacks were chosen to fill the bill: “If they ran away they were easily de tected because of their color. If they proved ungovernable they could be chastised with less qualms and with greater severity than in the case of whites, because the Negroes represented heathen people who could not claim the immu nities accorded to Christians.”3 Bennett adds: “At first, religion was the rationalization: Negroes were good material for slavery because they were not Christians. 20 Between 1667 and 1682, the basis shifted to race.”4 Initially, Christianity posed a threat to the exploi tation of Blacks by the colonists. “There was an unwritten law that a Christian could not be held as a slave, There fore, if blacks were allowed to be converted, they could no longer be slaves.”5 The colonists overcame this hurdle by enlisting the aid of English jurisprudence, “a series of laws between 1667 and 1671 laid down the rule that conver sion alone did not lead to release from slavery.”6 Having overcome the hurdle of Christianity as an obsta cle to slavery, the colonists did not hesitate to “indulge in an even more flagrant duplicity and turn Christianity into slavery’s partner.”7 Franklin continues: Gradually the doctrine that freedom was inherent in Christianity began to wane in popularity and was supplanted by a point of view that was in itself a rationalization of the institution. This view was that slavery was good in that it brought heathens into contact with Christianity and led to the salvation of their souls. Masters, far from discouraging the Christianization of slaves should cooperate with the agents of the church and the result would be the creation of a more obedient servile class,8 So, then, slavery held redemptive significance for Blacks. If it were not for their enslavement, Whites reasoned, the Blacks would be condemned to run around the deepest jungles or darkest Africa uncivilized and. hell bound. Furthermore,

Whites pointed to biblical proof texts to justify the oppression of Blacks and to support the notion of White superiority. Gayraud S. Wilmore writes: 21

Many White Christians, fortified by distinguished churchmen of the South, claimed that the Black skin of the African was the dire consequence of the curse that Noah had invoked upon his youngest son, Ham, when the latter had the indiscretion to look upon the drunken nakedness of his father. Actually, the curse in Genesis 9 was upon Canaan, the son of Ham, who as a result was to become “a servant of servants” to his brothers—-Cush, Mizraim, and Phut--and to his uncles, Shem and Japheth. Inasmuch as the curse was spoken to Ham and since the Hebrew word Ham probably meant hot and black, and further, in view of the inclusion of the people of Ethiopia and Egypt among the descendants of Ham (Genesis 10:6—14), the accepted interpretation of the whites was~ that the Negro was of Hamitic origin and that his skin color was of God’s punishment because of the sin of Ham.9 ~.lbert Raboteau further augments the historicity of the ~ihite church’s collusion in the institutionalization of 3lavery: “Increasingly, slavery was not only accepted as ~n economic fact of life, but defended as a positive good, 3anctified by Scripture and capable of producing a Thristian social order based on the observance of mutual luty, slave to master and master to slave.”0 Thusly, Whites could and did rationalize the enslave aent of an entire race of people by pointing to chapter and verse, quoting what “the Bible says.” “The powers that be are ordained of God.”” “Servants, obey in all things your nasters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as rnenpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God, ,,12 “Remember them which have rule over you.”’3 These and other proof texts were used to advance the myth that slavery and Christianity were compatible or divinely sanctioned~and “what 22

therefore God had joined together, let no man put asunder.” Having resolved the knotty question of whether or not slavery was consistent with the teachings of Christianity, Whites turned their energies to converting Blacks to the Christian faith. Missionaries frequented plantations preaching a gospel which was intended to dulcify an oppressed people and teaching a sullied faith-perspective aimed at perpetuating Black subjugation. Initially, Blacks and Whites attended the same churches. Haselden reports, “there was integration of Negroes and whites from the beginning of slavery until a year following the Civil War.”14 There were churches with mixed congrega tions. Some churches even heard Black preachers speak from their pulpits.15 Lest the reader be misled, “we must note that the inclusion of Negroes, both free and slave, in white churches was plainly prudential. As early as 1715 it was thought, and. correctly, that an exclusively Negro church might become a center for conspiracy.”16 Given the veracity of the aforesaid, that tension existed between Black and White churchgoers from the very beginning should come as no surprise to even the most casual reader of history. Rather than providing Black churchgoers with a place where they could find surcease from from rabid discrimination, the so-called “mixed congrega tion” endorsed distinctions based on color within its “fellowship.” “Where a master-slave relationship did not 23

exist to maintain status between Negroes and whites within the same church, artificial distinctions arose; and they arose first, not between masters and slaves, but between whites and. freedmen.”17 It was inevitable that the church would become a divided house given these circumstances. There was not one but a number of reasons for the estab lishment of the Black Church. Haselden states: Numerous incidents have been recorded which show that the so-called spontaneous and voluntary withdrawal of the Negroes to form their own churches was actually compelled by the discriminations and the subordinations which the Negroes suffered from white Christians in the integrated churches. The case of Richard Allen, pulled from his knees during prayer and bodily expelled from the St. George Church in Philadelphia; the special parti tions and galleries for worshippers of the Negro race; segregation in the time of worship for the different races where the same building had to be used by both. . . . such acts and incidents which were many times duplicated, are proof enough that segregation and discrimination against the Negro had been established as patterns within the Christian churches before the Negro and white churches became separate bodies and long before segregation was adopted and applied as ~ specific and localized form in secular society.10 Therefore, the segregation of the churches by the with drawal of Black churchgoers was not unconstrained but the result of numerous and increasing embarassments sustained by Blacks on account of their race. In the late eighteenth century Richard Allen, a former slave, a respected blacksmith arid preacher, with the help of Absalom Jones, organized the Free African Society, after having been denied the right to pray in a section of the St. George Church’s gallery not designated for Blacks. Soon 24

Jones organized the Bethel Church in 1794. Frazier docu ments: “The movements begun by Allen under the name of African societies spread to other cities where so—called African Methodist Episcopal Churches were set up.”19 The St. George “walkout” is “commonly referred to as the beginning of the black church, i.e., organized black religion. ,,20

Segregated Church • Integrated Theology

The introduction of Christianity among the slaves and the subsequent segregation of the church into two camps, one Black and the other White, raises the issue of Africanism, that is, African cultural survivals in Black religion. Anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits argues for African survivals in his’ book, The Myth of the Negro Past. Sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, in his classic The Negro Church In America, takes Herskovits to task, advocating a conflicting view. Raboteau presents a sensitive treatment of the works of both Herskovits and Frazier. He concludes: In the United States the influx of Africans and of African cultural influence was far less extensive than in the Carribean and in Brazil. In North America a relatively small number of Africans found themselves enslaved amid a rapidly increasing native-born population whose memories of the African past grew fainter with each passing generation. The character of the religious milieu, the average number of slaves on plantations, and the number of Africans in the slave population were all factors in the survival or loss of African culture. In the United States all these factors 25

tended to inhibit the survival of African cul ture and religion. It was not possible to maintain the rites of worship, the priesthood, of the “national” identities which were the vehicles and supports for African theology and cult organization. Nevertheless, even as the gods of Africa gave way to the God of Christianity, the African heritage of singing, dancing, spirit possession, and magic continued to influence Afro-American spirituals, ring shouts, and folk beliefs. That this was so is evidence of the slave’s ability not only to adapt to new contexts but to do so creatively.21 Since it is not the province of this author in the context of this study, to participate in the rhubarb either pro or con, suffice it to say that my perspective is congruous with James N. Washington’s assessment of the debate. Washington states, “The argument for African cultural residuals in black religion has great merit. But it is easier to assert the latter proposition than to prove it. The researcher who tries to demonstrate this historical proposition must often settle for descriptive and declara tive statements that yield little tangible evidence except one’s own sociological observations and experiences.”22 Even if those scholars and thinkers who advocate African retentions in Black religion were to go unchallenged by conflicting perspectives it would seem that the Africanisms which survived “the middle passage” and the harshness of institutional slavery would pertain more to worship style than to theological substance. At any rate, to what degree does the movement which grew up around Richard Allen reflect a confluence of two streams of culture, one West African 26 and the other Euro-American? Joseph Washington, Jr. chronicles the Richard Allen episode as “the beginning of the black church.” He writes: Allen’s movement was not a movement for a new religion. It was not a return to an old religion. It was the beginning of a tradition. The tradition has as its central thrust the affirmation that blacks should be Christians with the opportunity to develop separately from whites. In form they would not differ from whites. Only in practice was there to be a difference.”23 Carol V. R. George, writing in her book Se~re~ated Sabbaths, corroborates Washington’s appraisal: Doctrinally, Allen remained a lifelong Methodist, but after 1815 he was known officially as Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, rather than, say, as African Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. And that distinc tion was significant: if the universality of the Christian gospel was as comprehensive as the Methodist proclaimed it to be, if in fact they believed that in “Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, but all are one,” then there would be no need for separate worship facilities. The churches, however, were segre gated and black members were denied full parti— cipation in ways that reflected the racial attitudes of their social environment. It was to overcome such immediate, humiliating oppression that Allen walked out in protest from white St. George’s Methodist Church to organize a separate African denomination, and not because of any 24 doctrinal reservations he had about Methodism. In a nutshell, “Allen was a product of the white tradition, as his followers would be thereafter.”25 Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was not the only Black church of its era, nor was it the first.26 Howbeit, the fact remains that, though African cultural residuals impacted the way the slaves and freed.persons 27 approached Christianity, the Theological corpus remained

largely, if not exclusively, Euro-American. The irony of

the dilemma is echoed by John Hope Franklin: “This

establishment of separate houses of worship for Negroes as inconsistent as it may seem with the teachings of the religion which they professed, gave Negroes an unusual opportunity to develop leadership.”27 Washington, who has been written off as out—of-touch by some, nonetheless, broaches part of the truth when he summarizes:

Thus, what is African in black folk religion is not any unique religious phenomena, doctrine, rituals, beliefs, or even the will to ethnic community or communalism. What is African is simply the identity of a people who in common racial humiliation find themselves and seek power to effect their lives.28 Though the theological corpus was almost exclusively Euro- American, the distinctiveness of traditional Black Christianity stems from how being Black in an oppressive culture impacted Christianity.

The Idea of God in the Premodern and Modern Black Church

What did the slaves mean when they spoke the word “God?” In his seminal study, The Negro’s God as Reflected in His Literature, Benjamin Mays has this to say about Richard Allen’s idea of God: 29

The God of premodern Black religious expression was no respecter of persons,31 the Champion of equality. God was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Godseif saw all you did and heard all you said. Godself was the Rewarder of the righteous, Punisher of the wicked, Judge of all.

This is what the premodern Black meant when hesh spoke the word “God.”

In light of the foregoing, it is crystal clear and picture plain that the idea of God underwent a noticeable degree of reformation as the didactic and kerygmatic responsibility shifted from Whites teaching Blacks to Blacks teaching Blacks. The God of Whites cursed Blacks and con demned them to subservient roles, but the God of Black

religious experience was even-handed, causing rain to fall

and the sun to shine on the just and unjust alike.

That the God of Black religious experience would be

different from the God proclaimed by Whites owes itself to

the conflicting roles and experiences tempered and con

toured their perception of Ultimate Reality. It is note

worthy that many of the ideas of God taught and preached

by Blacks had been given lipserviCe, in the duplicitous White Church, prior to the segregation of the Church. Thus,

the ideas of God enounced from the Black pulpit were-by-

and-large traditional ideas “developed along social and

racial lines.” Mays is not far afield when he summates: 30

The data shows that however the ideas are used, they develop at the point of social crisis, at the point where justice is denied, hopes thwarted, and plans shattered, owing in part to the hampering proscriptions imposed upon the Negro by the dominant group. His ideas of God, so to speak are chiseled out of the very fabric of the social struggle. Virtually all of them express the unfilled yearnings of the Negro group, whether they be worldly or other-worldly. They developed, as can be validated historically, along the line of the Negro’s most urgent needs and desires. Prior to 1860, the Negro’s ideas of God were developed around slavery. After the Civil War, they grew out of the wrongs of Reconstruction. Since 191k, they are inseparable from the social and economic restrictions which the Negro meets in the modern world.32 Even beyond the premodern era, until the shouts of “Black Power” and “Burn, Baby, Burn” began to drown out the choruses of “We Shall Overcome Someday,” the black kerygma was still couched in the mythology of traditional theism. Some modern Black sayers and seers have argued that theological construction is impertinent to the sociocultural well being of Blackamericans. The Negro is not interested in any fine theo logical or philosophical discussion about God. He is interested in a God who is able to help him bridge the chasm that exists between the actual and the ideal. The Negro’s life has been too unstable, too precarious, too uncertain, and his needs have been too great to theologize and philosophize about God.3) It should be obvious that this rationale is partially responsible for the increased dissonance between the Black Church’s creedal allegiances and its social conscience. This occurred as the result of the Black Church’s efforts to maintain its earlier role as the leader of the Civil 31

Rights movement in the face of sturdy challenges by young Black militants and the ever-swelling ranks of alternative faith—interpretations, especially the Nation of Islam. In conclusion, the idea of God held by premodern and modern Blackamericaris was hammered out on the anvil of social crises. Though their idea of God was not the God of White Christian practice, it was the God of White Christian profession contextualized. It was the same God who required submission, obedience, humility, and self effacement. It was the same God who mandated through Paul of Tarsus that “wives should be subject in everything to their husbands” and women be silent in the sanctuary. It is God as a stopgap for the immature and the irresponsible, the God of metaphysical theism. 28

Allen believed in the traditional views of God which were current in his day and in our own time. Many of his traditional ideas of God . . . were developed along social and racial lines. He accepted the orthodox view of God relative to sin and salvation. He believed that sinners would be lost and that conversion was a mira culous act of God. God forgives and saves the repentant sinner.29 Allen’s concept of God included the idea of God present in the here and everywhere, the idea of God readily available to “hear our cries and pity our every groan.’ But, his God was also anti-slavery, so slavery could not last. God was love, hence, slaves were expected to love their masters. Slaveholders who freed their slaves were smiled upon by God.3° There was a social rehabilitative aspect of the gospel preached by Allen and other premodern Black clerics. There was also a compensatory mode in the premodern Black kerygma. The promise of heaven and otherworldly desserts was an integral part of the Black kerygma. It can be effectively argued that premodern Black religion was “survival religion,” and, as such, it was necessarily other worldly. Perhaps the only way Blacks could embrace a religion whose God could allow the evils of slavery to exist and persist was to reason that justice would ulti mately be realized, if not in the here-and-now, in the then and-there. This compensatory emphasis was one way of addressing the problem of theodicy which confronted the pre modern Black on the level of the everyday, CHAPTER III

RESEARCH: THE IDEA OF GOD IN THE FOSTMODERN BLACK CHURCH

Background Of The Study

What is the doctrine of God taught, preached, and received in the postmodern Black Church? Is it consistent with the idea of God subscribed to in earlier times? If not, how does it differ? If so, what difference does it make? These and related questions express legitimate con cerns. It has not been the theologian who has produced a definitive doctrine of God for the Black Church. It is the preacher who is the primary transmitter of the “received” tradition. The laity is the secondary transmitter. What do these “transmitters” say about God? What is their faith- interpretation vis a vis God? Of course, one’s faith- interpretation owes its shape to the historical tradition within which one stands. In order to get a clearly representative picture of the Black Church’s concept of God at least four sources of information were reviewed and analyzed: sermons and prayers recorded during actual worship, random one-on-one and small group interviews with clerics and laypersons, manuscripts/outlines of sermons preached by various clerics, and a simple random survey of preachers. The latter was

32 33 used as the principle barometer of the Black pulpits idea of God. The other three sources of information were used to verify the legitimacy of the responses given in the simple random survey.

Description Of The Study Sample

There were seventy-six respondents in the simple random survey questionnaire. Exactly two hundred question naires were sent out. However, the questionnaires were not mailed individually. They were mailed to contact persons in nine states, most of whom were key members of inter denominational clergy groups, in lots of eight to fifteen. The contact person in each locale, on the basis of a pre arranged agreement, accepted responsibility for distri buting thelots hesh received. Replies were returned from Texas (19), Louisiana (8), Maryland (14), South Carolina (9), Florida (11), Illinois (2), New Mexico (3), Georgia (3), and Tennessee (3). Four additional responses were received from pastors in Washington, D.C. (see Table I) The median age of the survey respondents was forty- two. The youngest participant was 24; the oldest was 62. The sample group averaged fifteen years in ministry. Only one of the study participants (a D. Mm.) had an earned degree above the master’s level; three had earned a Master

of Divinity degree; one held a Master of Arts in Religious Education; three had completed graduate work in liberal 34

TABLE I

Respondents to Questionnaire

Residence of Respondents by State Number Responding

Texas 19 Maryland 14 Florida 11 South Carolina 9 Louisiana 8 Washington, D. C. 4 New Mexico 3 Georgia 3 Tennessee 3 Illinois 2

Total 76 ~35

‘ts. Of the 76 participants, twenty had at least a semester f college or business school. T~ of the 76 did not complete ae requirements for a high school diploma.

The denominational affiliation of the study partici ants breaks down as foilows: twenty-one C 28%) Christian ethodist Episcopal, four (6%) /~frican Methodist Episcopal1 ne (1%) African Methodist Ep~scopal Zion, sixteen (21%) aptist, twelve (16%) Church of Christ, one (1%) Fire aptized, one (1%) African United Methodist Pentecostal, hree (4%) Church of the Living Grid, two (2.5%) Congrega ional, three (4%) United Methodist, four (6%) Church of od in Christ, one (1%) Seventh Day Baptist, three (4%)

~postolic, one (1%) Independent Methodist, two (2.5%) Full

~ospel, one (1%) NondenomiflatiOflal (see Table II). The ieterogeneous feedback is due primarily to the worb of the

:ontact persons. It was the exDressed purpose of this study

:o solicit input from a number of protestant denominations, Fifty-six percent of the respondents had been ~astoring their present charge for five years or less. Eighty-five

ercent were bivocational, having income from a nonrelated

~ield.

Part II of the questionnaire dealt with the nature and size of the congregations led by study participants.

Sixt~four percent pastored churches with memberships of

50—150 active members; twenty seven percent led congrega tions whose active membership numbered 150—~O0; seven 36

TABLE II

Denominational Affiliations of Respondents

Denomination of Respondents Affiliation No. Christian Methodist Episcopal 21 28 Baptist 16 21 Church of Christ 12 16 African Methodist Episcopal 4 6 Church of God in Christ 4 6 Church of the Living God 3 4 United Methodist 3 4 Apostolic 3 4 Full Gospel 2 2.5 Congregational 2 2.5 African Methodist Episcopal Zion 1 1 Fire Baptized 1 1 African United Methodist Episcopal 1 1 Seventh Day Baptist 1 1 37

TABLE II (continued)

Denomination of Respondents Affiliation No. Independent Methodist 1 1 Nondenominational 1 1

Total 76 100 38 percent ministered to churches with memberships totaling 300—500. Two of the respondents pastor parishes of 500 or more active members (see Figure I). The overwhelming majority (88%) of study participants headed congregations with majority high school graduates. Part III of the survey dealt with the respondents’ doctrine of God. Since this writer has not had training in the framing of questionnaires, and to preserve the study’s objectivity, all of the questions were open-ended. The study sample was asked to complete four questions: “God is . . . ?“, “Jesus is . . . ?“, “Man is . . . ?“, “Sin is

• . . ?“ No limit was placed on the nature or limit of the sample’s response. The respondents were also asked to rank four statements about the sovereignty of God from Benjamin Mays’ The Negro’s God. An alternative was provided for those who found the statements from May delimiting.

Review Of Research

Not surprisingly the sample’s response to Part III reflected the party’s line. All respondents viewed sin as “transgression of the law of God,” “rebellion,” “viola tion,” “disobedience to the expressed will of God,” and/or “separation.” The uniformity of the response indicated an adherence to the traditional interpretation of sin. The respondents believed humankind to be made in the image of God. Forty-nine (65%) replied that “Man is a 39

100

90

80

70

40

30

20

Under 50- 150— 300— 500 or 50 150 300 500 more

Figure 1 (in percentages) of Respondent’s active members 40 sinner.” Nineteen (25%) held that “man” was a “caretaker,” “trustee,” or “stewards of God’s creation.” The question which recorded the most varied response dealt with the person of Jesus. While one hundred percent believed that Jesus was God’s Son, only 58 concluded that Jesus was “God” or “God in the flesh.” The response from the interviews reflected this uncertainty about the person of Jesus. While both, the study sample and the interviewees were one hundred percent in agreement that Jesus was “God manifested in the flesh” or “God the Son” or that “Jesus is God.” Only forty six of the sample and thirty (out of one hundred thirty-six) of those interviewed would say “God is Jesus.”

Findings And. Interpretations

The study supports this paper’s thesis that the Black Church’s faith-interpretation has near its center the highly abstract God of metaphysical theism. Without excep tion, in both interviews and questionnaires, study parti cipants touted a God who is a free and sovereign supra historical being, who has his finger in every pie. Though there was a pronounced. degree of uncertainty vis a vis the person of Jesus, not one study participant ventured. beyond merely reiterated creedal formulations chaperoned by tradi tionalists. Many of those interviewed. responded to the questions asked them by repeating what the Bible says. CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS: IS CLASSICAL THEISM DISLIBERATING?

Historic Orthodoxy: Formative Influences

The faith perspective of the “mainstream church” is, for the most part, European theological orthodoxy. This in America, is known as fundamentalism, and its God is the God of mythic and metaphysical theism, the radically Tran scendent Reality who is absolute, all-powerful, all-knowing, holy, the lord of history and stern judge of the world. The White Church is committed to a certain way of thinking about God (deus ex machina), Jesus Christ (Christos Pantocrator), sin, salvation, heaven and hell. Unfortunately, historic orthodoxy absolutizes history, heralding the invariance of yesterday’s theological truth over against the theological truth of today and tomorrow. As Paul Tillich puts it: Fundamentalism fails to make contact with the present situation, not because it speaks from beyond every situation, but because it speaks from a situation of the past. It elevates something finite and transi tory to infinite and, eternal validity. In this respect fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and makes them fanactical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware. Fundamentalists in America . . . can point to the fact that their theology is eagerly received and held by many people just because of the histor 41. 42

ical or biographical situation in which men find themselves today. The fact is obvious, but the interpretation is wrong.’ “Mainstream churches” foist and cater theological and intellectual indisposition to change, no matter how construc tive the change or how critical the need for change may be. They declare that the canon is closed. “If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”2 With the advent of slavery, the mainstream church increasingly allowed the change in social reality, fostered by economic expediency, to tailor their theology, influ encing them to make their religious views more amenable to the status quo, meshing faith with docility. There are at least three ways in which the White faith-perspective became “heretical” under the impact of culturally imposed distor tions: (1) its ethical content was vitiated, (2) the passive, sentimental, privatistic, and devotional ingre dients of the faith were exaggerated, and (3) antira tionalism was promoted. First, by debasing the ethical content of Christianity the nature of faith was cankered. Its judgemental vigor and its redemptive power as a social conditioner were destroyed. Except for its catechism of private virtues the ethical content of Christianity was emptied by the deliberate exemption of the largest area of social injustice from the Christian definition of good and evil. Since the moral nerve of a religion 43

atrophies when it is no longer permitted to func tion, ethical Christianity disappeared. It was supplanted by a code of manners and private moralities and by otherworldly theology which not only could ignore the plight of the abused Negro but which could also justify that oppression So the defenders of slavery--and after them the defenders of discrimination and segre gation--invented an ethic-less gospel so that their conduct might become plausible to thems~lves and invulnerable to the attacks of the world.3 Having gutted Nicene orthodoxy of its ethical motif, Whites were freer to relativize values and attribute and distribute worth, and, by so doing, they redefined reality, even Ultimate Reality. The second “heresy’, (and I’m using Haselden’s charac terization here, with which I fully concur) involved the highlighting, by the dominant culture’s religious syllogists, of the passive, sentimental, privatistic, and devotional elements of their faith-perspective. Haselden writes: The religion extruded by the pressures of the white man’s religious duality was one from which the rigorous virtues of truth and justice were squeezed out and which the warm, tender, lesser merits of church-going, Bible-reading, courtesy, and hospitality remained. The essential balance was disturbed and the resulting heresy, a partial Christianity, enabled the white man to think him self highly religious--as in part he was-- even though his religion was ~ntirely cut off from his most vicious social sin.~ Haselden further notes: What happens is that the white man cleaves Christian piety into two parts: the strong, virile virtues he applies exclusively to himself; the apparently weak, passive virtues he endorses especially for the Negro. “Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely” belongs to the white man; “whatsoever things are of good report” belong to the Negro. The white man takes the active and positive Christian adjectives for him self: noble, manly, wise, strong, courageous; he recommends the passive and negative Christian adjectives to the Negro: patient, long-suffering, humble, self—eff~.cjng, considerate, submissive, childlike, meek.) The slaves and, after the Civil War, freedpersons were taught to be “meek and lowly like Jesus; he never said a mumbling word.” This emphasis on passivity, obedience, submission, sentimentality, and the like is found in the words of the hymns that were sung and that we now sing in the Black Church. We have sung, “Lord, I want to be like Jesus in a my heart.” And, how was Jesus? He was “gentle and lowly,”6 “obedient unto death,”7 passive,8 and non- threatening.9 This is the Prince of Peace put upon the oppressed by the dominant culture. Thirdly, questions about the accuracy of the dominant culture’s interpretation of the faith were frustrated by an antiintellectual bias. The effectiveness of these and other heretical pre tensions was exacerbated by the complicity of the collared clergy. Cotton Mather, George Whitfield, and Thomas Bacon overtly defended slavery in their preachments.’0 Jonathan Edwards ignored it.1’ But, by and large, the White Church in the South and North, through the peddling of questionable interpretations of biblical texts, continued to aggrandize the oppression of Blacks. Almost two hundred years after the St. George’s walk out the White Church tenaciously maintains its heretical stance. Walter Brueggemann is sensitive to the aberrant, even Constantinian, nature of the dominant culture’s faith-

interpretation, which he labels “White theology.” He writes:

White theology has always taught that “Massah knows best,” whether it is we over slaves or God over us. Many writers have recently said we need a theology of change, or more radically, a theology of revolution. White theology is the pure type of antichange and antirevolutionary theology because it is a theology of irresponsibility. It has imaged a world which is eternally ordered, which God has called into being and rules, and into which it is our business to fit. If change must come, it is God’s business and not ours.1’~ Brueggemann continues: White theology has by practice and perhaps by design given men low self-esteem. It has kept folks humble and obedient-- not feeling too good about themselves-- for such a self-image reduces self-assertion. White theology has produced persons who feel most comfortably abdicating: “After all, I’m only human.” In every phase of life, with people of every color, thi~ theology reduces persons to “boy” or “nigger.” 3 Undeniably, Brueggemann’s observations point to the extent the White Church has rented the Christian faith. This renting of the faith by the mainstream church, emasculating the gospel until it is not much more than a narcotic, cocainizing and dulcifying an oppressed people, prostituting religion to strengthen the hold of the dominant culture, and weakening the protest of the oppressed, did not occur in a vacuum, indeed, it “happened” in the theological context of traditional orthodoxy. The White 46 Church did, not denounce traditional orthodoxy. Instead, it circumscribed the scope of the Christian message, departmentalizing Christian virtues, debauching religion in the interests of capitalism. Nevertheless, the the ological corpus remained historic orthodoxy. The White Church made religion in America Constantjnjan, a partner of the state. But, it is not the first time the Christian religion has been pimped in this manner.’4 Historic orthodoxy fuses elements of Greek philosophy with religious insights derived from the Hebraic-Christian Scriptures. Hartshorne’s comment that orthodoxy “was a compromise between a not-very-well-understood Greek phi losophy and a not-very-scholarly interpretation of sacred writings”15 is well taken. Orthodoxy includes among its articles the mythological creation drama, the doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of total depravity, the doctrine of atonement, and is infiltrated with apocalyptic and gnostic themes. Orthodoxy argues that because of the Edenic tragedy all of humankind was plunged into a state of depravity and bondage; somehow we were all seminally pre sent in Adam’s loins and are born sinful. God contemplates all persons as actually one with Adam in his sin. We cannot ask: When does an individual be come a sinner? “For the truth is that each person never exists as other than sinful. He is eternally contemplated by God as sinful by reason of solidarity with Adam, and whenever the person comes to be actually he comes to be sinful.”1.5 47

Traditional Christianity holds that since God “hath made of one blood all nations” the fallout from Adam’s sin has

been transmitted, or imputed, to every human being that has lived or is now living on the face of the earth.

It is obvious to even the most inattentive worshipper that the Black pulpit stricly adheres to the twin doctrines of original sin and total depravity. This author taught and preached these doctrines for years to both clergy and laity without ever being challenged publicly or privately.

In 1983 a series of lessons were held at one of Atlanta’s leading Baptist congregations. The theme of the

series revolved around the topic of salvation. The pastor of the church, well-known nationally, after having taught

about the effects of the Fall, countered that God has

offered us a way out of our sullied predicament. In

simple language he told those in attendance that the

Scriptures teach that ruin came through “the first Adam” and salvation through the “last Adam,” Jesus Christ. Then this prominent pastor, reading from the King James version, quoted Romans 5:19, “For by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Evil appeared without God being at fault,

but have no fear, God has a solution to the ugly mess

humankind finds itself in. Through the Christ event, that

is Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension,

humankind has a chance at redemption and salvation. The 48 same God who pronounced judgement upon our sins (Genesis 2:17; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 6:23) has declared that atone ment could be vicariously made. Somebody else could die in our stead. If our blood were shed it would atone for no one because we are sinners. When we die, we just pay the penalty for our own sins. But somebody else could pay our debt and our penalty, and free us from our bondage to sin and death. According to the classic story, Jesus is that somebody else. He is the Atoner. Paul writes, in Romans 5:8, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Traditional orthodoxy is infiltrated with apocalyp ticism and gnosticism. Reuther, addressing the legacy of these two movements, writes of the former: What is apocalypticism? Apocalypticism was the radicalizing of Jewish prophetism under the impact of increasingly larger and more oppressive imperial powers: Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman. Under the impact of this historical experience of oppression, God’s promise of restoration to his people in a land where every man would sit under his own vine and fig tree, where all would obey the Lord from the heart and none would make war any more, these very concrete and this-worldly hopes came to be seen in an increasingly alienated or transcendant perspec tive, as the fulfillment of these hopes came to be seen as increasingly remote and impossible within the prevailing power structures of the world. The world as it is then appeared ever more alien and foreign to that which ought to be, not merely in a superficial, reformable sense, but right down to the root principle of existence. The dominant form of the world came to be seen as demonic in principle, alien to man’s true self, as though the very universe had fallen under 49 the dominion of evil powers. Only some interven tion from beyond which would radically overthrow the prevailing mode of the world and re-establish it on a new arid entirely different basis, abolishing the reign of the evil Prince of this World, and making a new beginning with a new heaven and a new earth, could hold out any hope of salvation. This is the essential message of apocalypticism.16 Don Cupitt, speaking of the influence of apocalypticism on orthodoxy, asserts: The mainstream of historic Christianity has always stayed true to its apocalyptic origins in being dualistic. Its language creates a series of antithesis, dividing the moral universe into two opposed camps. There is a way of life, the straight and narrow way; and the way of death, which is broad and easy. Every human act is performed under the influence of either God or Satan, and is a step towards Heaven or Hell. There are two societies: and with this distinc tion, which verges upon a separation, run a series of others, between faith and reason, Christianity and culture, grace and nature. There is at least a tendency to divide the self into good and evil realms. All that is merely human in us is of the old Adam, of the flesh; all that is of ourselves is to be fought; we do well only insofar as we collaborate with grace infused into us from without. The cosmic battle’s front lines are within each soul.’? Gnosticism is the other formidable influence on traditional Christianity. According to Williston Walker: Gnosticism was an immense peril for the church. It cut out the historic foundations of the Church . . . . The peril was even greater because Gnosticism was represented by some of the keenest minds in the church of the second century. The age was syncretistic, and in some respects Gnosticism was but the fullest accom plishment of Hellenic and Oriental philosophical speculation with primitive Christian beliefs which was in greater or les~er degree in process in all Christian thinking.l0 The apostle Paul, who is largely responsible for the 50 dogmatic enlargements of the early Church’s beliefs, and whose Christology was at odds with that pictures and presented by the gospelists, taught much that the Gnostics identified with. “His sharp contrast between flesh and spirit; his concept of Christ as victor over those ‘principalities and powers’ which are the ‘world rulers of this darkness’ and his thought of Christ as the Man from Heaven, were all ideas which the Gnostics could employ. H19 Both apocalypticism and gnosticism tempered historic orthodoxy’s mythical world-picture. “The mythical world- picture was always hierarchical, and historic Christianity was integrated with it. The ruling classes were high, noble, the quality: those they ruled were low, base, commoners: male was nobler than female, white was good and black was evil. Man to woman was as sun to moon, white man to black man was as day to night.”2° The cosmic redemption myth in toto is disagreeable with what is best in humankind. It posits each person as over against himerself. The self is vilified as corrupt and wretched. It marshals against individual and corporate wholeness; it fraginentizes persons into opposing camps, flesh and spirit; and promotes societal castes, us versus them, pro—life versus pro—choice. But, for our purposes, we need not engage each of the articles of orthodoxy nor need we grapple with the two movements which have affected orthodoxy’s purview per Se, for it is beyond the scope of 5’ bhis work, For now, we must address the question, ~What

~as all of this to do with God?’~ And, is historic

)rthodoxy really disliberative?

This author contends that the anthropomorphic-story theology which underpins orthodoxy is obscurantic,

)rthodoxy claims that the God of history, or the

~eschichts~ptt, is calling the shots. God sometimes allows things to happen by way of hiser permissive will. Satan

La allowed to tempt Job only after God gives permission.

~od is Spirit, Light, Love; hesh is Judge, Shepherd, King~

~od is known through hiser acts and attributes, Hiser attributes are either communicable or incommunicable, no ral or natural,

~~ God: A CritiQue

Though I do not wish to align myself with the version

~f theism found in Charles Hartshorne’s schema, there are some valuable elements in his conception of God that will help us to engage classical theis&s doctrine of C-cd, and, therefore, its contents, critically and redemptively.

Hartshorne critiques six ideas of God, “theological mistakes” he calls them, which “give the word God a meaning which is not true to its import in sacred writings or in concrete religious piety.”2’ Says H~shorne,

“This result cane about partly because theologians in medieval Europe and the Near East were somewhat learned in 52 Greek philosophy and largely ignorant of other philosophy.”22 The six unacceptable ideas Hartshorne addresses are God’s immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, impassivity, “immortality as a career after death,” and infallibility of revelation. Of these six “theological mistakes” only four are relevant to this study. This writer rejects the idea of God’s impassivity or unsympathetic goodness be cause it is alien to Black religious experience. Blacks do not preach or teach a God “who is pure intellect or will, knowing our feelings but feeling nothing, willing our good but not in any intelligible sense caring about our pleasures or sufferings.”23 Black people know the God who pities as a Parent pities hiser children. Black preaching affirms that God cares for and about hiser children. This author also reject Harthorne’s listing of “immortality as a career after death” in the same con text with the other attributes, in part, because it is not a necessary outflow of the line of reasoning which Hartshorne pursues. However, I might suggest, in regard to the subject of immortality, that perhaps Grace M. Jantzen’s contention, that “the belief in immortality is not so central to Christian thought and practice as is often believed, ,,24 deserves more than passing notice. Hartshorne’s statement that “the argument,” for immortality, “seems to assume, falsely, that it is God who decides when and how we shall die”25 will be dealt with under the topic of omnipotence. 53 The immutability of God stands for God’s unchangeable- ness through change. Classical theists declare that God is incapable of change. The Bible describes God as “the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.~26 Fred Klooster writes: Immutability is that perfection which desig nates God’s constancy and unchangeableness in His being, decrees, and works. He remains forever the same true God, faithful to Himself, His decrees, His revelation, and His works. He under goes no change from within, nor does he undergo change due to anything outside of Himself.2? Tradjtionaj..jsts maintain that if God could change it would imply imperfection in Godseif character; If God, however, could change in his moral attributes, it would imply moral imperfection in his character. If, for example, he could be come a better being than he is, it would imply that he is not perfect in goodness. If he could be more just, then justice has not reached its climax in him. If he could be more faithful to his word, his veracity is not perfect. If he could be more holy, it follows that he is not infinitely holy now. 28 Since God is infinitely perfect, hesh is and must be eternally the same. “For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. ,,29 Traditionalists objected to the notion of divine change because infinite perfection precludes change. PoppycockL Why must infinite perfection preclude change? Who says so? Hartshorne counters the orthodox argument for immut ability, saying: Whatever the world may be, God can know without error or ignorance what that world is and can respond to it, taking fully into account the actual and potential values which it involves, and thus be wholly righteous. But if the world 54

lacks and then acquires new harmonies, new forms of aesthetic richness, -then the beauty of the world as divinely known increases. God would be defective in aesthetic capacity were the divine enjoyment not to increase in such a case. Aesthetic value is the most concrete form of value. An absolute maximum of beauty is a meaningless idea. Beauty is unity in variety of experiences. Abso lute unity in absolute variety has no clear meaning. Either God lacks any aesthetic sense and then we surpass God in that respect, or there is no upper limit to the divine enjoyment of beauty in the world.30. God is no longer thought of as static and devoid of all temporal distinctions. God is “creatively becoming.” The omnipotence of God is the power of God to excel all others. It means that God has unlimited power to do whatever hesh chooses to do. Traditionalists maintain that the omnipotence of God is not naked power. HIser is power, wisdom, love, righteouSfleS5~ justice, and mercy. Nevertheless, God is in control. No one dies unless it’s God’s will. Hesh works “all things according to the counsel of hesh will.”~’ God’s omnipotence goes hand—in hand with hiser asiety. While humankind is frail, feeble, faulty, fickle, and fainting, God is incomprehen5ible~ indivisible, self_sufficient, holy, faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. “God is the sole absolute Lord and proprietor of everything. In him is all ~power and perfectiofl~ in us is all weakness and baseness. Traditianal theology’s notion of God’s omnipotence has generated quite a bit of trouble. Because people are 55 taught that God is “running the show,” when tragedy strikes and misfortune occurs, people are quick to ask God, Why did you do this to me? When a youth dies, either by homicide or suicide, or some other means of death, the family often is left to wonder, Why did God take himer at such an early age?

Hartshorne takes issue with the conventional argument for the omnipotence of God. He explicitly notes:

• . • omnipotence as usually conceived is a false or indeed absurd ideal, which in truth limits God, denies to him any world worth talking about: a world of living, that is to say, significantly decision—making agents. It is the tradition which did terribly limit divine power, the power to foster creativity even in the least creatures.33 This author resoriates with Hartshorne’s view of divine power. He has said, “The only livable doctrine of divine power is that it influences all that happens but determines nothing in its concrete particularity.”32 God’s power is not coercive. Hesh is not a cosmic despot who controls every detail of the world process. “God seeks to persuade each occasion toward that possibility for its own existence which would be best for it; but God cannot control the finite occasion’s self—actualization.”35

God certainly has a “will” or direction for our lives and Godself attempts to persuade or charm us to do that which is good. God will not usurp human responsibility, nor will hesh negate humankind’s right to choose.

Harvey Cox maintains in his book God’s Revolution And Man’s 56 Responsibility, that “God has given man a thrilling

responsibility for this world. But man has not fulfilled his assignment. God has placed the tiller of history in

man’s hand, but man has gone to his hammock and let the winds and tides sweep his ship aiong.”~6 Humankind has a much larger role than at first perceived, we have a deter minative voice in the outcome of this world. Deuteronomy

30:15 records God as saying, “ . . . I have set before thee

this day life and good, death and evil.” “Man is summoned to make his own decisions. So to shove them off on some one else, even on God or the church, is a betrayal of his manhood. Conventional theology’s insistence that God is in complete control of the world is disliberative and not support~d by the Biblical record, excluding Paul’s per spective.38 According to John Cobb: Traditional theology tended to portray God as the Sanctioner of the Status Quo. The notions of “God” and “order” were closely associated. In the political realm, the connection between obedience to God and submission to the political status quo was supported by the notorious appeal to Rom., ch. 13, where Paul says that we should “be subject to the governing authorities” because they “have been instituted by God,” so that “he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed.” This notion of God is also closely connected with the notion of God as Controlling Power. Paul’s statement is one of those Biblical state ments which presuppose that God is in control at the major features of the world process. The development of traditional theism, in which God was more consistently said to be in complete control of every detail, further strengthened the conviction that the political status quo should be affirmed. For if God had not wanted those rulers .57 in power, they would not be in power. It is largely due to this notion that those who have been in opposition to despotic rulers have also found them selves in opposition to the church, and have found it useful to espouse atheism.~9

Orthodoxy’s idea of God’s Almightiness has relegated human kind to the role of robots, whose destiny rests in the hands of a Cosmic Tyrant, who, like George Orwell’s

“Big Brother,” “hears all we say and sees all we do.” All that we) as humans, can do is to wrest “goodies” from God through prayers. Resistance to oppression, armed or other wise, plays second fiddle to the declaration that “the

Lord will make a way somehow.” This kind of reductionism leaves humankind “Like a ship that’s toss’d and driven.”

A third unacceptable idea about God is omniscience.

Omniscience denotes the infinite intelligence of God-—

Godself knowledge of all things. Our knowledge is partial and incomplete. There is an alter~iative to the usual view of the immutability of God’s knowledge. “As we have seen, the arguments for the complete unchangeability of God are fallacious; hence) the arguments for growth in God’s knowledge) as the creative process produce new realities to know, are sound,”4°

The idea of revelation as infallible impacts the way we look at the Scriptures. Traditionalists leap from an

infallible deity to an infallible book, the Bible, This

mind-set fuels the current fundamentalist claim of biblical

inerrancy. The Bible is heralded as God’s unerring 58 revelation to humankind. The real churches are “bible-

believing” churches where everyone totes the Bible. It’s little wonder that the religion of Jesus has been reduced to what Leon Wright properly calls “the religion of the book.”41 However, the critical historical method has

evidence that the Bible is a human book about God.

Orthodoxy’s Christ: Some Conclusions

The purpose of this discussion thus far has been to present evidence that conventional theology, historic orthodoxy, explicitly militates against and is undeniably incompatible with the liberation of the oppressed. The heretical pretensions of the mainstream church were documented in order to present the reader with a vivid picture of the faith-perspective which informed and informs the Black faith-perspective. A few pertinent articles of orthodoxy were explicated, along with those influences which framed the classical faith-interpretation, so as to acquaint the reader with the theological context of the

Euro-American faith-confession. Finally, four major

“theological mistakes” were discussed and engaged, however briefly, to further expose the reader to the unacceptability of the claims of convention theism. If someone says that hesh is a fundamentalist then much of this is what hesh believes, give or take a couple of minor differences of emphasis. 59 So then, historic orthodoxy denies human freedom. It is disliberative. The understanding of God that we find in the Pauline corpus and in the orthodox formulations of Christian dogma pictures the relation between God and humankind as an asymmetrical relation. Humankind needs God, but God does not need us. God affects us, but we do not affect God. Not only must we reject the dogmatic enlargements vis a vis orthodoxy’s doctrine of God as unacceptable. We must also reject the Jesus of orthodoxy, the homousios, of one substance, with the Father. The Christology to which traditionalists subscribe is problemmatic. Listen as the influential fundamentalist W. A. Criswell makes his case: Jesus, the mighty God, the everlasting Father is our Savior. As the ruler of the world, the earth, the sky, and the creation, Jes~s presides over all of history; yet he loves us.~2 Criswell goes on to add: There is no greater announcement than this: the God of all the universe is a man. The man who stood in Pilate’s judgement hail and the man who lay dead in Joseph’s tomb is the same man who sits on the throne of God and is the Lord of all the earth. It is too good to be true.43 This picturesque mythologization of Jesus, the man of Nazareth, presented by Criswell, engineered, embraced, and handed on by traditionalists through the centuries, is hardly consistent with what Jesus taught about himself.

Many of the orthodox bent declare that Jesus was either 6o God incarnate àr he was nothing. They pietistically declaim proof texts to buttress their history-denying posture (not unlike the dominant culture’s use of proof texts to lend ligitimacy to their oppression of Blacks). The Jesus of Nicene and Cha.lcedonian orthodoxy, Very God of Very God, coequally and coeternally God, is the product of mythological descent, conceptualized by the early church and the patristic Fathers, rather than a historical personage, a man, an itinerant radical Galilean holy man who glimpsed God. Cupitt has said something about this historically real iconoclastic Jew that I wish I had coined first. Says Cupitt: It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the religion Jesus himself believed and. taught was very different from the later Christian religion ostensibly based on Jesus. The contrast between the two religions derives mainly from the fact that Jesus did not believe in original sin. He followed the prophets in holding that the individual can and must turn directly to God in repentance and faith, and can gain God’s forgive— ness directly. There is no insuperable barrier between man and God. God is close to man and offers forgiveness freely. Of course Jesus’ God is holy and exalted and strange, and the relation to God is as demanding as could be. There is nothing easy about Jesus’ religion. But neither is it impossible. According to Christianity, though, man is trapped and bound in original sin and cannot properly perform the initial act of turning to God. Only if we cleave to the Mediator, a divine-human being who bridges the gulf between God and man, can we gain the promise of God’s forgiveness and the prospect of eternal salva tion in the world to come. Jesus is identified with this Mediator. So the confusing irony is this, that Jes~~s, the Jewish teacher of an immediate relation be tween man and God, became incorporated in a religion 61 which says the opposite of what he taught. Christianity said that Christ is the only one who can bridge the gulf between God and man, and God’s forgiveness can only be obtained via him. Where Jesus taught his disciples to pray directly to our Father, the church of Jesus prays to Almighty ~id Everlasting God through Jesus Christ our Lord.~ Cupitt rightly summates that Jesus was radically theocentric. Jesus was not some supernatural thaumaturge come from heaven. He was not the sole mediator between God and man, as Paul would have us believe. Nor was he the gnostic redeemer pictured by the autopic gospel God was in Christ in a special way. Jesus was a man who was open, viscerally and ultimately, to the will of God. Therefore, it behooves us to in-see through the contrived secondary mythological fog, pandered by orthodoxy and enshrined in their dogma, to Jesus, the man of Nazareth. In closing, it is incumbent upon this writer to add a further note. The Jesus of orthodoxy is an obstacle to meaningful dialogue with peoples of other confessions. The incarnation-doctrine is tantamount to the narrowing of God. If we were to insist, against the synoptic witness, that Jesus is God, a claim which the man of Nazareth himself did not make, we threaten to undermine or, even worse, rule out a priori, a meaningful dialogue with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and others. Contrary to the pratings of the New Right clerics, God is not the private property of Christianity, or, for that matter, of the dominant culture. Beyond a shred of a shade of. a shadow of 62 a doubt, the word “God” has nore universal currency than that ascribed to it by conventional theology. CHAPTER V

ALTERNATIVES: TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING

Historical Alternatives

It should be conspicuous, by now, that traditional orthodoxy is inimical to the liberation of oppressed peoples, particularly Blackamericans. Orthodoxy contracts its devotees to view themselves as base and mean. On the one hand, it extols humility, meekness, self-effacement, submission, and obedience. On the other hand, tradition alists overemphasize rebellion as the chief expression of sin. Politics is the apparent culprit, the reason why images of insubordination, revolt, and protest are so central in the conventional Christian doctrine of sin. To traditionalists, soteria does not bring about whole ness but leaves the individual fractured, divided against himerself in Pauline fashion. They depict Jesus as the archegos and aitios of soteria. He is characterized as a vicarious extraterrestrial who was victimized by the will of God. The God of orthodoxy is arbitrary and high handed, Godself is pictured as driving a hard bargain with himerself and punishing himerself in order to assuage hiser own wrath. Thus far, we’ve discovered that William R. Jones’ 63 64 question, “Is God a white racist?”, is not without rele vance. The God foisted on Blacks by Whites is culturally contoured. And even if one doesn’t buy Jones’ argument from theodicy, one has no other choice, predicated upon the vociferous wirness of history, but to conclude that God

is White and a racist. One could counter, quite unsuc - cessfully, that the God of European theological orthodoxy and the God of Black folk are different. Not so. Sure, we have declared that God is no respecter of persons. We’ve even declared that God is on the side of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation. However, to maintain that “Gott” is the God of the oppressed, without de—idealizing the mythological frame surrounding the God-idea and emancipating it from the contrived anthropomorphic imagery, reduces theology to cosmetology. To make new insertions into an old structure is no more than revisionism. The Black pulpit’s embracement of the tenets of orthodoxy places Black Church theology, enscounced. in Black sermons, songs, and prayers, closer to fundamentalist theology than either would like to admit. Both Black Church theology and the dominant culture’s faith-interpretation are anti intellectual, anti-theological, and anti-modern. A couple of years ago, in Longview Texas, I served as vice-president of a region—wide alliance of ministers. The alliance was a Black consortium of clergy. There were no White members. However, on occasion, White ministers would 65 frequent the alliance’s plenary sessions. The sessions were segmented into two parts, one for business and the latter part for worship. The business session was devoted to receiving and acting upon committee reports, which dealt largely with issues of communitywide interest. The latter session was comprised of singing, praying, reviewing the international Sunday School lesson, a short talk on ministerial ethics and etiquette, and a sermon. When the audience was “mixed” we curtailed the business session in order to preserve strategy. Nonetheless, the worship period was not limited in any case. I noticed that whatever the composition of the audience, the sermons remained the same. In fact, they could have been preached without change at the local predominantly White alliance, which, by the way, had Black members. It seemed odd that, even when the audience was unmixed, the sermons that were preached, the songs sung, and the prayers lifted often belied the spirit of the business session. For example, we were often admonished how important it was for us to move swiftly on an issue during the latter phase, by way of sermon, that they that trust in God should not make haste. Black Church theology is supplementary; it does not seek to transform the prevailing schema but to draw from it a few additional corollaries. Subsequently, what we are really faced with here is a demand for a fresh start, 66 a new direction. James Cone argues that “the difference in the form of black and white religious thought, is socio— logical and, theological.”1 Concerning the latter differ ence, he writes: The difference between black and white thought is also theological. Black people did not devise various philosophical arguments for God’s existence, because the God of black experience was not a metaphysical idea. He was the God. of history, the Liberator of the oppressed from bondage. Jesus was not an abstract Word of God., but God’s Word made flesh who came to set the prisoner free. He was the ‘Lamb of God.’ that was born in Bethlehem and was slain on Golgotha’s hill. He was also “the Risen Lord’ and ‘the King of Kings.’ He was their Alpha and. Omega, the One who had come to maI~e the first last and the last first. While white preachers and. theologians often defined Jesus as a spiritual savior, the deliverer of people from sin and. guilt, black preachers were unquestionably historical. They viewed God as the Liberator of history. That is why the black church was involved in the aboli tionist’s movement in the 19th century and in the Civil Rights movement in the 20th. Black preachers reasoned. that if God. delivered Israel from Pharoah’s army and Daniel from the lion’s d.en, then he will deliver black people from American slavery and oppression. So the content of their thought was liberation and. they communicated. that message through preaching, singing, and. praying,~ telling their story of how ‘We Shall Overcome.’4 If Cone’s romanticization of the Black experience in religion even broaches the periphery of truth then this paper’s argument for a fresh start is even more exigent than at first believed. This author can only lament as accurate, Cone’s pinpointing of the dissimilarity between black and. white religious thought being only a difference in form, rather than in substance, merely a 67 cosmetic difference at best. As Salley and Behin have stated, Cone’s “views are more consistent with the orthodox doctrines of the Christian tradition, Black or White.”3 This further underscores the need for a new direction in theology. Many Blacks, young and old, suspect the Black Church, which has been and is presently more conciliatory than its White counterpart, as being the source of Uncle Tomism. Black preachers have often been portrayed as charlatans who would sell out hiser people for a contribution to hiser anniversary. Understandably, there is a renewed Black disillusionment and disenchantment with traditional orthodoxy. “In this respect Black consciousness functions as an ideological base of spiritual awareness for those Blacks who realize the spiritual dimension of their humanity but who cannot identify and ultimately associate with what theyconceive to be a White, blue-eyed Jesus-—a Jesus who negates the humanity of their Blackness, a Jesus who demands that they Whiten their souls in order to be saved.”4 This fact, coupled with the ignorance of their theology and heritage which plagues young Blacks, under scores the need for a new direction; and, since theology is discourse or talk about God any fresh start must begin with God. Before one can point definitively to a transformative theology, one which will prove an organic option, history 68 demands that we acknowledge and learn from earlier alternatives to conventional theism.

The disenchantment of Blacks with White Christianity gave impetus to a movement led by George Baker, commonly known as “Father Divine.” Baker, who was born in either South Carolina or Georgia, began his movement in 1919 in Sayville, Long Island, New York, where “he quickly gained a reputation as an effective employment agent for maids and gardeners, as well as other domestic workers.”5 He also opened a lodging house. By 1930, Blacks were deserting their metropolitan New York churches in droves to attend Baker’s Sayerville retreat center. By some accounts,6 Baker’s movement became racially mixed as early as 1926, when the first T~ihite converts joined. Father Divine, as he caine to be known among his followers, was indicted and convicted as a public nuisance in 1932. However, before he won his appeal, the trial judge who had given him the maximum sentence suddenly died. This incident enhanced Father Divine’s already phenomenal popularity. Gayraud Wilmore documents: He became known as God to his followers, and sermons and addresses in his weekly newspaper The New Day fortified that belief by reiterating the familiar tenet of American spiritualism that God is everywhere, everything, and everyone. There was, however, little that was otherworldly about Father Divine’s ministry. His disciples were estimated from a few thousand to several million Black and white people many of whom he fed, clothed and housed at minimal or no expense to themselves. The mission practiced a form of ascetic love communion in which all things 69 were held. in common, and an extremely rigid morality demanded cleanliness, abstinence from liquor and sex, nonprofanity and good citizen ship. Politically the movement had more significance for ghetto dwellers than either Bishop Robinson’s or Daddy Grace’s churches. Father Divine’s followers supported civil rights and the social welfare of Black people and were urged to help implement “a plan for a righteous government” in which there will be equality for all mankind, with the abolition of ~uch evils as lynching and Jim Crow practices.” Father Divine founded “heavens” or “Peace missions” in a number of Eastern and Midwestern communities. Thousands of people were fed and sheltered in these “heavens.” Divine provided Blacks with dignity and integrity. In a hostile society which treated Blacks as pariahs, “Father” dubbed them “angels.” A contemporary of Father Divine was Bishop Marcerlino Manoel de Garca, “Daddy Grace,” who founded the United House of Prayer for All Peoples. Joseph Washington chronicles: A cook on a Southern railway, he caine under the influence of Holiness and Pentecostal teachings. In 1925 he was “called” to preach, assumed the name “Grace,” and proclaimed himself “bishop.” Bishop Charles Emmanuel Grace created a typical Holiness format for his United House of Prayer for All People, with a difference, “Daddy Grace” is substituted for God and is worshipped as such, exemplified by genuflection and prayer before his picture. 8 Daddy Grace’s movement differed from that led by Father Divine. Father Divine’s Peace Mission benefited Blacks in more tangible ways, such as, assisting Blacks in establishing small businesses, improved physical and mental 70 health among adherents, and the like. Contrariwise,

Daddy Grace was the sole benefactor of his movement. He controlled all monies from offerings and the sale of his

healing power products.

Neither Father Divine or Daddy Grace were the first persons to tap into Black cultural alienation and

disillusionment with traditional orthodoxy. Marcus Garvey and Timothy Drew wed Black nationalism with the indigenous

abhorence of a White God. However, the most recent and

notable historical alternative to traditional theism was

(and is) the Nation of Islam, led by Elijah Muhammad.

Elijah Muhammad was born as Robert Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, in 1897. He was the son of a

Baptist preacher and sharecropper, one of thirteen children.

Poole met W. D. Fard, a former door-to-door peddler, in

Detroit in 1931. Fard had built quite a following among

Blacks, who were, at the time, being hard hit by the depression. Fard claimed to hail from the Holy City of Mecca and declared that his mission was to secure “freedom,

justice, and equality” for Blacks in America. “Fard claimed he was the ‘Supreme Ruler of the Universe’ who had temporarily returned to earth ‘to redeem and return the

Negro to his true religion.’”9 Fard taught his disciples that they were members of the lost tribe of Shabazz, who were stolen from the Afro-Asian continent by White enslavers who caine in the name of Jesus. “Christianity, the prophet 71 taught, was a white man’s religion, a contrivance designed for the enslavement of nonwhite peoples. Wherever Chris tianity had gone, he declared, men have lost their liberty and their freedom.”’° Fard told all Blacks who would listen that Whites were devils, invented by Y&~ub, an evil Black scientist. Salvation was attainable by recovering the tradition of the lost Nation of Islam. According to Fard, it was Islam, not Christianity which was the true religion of Blacks. Poole, who had been renamed Elijah Muhammad by Fard, a name that Fard. himself had used on occasion, became Fard’s most ardent disciple. After Fard’s mysterious disappearance in late 1933 or early 1934, Muhammad assumed the leadership of the Nation of Islam. With Muhammad, the self-styled Messenger of Allah, at its helm, the Lost-Found Nation of Islan spread, establishing temples and missions in almost every major city in this country with a substantial Black populace. It is noteworthy, given the scope of this study, that Muhammad “embraced and, developed a theology which he believed to be consistent with the religion of Islam. The Black Muslims did not seek to restructure Christianity so that it provided a religious expression for Blacks, but totally repudiated Christianity as a tool of oppression and as an ideology that perpetuated Black exclusion.”” The Black Muslims, as the Nation of Islam was called by those outside its membership, offered Blackamericans a 72 Black God and proposed criteria for the establishment of a Black sovereign nation on American soil. Like the earlier Father Divine’s Peace Mission, the Nation of Islam wrought positive results among its followers. In 1974 and 1975 this author did a practicum at the Maryland House of Correction for Men, in Jessup,

Maryland. Even then the most disciplined and proud group of inmates were members of the Nation of Islam. This author

has attended bazaars sponsored by the Nation of Islam and witnessed the self—respect held by those Muslims who had been ex—injnates, pimps, prostitutes, et cetera. Muhammad took those whom society had classified as its dregs, the unchampioned and the disinherited, and told them that they had been lied to and lied upon by “Yakub’s devils.” But Muhammad’s most scathing attack was reserved for the Black Church and Black preachers. According to Elijah Muhammad, Black preachers are “chicken eaters” and “bootlickers.” The so-called Negro clergy, say the Muslims, prostitute themselves to the downtown whites in return for “whatever personal recognition they can get above their followers. North or South it’s the same. If a white preacher exchanges pulpits with a so-called Negro minister once a year on Brotherhood Sunday, the black preacher tells his people the millennium is here.” And as for their heroics during the “sit—ins” staged by black students in the South, the black preacher’s tactics was simply to “put the children out to expose themselves to the brutality of the uncivilized whites, then . . . rush in and ‘lead’ after the fight is over.”12 73 The Nation of Islam’s denunciation of the Black Church and its clerics impacted the way young Blackamericans perceived the Church and made a serious dent in the ranks of organized Black Christianity. C. Eric Lincoln has noted that the constituency of the Nation of Islam is predomi nantly ex-Christian.’3 A number of Muslim ministers are ex-Christian ministers. Even the two most prominent figures in post-Fard Islam, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, are sons of Baptist ministers.

The Nation of Islam’s momentum was checked by organiza tional infighting following the expulsion of Malcom X, then

Muhammad’s chief lieutenant, in 1964. Internecine conflict following the death of Elijah Muhammad issued into a splintering of the organization. The faction led by

Louis Farrakkhan most closely approximates the teachings of “the Messenger of Allah.”

Washington summates the significance of Father Divine,

Daddy Grace, and the Nation of Islam, as it relates to the Blackamerican’s idea of God: Prophet or messiah does not fit well the meaning of Father Divine or Daddy Grace. These men are God to their people, the black God who has come to deliver black people from white rule. • . . God is no longer the God of white people or the God of all people but God is the God of the blacks whom they possess, and who possesses them. As men and members of the community they must put forth effort to realize their destiny, but God is for them; assisting them. Blacks are on the side of God and God is on their side.14

It must be recognized that these movements, and others like 74 them, which offered Blackamericans a palatable alternative to colonialist theism, regardless of how farfetched that alternative may have appeared to outsiders, evolved from the disenchantment of Blacks with traditional orthodoxy, a faith-perspective sullied by blanched definitions and expressed in institutions of oppression. Black theology sprang from the same motive. The efforts of Albert Cleage, James Cone, and others were spurred by an undercurrent of Black disaffection with the mythology of the dominant culture’s faith-interpretation. Without stretching the truth one iota, it can rightly be said that, perhaps through indirection, Black theology came about as Black religious thinkers sought to answer the criticisms leveled at the Black Church by the Nation of Islam and Black militants.15 In spite of the utility of the alternatives to tradi tional theism, the challenge is to move beyond mere window dressing. A cosmetic solution to the dilemma of dissonance which besets the Black Church is, at best, atheological. To paint God black and proclaim that hest identifies with us is not a substantial way of addressing this dilemma. Is the only option left for us the option to create a pantheon? Is each race or tribe or clan to be responsible for the creation of their own deity? Although their conclusions underline their unwillingness to part with the substance of conventional theism, Salley and Behm, does some helpful fingerpointing. 75 Blacks who want to think independently cannot allow White ~Christian” society, which has lied about and to Blacks, to define the Christian faith. The White Americans who have perverted history to exclude their own atrocities and to ignore Black achieve ments also . . . have perverted Christianity. Those Blacks who reject the Christian God as too White and too inseparably united to racist ideology and institutions must have this image destroyed if t~ey are to have an experience with the true God.lb Salley and Behm are fudging on one point. They fall short of openly stating what they are intimating, that is, the death of the God of conventional theology.

Given the particulars, it is accurate to conclude that the crises about God today really points to the end of traditional doctrine and demands that a new start be made.

The classical formulation of the doctrine of God is inoperative. A radical recommencement must be initiated.

Since the White Church has defaulted ontologically, due to its historical endorsement of and partnership with oppressive structures, the oppressed must lead the way toward a transformative theology. Kyle Haselden asserts that the present malaise can be adequately redressed “only through the people whom white Christians have for so long despised, rejected, and abandoned.”17

A Liberating Theism

As I have indicated, we cannot go back to our tradi tional ways of thinking about God. Is it possible then to go forward without the God of orthodoxy? Is our only real 76 alternative consistent with the ruminations of Ronald Gregor Smith? Says Smith:

The word God, which was originally a name, has become so misused, as a battle-cry, as a symbol for a retreat from historical responsibility, as the conclusion of philosophical analysis and as the representation of a private pietistic experience, that we might well decide to get along without this name. For through man’s arbitrariness and hateful ness the name has become so soiled that it some— 18 times seems as though it can never be made clean.

I suggest that we continue to use the name God and redeem it from the dust because the reality of God himerself, as a name, is historical.

The only redemptively significant theology, as talk or discourse about God, is, by definition, liberation theology. This fact becomes even more concrete given the ontological default of colonialist theology. By the way, the default of the White Church is not predicated upon its acceptance or rejection of its position. So then, any valid theology or talk about God, must be liberative. This statement is necessary to the context of our ensuing discussion about God, that is, our presentation of a liberative (not liberal) alternative to traditional theism.

Shubert Ogden has said:

• . . the liberation theologies are characteristi cally lacking in anything that could be called a “theology” in the strict and proper sense of an adequately developed doctrine of God, and even the more properly systematic theological questions of the being and action of God they tend to deal with only incidentally in the course of explicating the meaning of God for us as the gift and demand of freedom. Not surprisingly, therefore, the existing theologies of liberation typically show 77 signs of still being very much under the influence of a metaphysical understanding of God that has played a fateful role in Christian theology. • . . they tend simply to perpetuate uncritically the well-known concept of God in classical metaphysics. 19 Although Ogden fumbles the ball badly in his book The

Reality of God, where he tries, quite unsuccessfully, to formulate a new philosophical theism, his point here is well-founded. Liberation theologians have been heretofore pouring new wine into old wine skins. What is needed is new wine skins, as well as new wine. There are several formative factors that go into the making of theology. Although there is no single source or theologian from whose thought we can extrapolate a transformative theology. Since I am a member of a group which has been marginalized by the dominant culture, I can speak of the factors indigenously without compromising

their catholicity. For example, I am Black, hence, I - cannot speak authoritatively of the Indian American experience. This does not mean, however, that the only theology I can formulate is Black theology. On the contrary,

I am a member of a larger group, the oppressed. Therefore, my “Black” experience has a relational relevance to and with the “Indian” American experience.

The seven formative factors are the Black experience,

Black history, Black culture, revelation, Scripture, tradi tion, and reason. According to Cone, the Black experience

“is existence in a system of white racism.”2° Experience 78 includes ideas, hopes, apprehensions, setbacks, and a whole range of rational and extra-rational convictions forged in the furnace of racism. Black experience presupposes participation in a community exploited, detested, and viewed with suspicion by the dominant culture. The experience which the Black community, corporately and individually, have in America powerfully shapes our theology. Of course, experience is impacted by the strength or weakness of a community’s cultural heritage. Black history, another source of Black theology, refers to the Black community’s past and extends back to the beginnings of slavery. It encompasses the forcible removal of Africans from their home continent, the dehumanization of Blacks by Whites through the centuries, the institutionalization of the dehumanization of Blacks, the de facto adoption of racism as a domestic policy, and how Black people have responded, for better or for worse, to the dominant culture’s unjustness. Black history as a discipline is fragmented and disjunctive primarily because of the common good of the dominant culture, but, it is a crucial source of (and resource for) a credible liberation theology. Black culture, a third source, is the way of life of Black people. No theologian can escape being a partici pant in the intellectual climate of hiser own culture. Liberation theology is (or should be) culturally condi 79 tioned, and, therefore, needs to be rethought as cultural forms change. Black culture includes both historical and contemporary aspects, Unfortunately, the contemporary aspect has been undervalued, Blacks, too, are affected by cybernation and, the prospect of a nuclear future and all that these imply.

Revelation cannot be overlooked as a “proper source” of liberation theology. Revelation exposes us to a dimension of the holy, James Cone identifies God’s revelation with the liberation of Black people. This identification limits the nature, scope, and activity of revelation because what Black people are doing about their liberation aa~ or may not be li~erative, God liberates the oppressed by prompting us to be responsible for our own decisions. God liberates us, perhaps in a cataclysmic— iconoclastic manner, by cha~ing us, through the drama of historical events, to come to grips with the oftentimes solenn fact that we cannot abdicate our stewardship~ That it is up to us~ And, when we accept all that our steward- ship implies, we experience a dimension of the holy~ When we accept our responsibility as authentic persons the

heavens open and the voice of God, who is ahead of us in

bistory~ is heard to say, “This is my beloved daughter/

son in whom I am well pleased.”

Liberation theology must critically engage the witness of Scripture and apprise its merits in light of its 80 intentionality. I agree with J. Davis McCaughey when he states, “The Canon of Holy Scripture constitute a problem and at the same time~, a challenge to the Christian intellectual conscience, the mind of the theologian.”21 The Bible is by no means an infallible witness, as Leon Wright says it is not a “magical talisman,” but it is an undeniable source of liberation. The Scriptures, in its diversity, points to where God is, ahead of us in history. Another source of liberation theology is tradition. Black people, oppressed people, must view tradition in a negatively constructive way. For the disinherited, tradition is God speaking to us from a bygone past under lining the mistakes which we dare not repeat. Finally, liberation theology must be reasonable theology. Too often, in practice, the Black pulpit assigns reason to an ancillary function. Reason helps to give shape and substance to theology. Since these sources are operative (or should be operative) in liberation theology, and theology is, at its center, the logos or the reasoning about theos, it logically follows that through the conduit of theology these sources impact the disinherited’s conception, their idea, of God. A liberation theology informed by these sources will address the question of how we conceive God. At some juncture the oppressed must consciously and deliberately ask and address ~the question, “What sort of 81 reality is Ged?” Our answer will not only help us to think flearly about choices and alternatives we must make, it will help us to choose. This speaks to our practice. 1 Black theology, a liberation theology, which allows for lialectical interplay among the aforestated sources may Lmplicate that flack people must come to know and accept that our destiny is open for us to choose and determine. qe do not have to wait for some extrinsic being to “fik ir ror us. For our purposes, it is necessary to affirm a couple )f points which have heretofore teen presented only by way f inference. First theos—logos concerns the reconstruc tion of the image/concept/idea of God. Neither the biblical Ldea or the creedal formulations of God are of primary Lnterest to us as we seek to engage the idea of God. The nly given with which the theologian works is God, not iblical and creedal conceptions of God. Creeds, dogras, md doctrines are attempts to locate and conc;etize what ye mean when we say the name “God” and they are significant )nly to the extent to which they are successful in doing

30. It is God who is the ultimate point of reference for the theologian. God is the subject matter of theology and biblical and creedal. conceptions are, at best, secondary to and derivative from theology’s subject matter. When :reedal formulas, dogmatic abstractions, doctrinal pro aouncements, and socio—politico—economic expediency 82 supplants God as the subject matter of theology idolatry sets in. When idolatry sets in, the idea of God atrophies. Secondly, our idea of God interprets us, not vice rersa. Though God is not directly and empirically perceivable—— “No one has seen God at any time,” as the 3.utopic gospelist puts it——Godself is present to us and

~nown by us primarily and, basically iii idea, in symbol.

Phere±’ore, the way I image or conceive of God affects my Dosmology and my anthropology, everything I thinI~, feel,

~nd experience. Having affirmed the preceding point, let’s answer the iuestion, “What sort of reality is God?” Of course, I’ve ilready intimated that we cannot construct the idea of ~od from scratch. There are formative factors which Lnforms our idea of God. God is creator. This is not an apostate statement. Phe old anthropomorphic cosmic redemption myth of Genesis ~ave birth to too many misguided doctrines--3riginal sin, the fall, atonement--and promoted misogyny, among other ills. But, for one to assert that God is creator does not mean that one also buys the classical Edenic story. The ~enesis story, despite its weaknesses, broaches part of the truth with its affirmation of God as creator. To attribute

Dreation to God is no less credible than any other pre ~railing theory about how we came to be. I have no idea how

~od created the wor]~d--certainly by fiat--and it really 83 doesn’t make any difference. Hartshorne is on to something when he argues that “God makes things make themselves.”22

Only so does a good parent, a good God, proceed. For the parent or God to do simply all the making is to leave no genuine function for the child to perform. Language supports this. We say that we “make” decisions, resolutions, or attempts, implying that God is not the unilateral maker or decider of literally everything.23 “In the beginning God created” has a legitimate ring to it.

But, to go on to endorse the classical view of God as deus faber, the artificer God, is to lend de facto endorse ment to a mechanistic imagery which perpetuates the myth of God as One from whom the world originates, owes its continuance to, and. will be ended by. Harvey Cox has latched on to a redemptive truth when he asserts that God is “ahead” of humankind in history. Though he clings to much of conventional theology’s debris, Bishop John A. T.

Robinson has said, redemptively:

God is “the beyond” yet “in the midst”——at the heart of the process from the beginning, yet ever ahead, going on before. His is the lure of the Thou drawing out all things to a level of life perpetually beyond the grasp of attaininent.24

God is the creator who calls into being. “Let there be light” is not a command, but a call for clarity, even a call which leads to liberation. God calls humankind from the dust and the dirt. Bishop Robinson continues:

And in the second creation story, not only is man, like everything else, formed out of the dust from the ground, but the link between nature and history is symbolized in God bringing every beast and bird to Adam to be given its name, that is, its 84 significance in terms of purpose. The God who “calls the foundations of the earth and the heavens that they stand forth together” and. “calls for corn and increases it” is the same God who summons Adam to response and responsibility. . . . It is this pattern that Harvey Cox fastens on in making the point that for the Biblical writers the characteristic “place” of God, if we must localize him, is not so much “out there” in space as “ahead” of man in history. God, is the one who goes on before; who challenges Abraham to set forth, not knowing where he is going; who calls to Moses out of the midst of the burning bush, summoning him through the mysticism of nature in the depths of the wilderness to the politics of history in indus trial Egypt, and disclosing his “ultimate” reality in the name which is as much “I will be what I will be” as “I am what I am”; who teaches his people to live as men who must be on their way in the morning; who precedes them in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night • • 25

Though Robinson’s beliefs are in many ways consanguine with traditionalist credenda, the preceding quote is consistent with a proper view of God. God summons us to live up to the full stature of our personhood. Hesh calls us to be

Christ--Roger Christ, Tiwana Christ, Huang Christ, Justo

Christ. God summons us to be hiser annointed ones.

It is safe for the reader to conclude that the God of history, who “makes things make themselves,” is not avail able to us, like some cosmic “bellhop,” when, and where we may wish to make use of himer. God is not going to dispatch an Edenic cherubim with “a flaming sword” flashing back and forth to prevent us from going glumly on our disastrous way. When things go awry it’s not the result of some cosmic duel. Hartshorne closely approximates the truth when he states, “The root of evil, suffering, 85 misfortune, wickedness, is the same as the root of all good, joy, happiness, and that is freedom, decision_making.~26 Enough of using prayer to pass our responsibility on to God. To do so trivializes prayer and leads us to shun and shift responsibilities we must shoulder ourselves. The God who is a meeter of needs and solver of problems has always been no more than a projection of humankind’s wish fantasy or the oppressor’s ignorance of and reckless disregard for the worth of human life. Since Jesus, the man of Nazareth, has been victimized by a curious set of misconceptions and erroneous assumptions, especially regarding his relation to God, it is in order to conclude with a word about him. Jesus was a man who was in touch with God’s vision for humankind. He was a radical who took issue with common convention. John Macquarrie writes; Christianity in what might be termed its raw form has in fact been too frightening for most people, so that its radical and eschatological aspects have been more often than not suppressed. There is some evidence that the evangelists themselves were already toning down some of the more radical teaching of Jesus, so that New Testament scholars are inclined to the opinion that the more radical any teaching of Jesus is, the more authentic it is likely to be. I mentioned already the antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount, and these (or, at least, most of them) seem to be ~beyond ciuestion genuine utterances of Jesus. As the parousia was more delayed, and as Christian theology coalesced more and more with Hellenistic philosophy, the escathological and consequently the radical elements in the Christian faith were increasingly muted. 27 86

The apotheosis of Jesus is partly attributable to the fact that traditionalists have found that it is easier to worship this angry Galilean than to follow him. We find it easier to sing “All Hail the Power” and “The Old Rugged Cross” than to be “salt” and “light.” We’d rather participate in the sentimental of weeping for “a slain savior” than to “strive to enter the strait gate.”

Conclusions

The picture of God this writer has tried to portray is the God, Jesus, the man of Nazareth, taught about.

Though Jesus’ though was subject to cultural emphases, this journeyman preacher saw through the “pea soup” of ritualism and legalism to the God of history, the God who draws with

“bands of love.” Christianity has been reduced to a religion based on Jesus, rather than the religion of Jesus. The encrusted church, even today, preaches a “five-and- dime” gospel that inhibits liberation and denies human freedom. The oppressed are taught not to expect too much of themselves, and to accept themselves as weak and worth less creatures. Since “All things work together for good,” the oppressed are admonished to be content with their lot because God will manipulate history in their favor. God will make everything all right. This gospel of irrespon sibility is even given a face lift in the positive thinking emphasis of religious capitalism. 87

Blackamericans, the disinherited of the Third World, all who are grunting under the yoke of neoracism and neocolonialism, can ill afford to continue to adhere to the tenets of conventional theology. There must be a rewriting of the Black Church’s objectives. We must rehabilitate the meaning of “saving the lost.” Our aim must be liberation. What this writer has suggested in this study by way of direction provides a clue for the construc tion of a liberation theology. Black thinkers must engage, critically, in canonical and metaphysical reflection. The tensions I have attempted to describe in this paper are real and, as such, they are counterproductive and promote disliberation. The failure of conventional theology to be more than a partner of the state underscores

the urgent need for Black thinkers to tailor a theology

that is in sync with that intended by Jesus. Those who frequent our pews must know that God is not “up there” or

“beyond.” God is “ahead” of us and we must get in “hot

pursuit” of God. TOWARD A NEW BEGINNING:

A THEOLOGICAL PRIMER

Prepared by

Michael ‘EM. A.” Bell PRIMER CONTENTS

PAGES

A WORD TO THE READER 90

THE THEOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE BLACK CHURCH 92

IS TRADITIONAL THEOLOGY DISLIBERATING? 99

TOWARD A NEW DIRECTION 100

GLOSSARY 109 A WORD TO THE READER

The purpose of this primer is to introduce to the reader an alternative theology. The route taken to accom plish this end has been carefully charted. Some of the materials introduced will strike you, the reader, as contrary to what you have previously taught or preached.

This requires that the reader try hiser level-best to remain open, viscerally and ultimately, to fresh informa tion, different points of view, and alternative possi— bilities.

This primer has as one of its aims to teach clergy- persons what not to say. It is not a commentary, a resource to be used in sermon building. A further aim of this book is to prime the reader’s theological pump, prompting himer to start asking questions about hiser faith- interpretation. Also, this work is interested in calling the reader’s attention to the Black Church’s reluctance to evaluate its theology.

It should be noted that this book uses inclusive language pronouns that deal fairly with male-female references. These are taken from a booklet by Ben Johnson entitled Skills For Communicating Good News For Daring

Discipleship.’ The words used are: hesh (he/she), hiser

(his/her), hinier (him/her), and himerself (himself/herself). 90 9’

This book is designed specifically for ministers engaged in some aspect of pastoral ministry. A glossary is included to promote continuity. THE THEOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE

BLACK CHURCH

History attests to the commitment of the Black Church to full human liberation. The Black Church was the seedbed of the movement for freedom, justice, and equality. It was and continues to be the one place where those who have been systematically shutout from mainstream Americana are assured that they are indeed “God’s children.” E. Franklin

Frazier affirms~ in his classic The Negro Church In America, that the early Black Church provided Blacks with whatever semblance of cohesion was possible given the context of their fractured and fragmented existence.

The Black Church, ironically, was born of segregation.

Marvin McMickle, speaking at the opening communion service for the 1983~824~ academic year, at Princeton Seminary, was on target historically when he asserted that “there would have been no black church at all, if white Christians had not turned our ancestors away from the doors of their churches.”1 The Christian Church in the United States is indeed a divided house. But this has not always been the case. In August, 1619, the history of Blacks in America began when twenty Africans were sold as indentured servants 92 9:3 to some settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America. These Africans ~nd others who followed fast on their heels were not bereft of religious beliefs prior to their arrival, as some would have us to believe. According to Lerone Bennett, Jr., “Religion, to the African, was life. Every event was suffused with religious significance.”2 With the increase in the worldwide demand for tobacco and cotton, and the accompanying growth of plantation- sized units to meet this demand, the labor problem worsened. Indentured servants had contracts which expired after a specified period. This was unpopular with the rulers of the early American colonies. The attempt to enslave Whites and Indians failed. It was the Blacks who appeared to be the answer to the labor problem. John Hope Franklin gives a couple of reasons why Blacks were chosen to fill the bill: “If they ran away they were easily detected because of their color. If they proved ungovern able they could be chastised with less qualms and with greater severity than in the case of whites, because the Negroes represented heathen people who could not claim the immunities accorded to Christians.” Bennett adds: “At first, religion was the rationalization: Negroes were good material for slavery because they were not Christians. Between 1667 a~id 1682, the basis shifted to race. 94~ Initially, Christianity posed a threat to the exploita tion of Blacks by the colonists. “There was an unwritten law that a Christian could not be held as a slave. Therefore, if blacks were allowed to be converted, they could no longer be slaves.”5 The colonists overcame this hurdle by enlisting the aid of English jurisprudence, “A series of laws between 1667 and 1671 laid down the rule that conversion alone did not lead to release from slavery.

Having overcome the hurdle of Christianity as an obsta cle to slavery, the colonists did not hesitate to turn

Christianity into slavery’s cohort. If it were not for their enslavement, Whites reasoned, the Blacks would be condemned to run around the deepest jungles of darkest

Africa uncivilized and heilbound. Furthermore, Whites pointed to biblical proof texts to justify the oppression of

Blacks and to support the notion of White superiority.

Gayraud S. Wilmore writes: Many White Christians, fortified by distinguished churchmen of the South, claimed that the Black skin of the African was the dire conseçuence of the curse that Noah had invoked upon his youngest son, Ham, when the latter had the indiscretion to look upon the drunken nakedness of his father. Actually, the curse in Genesis 9 was upon Canaan, the son of Ham, who as a result was to become “a servant of servants” to his brothers--Cush, Mixraim, and Phut- and to his uncles, Shem and Japheth. Inasmuch as the curse was spoken to Ham and since the Hebrew word Ham probably meant hot and black, and further, in view of the inclusion of the people of Ethiopia and Egypt among the descendants of Ham (Genesis 10: 6—14), the accepted interpretation of the whites 95 was that the Negro was of Hamitic origin and that his skin color was of God’s punishment because of the sin of Ham.7 Albert Raboteau adds: “Increasingly, slavery was not only accepted as an economic fact of life, but defended as a positive good, sanctified by Scripture and capable of producing a Christian social order based on the observance of mutual duty, slave to master and master to slave.”8 Thusly, White could and did rationalize the enslave ment of an entire race of people by pointing to chapter and verse, quoting what “the Bible says.” “The powers that be are ordained of God.”9 “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.”1° “Remember them which have rule over you.”1’ These and other proof texts were used to advance the myth that slavery and Christianity were compatible, divinely sanctioned; and “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” Having resolved the knotty question of whether or not slavery was consistent with the teachings of Christianity, Whites turned their energies to converting Blacks to the Christian faith. Missionaries frequented plantations preaching a gospel which was intended to make an already oppressed people more demur and teaching a sullied faith perspective aimed at perpetuating Black subjugation. 96 At first, Blacks and Whites attended the same churches.

Haselden reports, “there was integration of Negroes and whites from the beginning of slavery until a year following the Civil War.”12 (Though Haselden’s use of the word “integration” is questionable in this context, his intent is well-taken.) Lest the reader be misled, “we must note that the inclusion of Negroes, both free and slave, in white churches was plainly prudential. As early as 1715 it was thought, and correctly, that an exclusively Negro church might become a center for conspiracy.”3

Given the accuracy of the foregoing, that tension existed between Black and White churchgoers from the very beginning should come as no surprise to even the most casual reader of history. Rather than providing Black churchgoers with a place where they could find surcease from rabid discrimination, the so-called “mixed congregation” endorsed distinctions arose; and they arose first, not between masters and slaves, but between whites and freed men.”4 It was inevitable that the church would become a divided house given these circumstances. There was not one but a number of reasons for the

establishment of the Black Church. Haselden states: Numerous incidents have been recorded which show that the so-called spontaneous and voluntary withdrawal of the Negroes to form their own churches was actually compelled by the discriminations and sub ordinations which the Negroes suffered from white Christians in the integrated churches. The case of Richard Allen, pulled from his knees during prayer and bodily expelled from the St. George 97 Church in Philadelphia; the special partitions and galleries for worshippers of the Negro race, segregation in the time of worship for the different races where the same building had to be used by both. . . . such acts and incidents which were many times duplicated, are proof enough that segregation and discrimination against the Negro had been established as patterns within the Christian churches before the Negro and white churches became separate bodies and long before segregation was adopted and applied as a specific and localized form in secular society.’S Therefore, the segregation of the churches by the with drawal of Black churchgoers was not unconstrained but the result of numerous and increasing embarassments sustained by Blacks on account of their race.

In the late eighteenth century Richard Allen, a

former slave, a respected blacksmith and preacher, with

the help of Absalom Jones, organized the Free African

Society, after having been denied the right to pray in a

section of the St. George Church’s gallery not designated

for Blacks. Soon Jones organized the Bethel Church in

1794. Frazier documents: “The movements begun by Allen

under the name of African societies spread to other

cities where so—called African Methodists Episcopal Churches

were set up.”6 The St. George “walkout” is “commonly

referred to as the beginning of the black church, i.e.,

organized black religion.”7 QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. This section suggests that the theological foundation of the Black Church was “received” from the White Church. What is your assessment of this contention?

2. Given the fact that the Black Church was born of segregation, is it conceivable that the Black Church would have come about without White Church sanctioned racism?

98 IS TRADI TIO NAL THED LOGY DI SLI BERATING?

The faith-perspective of the White or mainstream Church is, for the most part, European theological orthodoxy, which in America is known as fundamentalism or historic orthodoxy.

The God of historic orthodoxy is absolute, all-powerful, all-knowing, holy, the lord of history and stern judge of the world. Traditionalists hold, unyieldingly, to the belief in a God who is somehow “out there” (or “up there” or “in here” or “down there”), extrinsic to, beyond or outside, the givenness of our experience. The White Church is committed to a certain way of thinking about God,

Jesus Christ, sin and salvation, heaven and hell.

With the advent of slavery, the mainstream church increasingly allowed the change in social reality, ushered in by economic expediency, to shape and contour their theology, influencing them to make their religious views conformable with the status quo. There are at least three ways in which the White or dominant culture’s faith perspective became “heretical” under the impact of culturally imposed distortions: (1) weakened ethical content, (2) overstated the passive, sentimental, privatistic, and devotional aspects of the faith, and (~) promoted an anti intellectual bias.

99 100 First, by weakening the ethical content of Christianity the nature of faith corrupted. The redemptive significance of corporate—societal justice was cannibalized by the strongly emphasized “personal responsibility” aspect of the faith. Humankind’s duty to all of humanity was quieted, shifting the focus to the “everyone going to have to answer for himself” morality. Having gutted Nicene orthodoxy of its ethical motif, Whites were freer to relativize values and attribute arid distribute worth, and, by so doing, they redefined reality, even Ultimate reality. God was no longer “Spirit.” Instead, God was an aged White male with long white hair, a long white beard, and menacing white eye brows. The second heresy involved the highlighting of the passive, sentimental, privatistic, and devotional elements. Kyle Haselden writes: The religion extruded by the pressures of the white man’s religious duality was one from which the rigorous virtues of truth and justice were squeezed out and which the warm, tender, lesser merits of church-going, Bible-reading, courtesy, and hospitality remained. The essential balance was disturbed and the resulting heresy, a partial Christianity, enabled the white man to think him self highly religious--as in part he was-- even. though his religion was entirely cut off from his most vicious social sins.’ Haselden further notes: What happens is that the white man cleaves Christian piety into two parts: the strong, virile virtues he applies exclusively to himself; the apparently weak, passive virtures he endorses especially for the Negro. “Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely” belongs to the 1.01 white man; “whatsoever things are of good report” belong to the Negro. The white man takes the active and positive Christian adjectives for himself: nobel, manly, wise, strong, courageous; he recommends the passive and negative Christian adjectives to the Negro: patient, long—suffering, humble, self-effacing, considerate, submissive, childlike, meek.2 The slaves and, after the Civil War, freedpersons were taught to be “meek and lowly like Jesus; he never said a mumbling word.” This emphasis on passivity, obedience, submission, sentimentality and the like is found in the words of the hymns that were sung and that we now sing in the Black Church. We have sung, “Lord, I want to be like

Jesus in a my heart.” And, how was Jesus? He was “gentle and lowly,”~ “obedient unto death,”4 passive,5 and non- threatening.6 This is the Prince of Peace put upon the oppressed by the dominant culture.

Thirdly, questions about the accuracy of the dominant culture’s interpretation of the faith were frustrated by an anti-intellectual bias. Christianity, Blacks were told, was all heart and, sometimes, hands, but, never the head.

The faith versus reason argument was sharpened and promoted.

Almost two hundred years after the St. George’s walk out the White Church continues to cling stubbornly to its heretical stance. But, the question “is traditional theology disliberating?” must be addressed head-on. Though its answer is implied in the preceding, Walter Brueggemann has confronted it in less discreet fashion. He states: 102 White theology has always taught that “Massah knows best,” whether it is we over slaves or God over us. Many writers have recently said we need a theology of change, or more rs~dically, a theology of revolution. White theology is the pure type of antichange and antirevolutionary theology because it is a theology of irresponsibility. It has imaged a world which is eternally ordered, which God has called into being and rules, and into which it is our business to fit. If change must come, it is God’s business and not ours.?

Brueggemann continues:

White theology has by practice and perhaps by design given men low self-esteem. It has kept folks humble and obedient--not feeling too good about themselves--for such a self-image reduces self- assertion. White theology has produced persons who feel most comfortably abdicating: “After all, I’m only human.” In every phase of life, with people of every color,~ this theology reduces persons to “boy” or “nigger. “d

Undeniably, Brueggemann’s observations point to the extent

the White Church has rented the Christian faith and, there

by, actively lobbying against any change in the status duo,

even the liberation of the oppressed.

The White Church limited the scope of the message of

Jesus, the man of Nazareth, rendering it little more than

a narcotic, an opiate designed to induce the oppressed to grin and bear it because “all things work together for good

to them that love God.” It encouraged the disinherited, those who are heirs to a heritage of hurt, to leave it all in the hands of God. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Much of Black Church theology mirrors the tenets of historic orthodoxy. Why do you agree or disagree with this contention? 2. What is there about traditional theology or historic orthodoxy that is disliberative?

3. Can the three heresies brought about by the White Church be rectified? Should they be?

4. If, as this author contends, traditional theology really militates against liberation, what difference does it make to you? Your ministry?

103 TOWARD A NEW DIRECTION

Black Church theology is supplementary; it mirrors the tenants of White theology. The style, symbols, and images

embraced by the Black Church are, at bottom, those spawned by the White Church. This adds to the problem of

inconsistency already present in the Black Church’s embrace ment of a Hellenistically-oriented gospel. Subsequently,

what we are really faced with here is a demand for a fresh start, a new direction. This fresh initiative requires

that we give up certain ways of talking about God.

First, let’s address the question, “What sort of

reality is God?”

God is creator. This is not an apostate statement. The

Genesis story, despite its weaknesses, broaches part of

the truth with its affirmation of God as creator. To

attribute creation to God is no less credible than any

other prevailing theory about how we caine to be. I have

no idea how God created the world--certainly not by command--

and it really doesn’t make any difference. Charles

Hartshorne is onto something when he argues that “God make things make themselves.”

Only so does a good parent, a good God, proceed. For the parent or God to do simply all the making is to leave no genuine function for the child to perform. Language supports this. We say that we

104 105 “make” decisions, resolutions, or attempts, implying that God is not the unilateral maker or decider of literally everything.2 “In the beginning God created” has a legitimate ring to it. But, to go on to endorse the classical view of God as

the absolute monarch who rules the world is to lend de

facto endorsement to an imagery which perpetuates the myth of God as One from whom the world originates, owes its

continuance to, and will be ended by.

God is the creator who calls into being. “Let there be light” is not a command, but a call for clarity, a

call which leads to liberation. God calls humankind from

the dust and the dirt. Bishop John A. T. Robinson has said:

And in the second creation story, not only is man, like everything else, formed out of the dust from the ground, but the link between nature and history is symbolized in God bringing every beast and bird to Adam to be given its name, that is, its signifi cance in terms of purpose. The God who “calls the foundations of the earth and the heavens that they stand forth together” and “calls for the corn and increases it” is the same God who summons Adam to response and responsibility. • . . It is this pattern that Harvey Cox fastens on in making the point that for the Biblical writers the characteristic “place” of God, if we must localize him, is not so much “out there” in space as “ahead” of man in history. God is the one who goes on before; who challenges Abraham to set forth, not knowing where he is going; who calls to Moses out of the midst of the burning bush, summoning him through the myticism of nature in the depths of the wilderness to the politics of history in industrial Egypt, and disclosing his “ultimate” reality in the name which is as much “I will be what I will be” as “I am what I am”; who teaches his people to live as men who must be on their way in the morning; who precedes them in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night • . 106

God. summons us to live up to the full stature of our person hood. Hesh calls us to be Christ--Willie Christ, Tiwana Christ, Alphonse Christ, Rafer Christ, Sinclair Christ.

God summons us to be hiser annointed ones.

It is safe for the reader to conclude that the God of history, who “make things make themselves,” is not avail

able to us, like some cosmic bellhop, when, and where we may wish to make use of himer. Hartshorne closely approximates the truth when he states, “The root of evil,

suffering, misfortune, wickedness, is the same as the root

of all good, joy, happiness, and that is freedom, decision-

making.”4 Enough of using to pass our responsibility on to

God. To do so trivializes prayer and leads us to shun and

shift responsibilities we must shoulder ourselves. The

God who is a meeter of needs and solver of problems has

always been no more than a projection of humankind’s wish fantasy or the oppressor’s ignorance of and reckless

disregard for the worth of human life.

Since Jesus, the man of Nazareth, has been victimized

by a curious set of misconceptions and erroneous assump

tions, especially regarding his relation to God. Jesus

was a man who was in touch with God’s vision for humankind.

He was a radical who took issue with common convention.

John Macciuarrie:

Christianity in what might be termed its raw form has in fact been too frightening for most people, so that its radical and eschatological aspects have been more often than not suppressed. There is some 107 evidence that the evangelists themselves were already toning down some of the more radical teaching of Jesus, so that New Testament scholars are inclined to the opinion that the more radical any teaching of Jesus is, the more authentic it is likely to be. I mentioned already the antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount, and these (or, at least, most of them) seem to be beyond question genuine utterance of Jesus. As the parousia was more delayed, and as Christian theology coalesced more and more with Heilenistic philosophy. The escathological and consequently the radical elements in the Christian faith were increasingly muted.~

Conclusions

The picture of God this writer has tried to portray is the God, Jesus, the man of Nazareth, taught about. Though Jesus’ thought was subject to cultural emphases, this journeyman preacher saw through the “pea soup” of ritualism and legalism to the God of history, the God who draws with “bands of love.” Christianity has been reduced to a religion based on Jesus, rather than the religion of Jesus. The White Church, even today, preaches a “five-and-dime” gospel that inhibits liberation and denies human freedom. The oppressed are taught not to expect too much of themselves, and to accept themselves as weak and worthless creatures. In light of the aforesaid, we must rewrite the Black Church’s objectives. We must rehabilitate the meaning of “saving the lost.” Our aim must be liberation. Black pastors and thinkers must engage in canonical and metaphys ical reflection. Those who frequent the pews must know that God is “ahead” of us and we must get in “hot pursuit” of God. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Is the call for a new direction in the way we think and talk about God needed? Why or why not? 2. Do you consider the proposed introductory perspective about God, given in this section, Christian? 3. How is this alternative perspective more or less liberating than the traditional faith-interpretation? 4. Since our idea of God interprets our view of humankind, will an alternative faith-interpretation make any difference?

108 109

GLOSSARY

Canonical Reflection: the critical study of the Bible as a historical document which recognizes that it (the Bible) is a book about God written by persons who lived in a specific context and were subject to contemporary influences. Disliberating: not liberating; militating against libera tion. Hellenistically—oriented gospel: the Greek dualistic influence which lies at the root of virtually all Western religious thinking, expressed in the Bible in full-blown terms, such as, flesh and spirit, heaven and hell, mortality and immortality. Heretical: departure from the religion of Jesus. Historic Orthodoxy: the fusion of elements of Greek philosophy with religious insights derived from the Hebraic—Christian Scriptures. Orthodoxy includes among its articles the mythological creation drama, the doctrine of original sin, the doctrine of atone ment, and is infiltrated with apocalyptic and gnostic themes. Liberating Theism: the emancipative belief in God which, at once, frees God to be God and liberates the idea of God from the unyielding design of historic orthodoxy. Liberation Theology: theology done from the perspective of the disinherited, those who are heirs to a heritage of hurt. Metaphysical Reflection: the critical study of the idea of God as objective reality. Theology: responsible God—talk. NO TES

CHAPTER ONE

1 Justo Gonzalez and Catherine Gonzalez, Liberation Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), PP. 31-32

2 Rosemary Ruether, Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1972), p. 128.

Cecil Wayne Cone, The Identity Crisis In Black Theology (Nashville: AMEC, 1975), p. 141.

Ibid., p. 142.

Choan-Seng Song, ed., Doing Theology Today (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1976), pp. 34—35.

6 Columbus Salley and Ronald Behiu, What Color Is Your ? (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1981), pp. 9—10.

Kyle Hasleden, Mandate For White Christians (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1966), pp. 49-50.

8 See Harvey Cox’s appraisal of “Redneck Religion” in his book Religion In The Secular City. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

Taken from notes given by Dr. Roberts’ Spring semester 1975 Black Theology class at Howard University.

10 Mervyn Warren, Black Preaching: Truth and Soul (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1977) pp. 2—3.

11 Ibid., p. 1.

110 1.11 12 Leon Wright, “Black Theology or Black Experience,” ournal of Re1i~ious Thought 26 (Summer Supplement 1969): 53.

James Cone, God The Oppressed (New York: Seabury ‘ress, 1975), pp. 8—9.

Ibid., p. 8.

Ibid.

16 Ibid., p. 9.

17 Ibid.

18 William A. Jones, Is God A White Racist? (Garden ~ity, New York: Anchor Books, 1973), p. 67.

19 Ibid., p. 68.

20 See Olin P. Moyd. Redemption In Black Theology. rhis epoch corresponds roughly to Olin P. Moyd’s Formative, ~Iaturation, Expansion-Renaissance, and Passive Protest periods. Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1979.

21 Gonzalez and. Gonzalez, Liberation Preaching, p. 11.

22 Ibid., p. 21.

23 Ben Johnson, Skills For Communicating Good News For Daring Djscipleship (Tucker, Ga.: Lay Renewal Publications, 1978), p. 1.

2L1. The author is aware of the historical differentiation between historic orthodoxy and American fundamentalism. Though the former is largely European and the latter thoroughly American, the contents of both perspectives are for the most part consonant and disliberative. ___ , (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1981),

112 1 Marvin McMickle, “The Ministry of God,” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 5 (1984): 12.

2 Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before The Mayflower (New York: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 26.

3 John Hope Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), p. 72.

Bennett, Before The Mayflower, p. 37.

Columbus Salley arid Ronald Behm, What Color Is Your p. 20.

6 Oscar HandJ..in, Race arid Nationality in American Life, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1957), p. 14.

Kyle Haselden, Maxidate For White Christians, (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1966), p. 37.

8 Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom, pp. 87-88.

Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972), p. 164.

10 Aibert Raboteau, Slave Religion, (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978), p. 152.

Romans 13:1.

12 Colossians 3:22.

13 Hebrews 13:7.

14 Kyle Haselden, The Racial Problem In Christian Perspective (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), p. 24. 113 15 See Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom, p. 162.

16 Haselden, The Racial Problem In Christian Perspec tive, p. 26.

17 Ibid., p. 28.

18 Ibid., p. 30.

19 E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church In America (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), p. 27.

20 Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Black Sects and Cults Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 48.

21 Raboteau, Slave Religion, p. 92.

22 James Washington, “The Origins of Black Evangelicalism and, the Ethical Function of Evangelical Cosmology,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 32 (Winter 1977): 104—105.

23 Washington, Black Sects and Cults, p. 48.

24 Carol V. R. George, Se~re~ated Sabbaths (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 6.

25 Washington, Black Sects and Cults, p. 49.

26 See Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom, p. 162.

27 Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom, pp. 163-164.

28 Washington, Black Sects and Cults, p. 56.

29 Benjamin Mays, The Negro’s God (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 30. llLk

30 See Mays, The Negro’s God, p. 39.

31 See Maya, The Negro’s Go~, p. 59.

32 Maya, The Negro’s God, p. 255.

Ibid.

CHAPTER FOUR

1 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1951—63), 1:3.

2 Revelation 22:19, Revised Standard Version.

Kyle Haselden, Mandate For White Christians Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1966), pp. 39-40.

Ibid, p. 40.

Kyle Haselden, The Racial Problem In Christian Perspective (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), pp. 42-43.

6 Matthew 11:29.

“ Philippians 2~8.

8 I Peter 2:23.

Ibid.

10 Choan-Seng Song, ed., Doing Theolo~~ Today (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1976), pp. 27-28.

11 Choan-Seng Song, ed., Doing Theolog~r Today, pp. 27. 11~5

12 Walter Brueggemarin, In Man We Trust (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1972), p. 101.

Ibid, p. 102.

See Williston Walker. A History 0± the Christian Church. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970.

15 Carl F. H. Henry, ed., Basic Christian Doctrines (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1962), P. 112.

16 Rosemary Ruether, Liberation Theology (New York: Pauljst Press, 1972), p. 26.

17 Don Cupitt, Crisis of Moral Authority (Philadelphia; The Westminster Press, 1972), pp. 98—99.

18 Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), p. 53.

19 Ibid., pp. 52—53.

20 Cupitt, Crisis of Moral Authority, p. 93.

21 Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and. Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New YorkPress, 1984), p. 1.

22 Ibid., p. 1.

23 Ibid., p. 27.

24 Grace M. Jaiitzen, “Do We Need Immortality,” Modern Theology 1 (October 1984): 33.

25 Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p. 35. 116 26 James 1:17, Revised Standard Version.

27 Carl F. H. Henry, ed., asic Christian Doctrines (Grand Rapids, Mjch.: Baker, 1962), p. 25.

28 j• M. Pendleton, Christian Doctrines (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1906), p. 47.

29 Malachi 3:6.

30 Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, pp. 9-10.

31 Inclusive pronoun and italics by author,

32 Cupitt, Crisis of Moral Authority, p. 106.

Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p. 18.

34 Ibid., p. 25.

John B. Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology (Philadelphia: Westmir~ter Press, 1976), p. 53.

36 Harvey G. Cox, God’s Revolution and Man’s Responsi bility (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson, 1965), p. 39.

Harvey G. Cox, On Not Leaving It To The Snake (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964), p. ix.

38 Howard Thurman interpretation of Paul informs this author’s appraisal of the apostle. See Thurman’s classic Jesus and the Disinherited. Nashville: Abingdon, 1949.

39 Cobb and Griffin, Process Theology, pp. 57-58. 40 Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p. 27. 117 41 Leon Wright, From Cult To Cosmos: Can Jesus Be Saved? (Pelatunia, California: Omega Books, 1978), p. 14.

42 W. A. Criswell, Great Doctrines Of The Bible, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1982), p. 199.

Ibid., p. 200.

4- Don Cupitt, The Debate About Christ (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1979), p. 80.

CHAPTER FIVE

1 Choan-Seng Song, ed., Doing Theology Today (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1976), pp. 34—41.

2 Ibid., p. 36.

Columbus Sailey and Ronald Behm, What Color Is Your God? (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1981), p. 76.

Ibid., p. 72.

Joseph Washington, Jr., Black Sects and Cults (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 124.

6 John Hope Franklin and Joseph Washington disagree on the date on which the first white followers began joining Father Divine’s movement.

Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 215—216~

8 Joseph Washington, Jr., Black Sects and Cults, p. 127.

Bradford Chambers, Chronicles of Black Protest (New York: Mentor, 1968), p. 201. 118 10 C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), p. xxv.

Salley and Behm, What Color Is Your God?, p. 74.

12 C. Eric Loncoln, The Black Muslims, p. 82.

13 See Lincoln, The Black Muslims, p. 28.

Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Black Sects and Cults, p. 16.

See Salley arid Behm, What Color Is Your G~?, pp. 74—75.

16 Sailey and Behm, What Color Is Your God?, pp. 82-83.

17 Kyle Haselden, Mandate For White Christians (Richmond, Va.: Joh.n Knox Press, 1966), p. 23.

18 Ronald Gregor Smith, The Doctrine of God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970), p. 160.

19 Shubert Ogden, Faith and Freedom (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), pp. 71-72.

20 James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970), p. 160.

21 Daniel T. Jenkins, ed., The Scope of Theology (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1965), p. 16.

22 Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York, 1984), p. 73.

23 Ibid. I. 19

24 John A. T. Robinson, Exploration into G~ (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 108.

25 Ibid., pp. 109—110.

1 ., p.

27 John Macquarrie, Thinking About God ~ New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 65. NO TES

PRIMER

A ~ RD TO THE READER

1 Ban Johnson, Skills For Communicating Good News For Daring Discipleship (Tucker, Ga.: Lay Renewal Publications, 1978).

THE THEOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF THE BLACK CHURCH

1 Marvin McMickle, “The Ministry of God,” The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 5 (1984): 12.

2 Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before The Mayflower (New York: Penguin Books, 1964), P. 26.

John Hope Franklin, From Slavery To Freedom (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), p. 72.

Bennett, Before The Mayflower, P. 37.

Columbus Salley and Ronald Behm, What Color Is Your God? (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1981), p. 20.

6 Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 19~57), p. 14.

~ Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972), p. 164.

8 Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), P. 152.

Romans 13:1. 120 121

Colossians 3:22.

Hebrews 13:7.

12 Kyle Haselden, The Racial Problem In Christian Perspective (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), p. 24.

13 Ibid., p. 26.

Ibid., p. 28.

15 Ibid., p. 30.

16 E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church In America (New York: Schocken Books, 1963), p. 27.

17 Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Black Sects and Cults (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 48.

IS TRADITIONAL TH~ LOGY DI SLI BERATING?

1 Kyle Haselden, Mandate For White Christians (Rich mond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1966), p. 40.

2 Kyle Haselden, The Racial Problem In Christian Perspective (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), pp. 42-43.

Matthew 11:29.

Phi.lippians 2:8.

-~ I Peter 2:23.

6 Ibid. 1.22

Walter Brueggeman, In Man We Trust (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1972), p. 101.

8 Ibid., p. 102.

TOWARD A NEW DIRECTION

1 Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York, 1984), p. 73.

2 Ibid.

John A. T. Robinson, Exploration into God (Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 108.

Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p. 18.

5 John Macquarrie, Thinking About God (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 65. ______•______AGodTheBlackofSeculartheTheologyOppressed.City. of NewLiberation.NewYork:York:The Philadelphia:MacmillanSeabury

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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