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Black Theology of Liberation and the Impact of Womanist Theology

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Black Theology of Liberation and the Impact of Womanist Theology CHAPTER ONE Black Theology of Liberation and the Impact of Womanist Theology Black theology of liberation means thinking about how the spirit of liberation works with poor black folk spiritually and materially, individ- ually and collectively, and privately and publicly. The foundation for black theology has always existed whenever and wherever God has chosen to colabor with the poor for justice. Moreover, black theology analyzes specific events and times when God gives communities at the bottom of society the freedom to choose life when they live as full human beings. And black theology presupposes that working people and the poor possess an active faith that inspires them to practice freedom as a major definition of what it means to be a full human being. In the last analysis, there exists a hope among justice-minded people that the disproportion- ate amount of white power on earth and the suffering of oppressed people represent finite phases on the journey toward a healthy and healed human D. N. Hopkins, Heart and Head © Dwight N. Hopkins 2002 30 HEART AND HEAD community. Another way of putting this is: Storm clouds might gather at the midnight hour, but joy comes in the morning. Black theology started mainly with Christian pastors, who were convinced that God’s gift of liberation was present both inside and outside of the African American church. In fact, they believed that the revelation of God’s love for the least in every society had no institutional boundaries. To construct their contemporary statements on the God–human efforts for human freedom, the founders of black theology drew on a long tradition in black religion in North America. The major model came from the slavery period. Nat Turner, a Baptist preacher, heard voices from the spirit of liberation that led him to use Christianity for insurrection against the slave system in Virginia in the year 1831. Harriet Tubman left enslavement on a Maryland plantation and walked to freedom in the North. But the spirit of liberation compelled her to return many times to the enslaved South in order to free other slaves. Because of these successful secret acts, she is hailed as the Moses of the Underground Railroad (that is, the clandestine paths from the slave South to the North and Canada). In the nineteenth century, the African Methodist Episcopal Church bishop Henry McNeil Turner proclaimed that God was a Negro. And in 1923, Marcus Garvey built a six-million- member organization in his Universal Negro Improvement Association and preached that God and the Madonna were both black. Contemporary black theology began with the formation of the ad hoc National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC) in the summer of 1966, specifically with the publication of their “Black Power State- ment” in the New York Times (July 31, 1966). A month earlier, in June of 1966, the black power challenge was issued from black students in the civil rights movement. For African American Christians, the question was immediate and clear: Is it possible to be black and Christian? Could Black Theology of Liberation and the Impact of Womanist Theology 31 the gospel of Jesus Christ affirm that black people should possess power as well as a strong sense of their cultural roots? This first stage of black theology included primarily radical black clergy who were connected to churches and community movements for justice. They also debated theological issues with their white counterparts and mapped out aspects of a beginning black theology. In the specific context of Christianity, the NCNC stated that black power and black consciousness revealed the presence of Jesus Christ the Liberator. Furthermore, they analyzed how the essence of Christianity was deliver- ance of and freedom for the oppressed on earth. The formation of the NCNC in 1966 marked stage 1 of black theology, in which African American clergy, administrators, and educators attempted to separate the theological reflection and practice of black religion from that of the conservative and liberal theologies of the white churches. Black theology began as a criticism both of white conservative theology’s rejection of the role of the black church in the civil rights movement and of white liberal theology’s denial of the relation between black religion and black power. Black theology put forth liberation of the oppressed as the key thread throughout the Christian gospel. For the creators of contemporary black theology, the good news of Jesus Christ was not neutral; Christianity concerned power—those with it and those without. Stage 2 of black theology began in 1970, with the creation of the Society for the Study of Black Religion. Black theology became an academic discipline in graduate schools, where black religious scholars emphasized religious issues among themselves. By this time, more African American professors had been allowed into divinity schools and seminaries. They struggled over issues such as the relation between liberation and reconciliation, God’s goodness and human suffering, African religion and black theology, and the spontaneous faith expres- 32 HEART AND HEAD sions of African American people versus the theological systems of white graduate schools. More discussion took place about the non-Christian examples and movements that also represented black theology. In brief, God’s liberation for the least in society showed itself through Jesus the Christ (for Christians). But this same spirit also appeared wherever liberation took place for oppressed people suffering internal, spiritual pain and external, structural exploitation. Although black theology turned more toward an academic emphasis in this phase, various historic black church hierarchies also began to respond favorably to different doc- trines of the theology. Stage 3, in the mid-1970s, gave birth to a new organization called the Black Theology Project (1975)—made up of church persons, community activists, and scholars—with a strong connection between African Americans and the Third World. The broad range of participants in this new group reflected black theology’s turn toward liberation theologies in the Third World and a brief look at forms of African socialism, the day-to-day survival issues in the black community, black theology’s relation to the African American church, and the importance of feminism and Marxism. The fourth and current stage started in the early 1980s when the first generation began to produce doctoral students. This period includes new voices concerned with both Christian and non-Christian aspects of black life, especially African indigenous religions, modified African religious practices in the Caribbean and Latin America, black Islam, and most strikingly, the cutting-edge challenge of womanists. These black female religious scholars have pressed for a holistic black theology that integrates race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ecological analyses. Womanists also have shown the necessity of doing black theology from such innovative sources as African American fiction and women’s roles Black Theology of Liberation and the Impact of Womanist Theology 33 in the Bible. Furthermore, this fourth stage is marked by more pastors and professors studying and preaching black theology. THE CONSEQUENCES OF BLACK THEOLOGY Method in theology responds to the question: How do people arrive at answers in their talk about and practice with God among the poor? How do they come to conclusions about relations among God, humanity, and the world? What sources are their starting point; what are their normative presuppositions; and what are the consequences of their theology? As a liberation theology, black theology is a systematic and constructive movement arising from the reality of God’s emancipating power that exists in all parts of life. God is present in all sources or aspects of black existence, especially that of the poor. The Bible presents an abundance of stories about human tribulations and triumphs. These sacred tales enrich immensely black theology’s creativity. Today’s poor African Americans have a parallel message of oppressed conditions and struggle for freedom to that of stories in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The Hebrew scriptures reveal Yahweh compassionately hearing and seeing the dire difficulties faced and experi- enced by the bottom of society, in this case, the Hebrew slaves. When people living in a system of poverty today read the story of enslaved Hebrew workers and their relationship to a liberator God, they can see that they are not alone in their cruel predicament in contemporary America. The exodus story offers a picture of a similar people who suffered at the hands of brutal taskmasters; were accused falsely; were pursued by forces of prejudice; suffered through a wilderness experience; went through periods of anxiety, fear, and doubt about the future; at times longed for a return to their former status in an inhuman system; argued with their leaders; and yet doggedly pursued the way to freedom. 34 HEART AND HEAD Moreover, the African American poor, reading the Hebrew scriptures from their location on the underside of American society, discover a whole new world different from the dominating Christianity and theology of mainstream American believers. The exodus story does not end with harsh difficulties. On the contrary, the hope of deliverance cancels out the pain and energizes today’s poor to keep on keeping on. The certainty of victory, witnessed in the Hebrew scriptures, empowers the poor in the midst of their deepest self-doubt. Likewise, the black poor bring their own life issues to the stories in the Christian scriptures. And Jesus meets and greets them as their liberator, the one who can perform miracles—turning the impossible into the possible. The lowly birth of Jesus, his singular purpose to be with, struggle with, and set free the oppressed; his constant harassment by the official authorities who questioned his claims to usher in a new society for the least in his day; his eventual death sanctioned by government officials and the police; and his final triumph of resurrection all bring hope, a sense of possibilities, and power for the poor.
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