Wayward Christians, Worldly Scriptures
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Wayward Christians, Worldly Scriptures: Disarticulating Christianities in the Black Atlantic Public Sphere by Joseph Lennis Tucker Edmonds Program in Religion Duke University Date: Approved: Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Supervisor J. Kameron Carter Willie Jennings Ken Surin Walter Mignolo Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 ABSTRACT Wayward Christians, Worldly Scriptures: Disarticulating Christianities in the Black Atlantic Public Sphere by Joseph Lennis Tucker Edmonds Program in Religion Duke University Date: Approved: Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Supervisor J. Kameron Carter Willie Jennings Ken Surin Walter Mignolo An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program in Religion in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Copyright by Joseph Tucker Edmonds 2013 Abstract This dissertation will engage in a historical-critical encounter with a peculiar subset of lived Christian traditions in the black Atlantic world, and the ways in which black theology as a disciplinary formation has only partly included these competing constructions of Christianity in their account of marginalized and marooned peoples. This project will do three things. First it will explore theoretically the construction of a black Atlantic world and re-establish a genealogy of lived Christian traditions in the black Atlantic world that takes seriously a set of movements emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century (primarily 1915-1955). These movements unsettled the monolithic depiction of the black church as western and primarily connected to a European or Euro-American theological tradition. The movements also help us to rethink the black Atlantic sphere as not simply the dispersion of African bodies to regions predominately bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the resulting demographic transformation of these new world spaces, but more appropriately as the collection of spaces (often exceeding the regions bordering the Atlantic) in which black cultures have been contested, shaped, and informed by the legacies of enslavement, colonialism, and capitalism/modernity. It is my contention that by using the lenses of the black Atlantic and scripturalizing to return to this important archive of black Atlantic religious traditions we not only have access to the variety of black Christian experiences in a transnational frame, but we are able to redefine the scope of black theology and more fully engage the complex performances of black religious traditions in the public sphere. iv Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to the women who made this possible: Gail Edmonds, Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, and Zora Tucker Edmonds v Contents Abstract iv Dedication v 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Theorizing Christianity in the Black Atlantic 4 1.2 Re-visioning Black Theology as “Trans-Theological” 7 1.3 A Critical Re-Appraisal of Alternative Christianities 12 1.4 A Way Forward 16 1.5 Thinking Globally 22 1.6 Transnational and World Systems Analysis 23 1.7 Transnational and Empire 24 1.8 Transnational and Cultural Anthropology 25 1.9 1884, Black Internationalism, and the Practice of Diaspora 28 2. Chapter 2 32 2.1 Rethinking Black Theology 32 2.2 Black Womanist Intervention 40 2.3 From Post-Liberation to Post-Modern 45 3. Chapter 3 58 3.1 Introduction 58 3.2 Inside the Logic of Coloniality 62 3.3 Re-engaging the Archive 66 3.4 Coloniality and the Production of Alternative Christianities 70 vi 3.5 Enchantment Intensified 74 3.6 Africa as Subject 78 3.7 Dark Continents 82 3.8 Reading Africa, Africana Scripturalizing 86 4. Chapter 4 88 4.1 Black Prophets and the Creation of Alternative Publics 88 4.2 Father Divine and the Black International Public 90 4.3 Transnational Brotherhoods 99 4.4 Brotherhood and Revelation 103 4.5 Brotherhood and the African Christianities 110 4.6 Brotherhood and the Black International Public 114 5. Chapter 5 119 5.1 Shifting Allegiances in the Midst of Darkness 119 5.2 Reading Darkness, Reading Hybridity 124 5.3 The Future of Africana Christianities and Black Theology 127 5.4 Scripturalizing and Africana Christian Publics 129 Bibliography 131 Biography 136 vii Chapter 1 “If this option seems to separate them from the Christian community, it is because many Christians, intent on domesticating the Good news, see them as wayward and perhaps even dangerous.”1 Introduction This dissertation will engage in a historical-critical encounter with a peculiar subset of lived Christian traditions in the black Atlantic world, and the ways in which black theology as a disciplinary formation has only partly included these competing constructions of Christianity in their account of marginalized and marooned peoples. This project will do three things. First it will explore theoretically the construction of a black Atlantic world and re-establish a genealogy of lived Christian traditions in the black Atlantic world that takes seriously a set of movements emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century (primarily 1915-1955). These movements unsettled the monolithic depiction of the black church as western and primarily connected to a European or Euro-American theological tradition. The movements also help us to rethink the black Atlantic sphere as not simply the dispersion of African bodies to regions predominately bordering the Atlantic Ocean and the resulting demographic transformation of these new world spaces, but more appropriately as the collection of spaces (often exceeding the regions bordering the Atlantic) in which black cultures have been contested, shaped, and informed by the legacies of enslavement, colonialism, and capitalism/modernity. Therefore, this initial section will attend to the construction of a 1 Gustavo Gutierrez,́ A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, N.Y.,: Orbis Books, 1973), 117. 1 black Atlantic public sphere beginning with the Berlin Conference (1884) and the failure of Reconstruction in the United States and reaching its greatest intensity just prior to the Second World War. As its second move, the dissertation will argue that these black Atlantic Christian traditions consist of processes of reading and theorizing sacred scriptures in a transatlantic and mobile world that should be understood as a theological endeavor invested in rethinking scripture/canon, race, and citizenship. Finally, I will use a historical and theological read of the Aladura Church movement of Nigeria and Father Divine of the United States to argue for a black theological endeavor that takes seriously Brent Hayes Edwards’ construct of “disarticulating”2 and Vincent Wimbush’s understanding of “scripturalizing.”3 Both disarticulating, as the process by which discourses are produced, discarded and reformulated in public sphere, and scripturalizing, the creation of meaningful social and theological worlds in the form of sacred texts, ideas, and scriptures, will function as the theoretical ground to critically and theologically engage the process by which God has been and is being made visible in black Atlantic spaces. It is my contention that by using the lenses of the black Atlantic and scripturalizing to return to this important archive of black Atlantic religious traditions we not only have access to the variety of black Christian experiences in a transnational frame, but we are able to redefine the scope of black theology and more fully engage the complex performances of black religious traditions in the public sphere. In reconfiguring the very ground of black theological thought and expanding its method to include a more expansive account of black religious discourse, it is important to return to Charles Long and James Cone to establish the parameters for such a 2 Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora : Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 3-36. 3 Vincent L. Wimbush and Rosamond C. Rodman, African Americans and the Bible : Sacred Texts and Social Textures (New York: Continuum, 2000), 4. 2 conversation.4 5 It is their attention to black particularity that is located in discrete geo- political moments and spaces that ultimately created and continues to sustain the impetus to return to the archive of black religious experience. Black theology’s primary interests have been Christian African American bodies and the construction of religious and racial identities within the confines of the United States. Additionally, black theology has traditionally endeavored to engage black religious identities from categories made visible by normative theology6. Cone in his earliest theological account and other theorists who have engaged in the epistemological project called black theology have been concerned with the resituating and re-contextualizing of dominant theological categories and doctrinal concerns to account for black existence.7 However, the conceptual and theoretical capacity of theology and ecclesial doctrine do not fully account for the religious imaginaries or even the Christian imaginaries of African Americans. Charles Long suggests in Significations that opaque or race-based theologies must “deconstruct” theology and more explicitly challenge a theoretical frame that was not designed to account for religious variety especially variety amongst dark and marginalized bodies. He responds in light of the theological constraints