Is there a place for Black Liberation Theology? Part 2

There are six parts that you can watch on youtube.

About a week ago I had the opportunity to see the first half of Powernomics. Now this prove to be very disturbing to me for a few reasons:

1. I began to see the systemtic hatred that has been dumped upon blacks.
2. I really saw the gap between the opportunities for blacks and whites.
3. I saw the intentionality to keep blacks in a poverty stricken environment.

From these three points, I had to wrestle with if there was a need for Black Theology.  Now I came to some conclusion about my racist thoughts a while back in a post, The Done And Unseen. I truly did not think that my white brothers and sisters needed Christ. Now some of you may think that is silly or inane but I was dead serious. I had never share the Gospel with a white person because I didn’t think that they really needed a savior. I has experienced racism on a job and job interview so I understood that it was live and well. I understood that there were more opportunity, at least my mind, for whites looking for jobs than blacks.  From this I unknowingly viewed the Scriptures through the eyes of black culture and not to mention the only people that really engage me on the street were the Black Muslims.  They had a better integrated faith than any Christian that I had meet during that time. They lived what they believed and know it top to bottom. And they appealed to the black man. Eric Redmond gives 4 points that sum up the attraction for black brothers to the Nation of Islam,

• You have heard the leaders of local mosques be far more vocal on political issues that matter to you and to the majority of African Americans.
• You see drug dealers being run out of neighborhoods by the members of the local mosque, and you are appreciative.
• You are grateful for the cleanliness and productivity of young men you see selling bean pies and The Final Call as entrepreneurs.
• You have expereinced the brotherhood of the Nation behind bars. (Where are all the Brothers?, Eric Redmond pg.49)

The Christian church negligence to address some of the very ills that taint the clack community presents a disconnect to the faith. Whether you agree with Black Liberation Theology (BLT) or not it addresses the very same ills that plague the community. It presents Christ as a liberated to the oppressed from the hands of white supremacist. It calls for the liberated i.e. Jesus, to stand on the side of the oppressed and fight for their rights and honor.   BLT supposedly gives a sense of hope to those caught in the place of oppression.  James Cone asserts,

“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.” ( Black Theology of Liberation, James Cone pg. 27)

” … liberation is not a human possession but a divine gift of freedom to those who struggle in faith against violence and oppression. Liberation is not an object but the projectof freedom wherein the oppressed realize that their fight for freedom is a divine right of creation.” (God of the Oppressed, James Cone pg. 138)

“Black people who have been humiliated and oppressed by the structures of White society six days of the week gather together each Sunday morning in order to experience another definition of their humanity.” (Speaking the Truth, James Cone)

Cone’s presentation is a one of  a God who at all cost defends his own primarily based upon their race. The connecting factor with God is not due to his salvific nature but to his “I got your back  mentality.” God is out to help those oppressed, the blacks, with a his mighty hand. I just have one problem………..catch me later.

Top 5 Lyrics of the Christian Hip Hop scene:Fifth Place Timonty Brindle

 

Fruit Inspection

Chorus
Killing Sin is not a prescription of how to be forgiven.It’s a description of the Christian who is forgiven by trusting in the risen Christ who took our wrath and affliction.
Killing Sin is not a prescription of how to be forgiven but it’s a description of the Christian who is forgiven and the Spirit now convicts them to put off and kill their sick sin

It’s so strange how so many folks claim they’re born again when their lives are showing no change. Listen while I’m spitting, if you go about your sinning without conviction you should doubt  your christian. The devil tricks people that they’re saved when they’re sleeping in their grave still to evil they’re a slave. So examine yourself are you in the Faith or are you just a slave to sin’s glamour and wealth because you seek finer things and seem fond of sin but please read 1 John 3:9 and 10 because it’s a warning. It shows if you’re a fraud and that this is impossible if you’ve been born of God to live habitually sinful. It least hear it from Christ if you don’t wanna listen to Brindle. Please understand this – Jesus demands it. Those who really love him will keep his commandments.

I’m a make this as basic as can be. They say a saved saint is like a tree. Since their faith is in Christ, their root’s in the soil. So they’re saved for life and their fruit isn’t spoil. So it makes since that if the root is alive, the dead branches fall off but their fruits gonna thrive. But if there’s no evidence of a changed life, sin’s a claimed price so you’re still dead in sin. So, Jesus is Lord your lips confess, but killing sin is that confession’s litmus test. If perhaps the truth is that you’re lacking proof with absent fruit, the axe is at the root.So, let’s be specific. You say, “But God knows my heart.” Yeah, He knows that it’s desperately wicked. So, you can repent and accept the truth dude or else when you meet Christ hear, “I never knew you.” So let’s start from the top-Your heart is a rock. You must trust Christ’s death for your charges to drop.

So repent pretenders and present your members to Him who does contenders like fender benders. I ain’t saying that I’m flawless from sin. I’m saying when I fall I go to the cross and repent. And just because we believe in eternal security don’t mean we’re not concerned with personal purity because those who’ve been elected, chosen and predestined won’t rest till the day our souls have been perfected. So we’ll work out our salvation with fear and trembling but give God the glory knowing it’s His spirit’s rendering.

Is there a place for Black Liberation Theology? Part 1

As I Rethink Church in Chill Mode, I continue to look at the presentation of the Gospel through many different context and viewpoints. Though always filtered through the cross, I find myself gazing back at the same question, “How does God really view the struggle of blacks in America?” Some would venture out to compare the children of Egypt paradigmatically with the blacks in America. As they suffered God rewarded them eventually with a land flowing with milk and honey thus he will bless us with our 40 acres and a mule.  This would supposedly compensate for the free labor that was gained for the wealthy in America. This would allow blacks to obtain a substantial foothold upon the economic power structure in America.

Though I am not a big advocate of mixing church and money it is impossible not too. Whether I like it or not, for the blacks in America, the church and the barbershop, has been the only organizations that have endured the test of time in the black community.  The church became the institution in the black community in which all things reconnected back to for social justice.  The pastor was the voice of justice and a visionary of strength. According to W.E.B. Du Bois the black preacher on the plantation

” found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the Unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing, disappointment, and resentment of a stolen oppressed people.

In a utopian society where racism would be null and void, a statement like that of Du Bois would not be an essential truth. But due to a white supremacist social system that we have in America, we find this is a norm but covered in a different context.  In contrast Lincoln and Mamiya writes in Black Church in the African American Experience write,

 ”The black Christians who formed the historic black church also knew implicitly that their understanding of Christianity , which was premised on the rock of antiracial discrimination, was more authentic than the Christianity practiced in the white churches.”

Pre and Post-Civil War exposition of the scriptures placed blacks in position that categorized them as slaves. The Gospel was presented as a handcuff to blacks that rendered them prime recipients of enslavement and was considered religious empowerment for whites. Thus prolonging the myth that whites were superior to blacks which entitled them to enslave man.  J. Derrida writes,

 

” A white mythology which assembles and reflects Western culture: the white man takes his own mythology (that is Indo-European mythology), his logos— that is the mythos of his idiom, for the universal form of that which it is still his inescapable desire to call Reason.”

 

From this context, we get view of scripture slanted toward elitism instead of being center upon Christ. I would even declare that as strong of a presentation that The Reformation brings to the table it is still centered in a culture predicated toward whiteness. Thus you get reformers i.e. Jonathan Edwards- who could not see the error of owning slaves though they preached great expository messages.

 

When I look at Black Liberation Theology, I see a theology laden with the promise that God will protect the oppressed. As James Cone (Black Theology, Black Power), wrestles between the non violent approach of King while simultaneously embracing the by any means necessary stance of Malcolm X. Both of these men fighting for the social justice of blacks were representatives of a community of people that were treated inhumane and with disrespect. Cone states,

 

“Cone says black theology is the religious counterpart of black power.” Black Theology is the theological arm of Black Power, and Black Power is the political arm of Black Theology.” And, “while Black Power focuses on the political, social, and economic condition of black people, Black Theology puts black identity in a theological context.”

 

Cone’s presentation of the Gospel is interesting and speaks boldly to the ills that have amassed against blacks. His engagement with the struggle of blacks juxtaposed with the scriptures paint a picture that can presumably bring accountability to the white establishment for the conditions of the black community.

 

The question still looms whether or not this gives acceptance to the scripture being viewed through the lens of black theology.  

Rethinking Church in Chill Mode

I was musing through the Ephesians 1-3 today and really began to reverberate the tone of Paul. His tone is not one of critical analysis but one “chopping it up” with some of his fellow members of the body of Christ. His primary focus was not to get them into to church but to display the grace of God with such boisterousness that the average would wonder in amazement. Though at times he would address the body of Christ with instruction it was still filtered through love. As I walked with Paul through Ephesus, it bears a resemblance to what I see here today. As Ephesus dealt with there cults and paganist organization so do we in our times. But we refer to a lot of them as houses of God.

Reading Matthew Patton’s, My Evangelical Bailout Plan, opened my thoughts to some of the mishaps in the church that we overlook. He gives some interesting point to bring about change in the body of Christ:

1. We need to reform.
2. We need to be our own spokespeople.
3. People simply need to be discipled.
4. There needs to be a better ordination process within Evangelicalism.
5. Denominations and traditions need to recognize the centrality of the Person and Work of Christ.
6. There needs to be more focus on semi-official Evangelical para-Evangelical ministries.
7. We need to quit being so scared of becoming institutionalized.

His point brings reality that the church is failing due to the fact that it has failed to see that it is failing. The church has failed to take the responsibility that it has not lived up to the creed that was set by the Apostles and the saints of old. We have not allowed our theology to governed us to the point that we have caused major shifts in the motives of society. J. I. Packer, makes a remarkable statement about theology and evangelism that I think bears repeating;

“Evangelism and theology for the most part go separate ways, and the result is great loss for both. When theology is not held on course by the demands of evangelistic communication, it grows abstract and speculative, wayward in method, theoretical in interest and irresponsible in stance. When evangelism is not fertilized, fed and controlled by theology, it becomes a stylized performance seeking its effect through manipulative skills rather than the power of vision and the force of truth. Both theology and evangelism are then, in one important sense, unreal, false to their own God-given nature; for all true theology has an evangelistic thrust, and all true evangelism is theology in action.”

Nestled in this statement is the crux of the faith that Paul was able to display before others. Whether in Ephesus, Corinth or Rome he managed to always fuse the two to bring about change through the Gospel. We have gotten so far off track that we are making church into a “spiritual social club with fringe benefits.” Paul tells us what the church is in Ephesians 1:22-23, “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”

So I wonder what would happen if we were to really implement the priesthood of the believers into the movement of what we call church in the West.

The Effectiveness of Being Indigenous to the Culture

The Ambassador writes,” The Thesis follows an Isaiah 6 pattern.  There Isaiah lumps himself in with the unclean people of society, but God cleanses him.  Then God announces that He is looking for someone that He can send to the sinful society, And out of gratitude and inner zeal, Isaiah requests to be the ambassador sent to his people.  What you then have is the cleaned version going to the unclean version to proclaim the way to be cleansed.”[1] This statement captures the life of what it means to be indigenous to a culture while trying to transmit the gospel simultaneously. The goal is to reflect more of the one who sent you in comparison to your countrymen or friends seeing you as one of them. The goal is to use the information that you have and then contextualize that into what the culture understands. 

One that is indigenous to the Hip Hop culture will find that the culture itself is so diverse that it brings with it constant imbedded difficulties. The Hip Hop culture is a diverse group because it transcends every culture and syntheses itself with most religious groups. This adds to the dilemma of trying to infiltrate or penetrate as opposed to destroying it all together. Because it has the ability to transform itself the culture is always finding opportunity to reinvent itself. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson writes, “there’s an intermingling and cooperation among many ethnicities in hip hop that bring them together in ways other cultures and musical movements didn’t.” [2] Because of its diverse nature Hip Hop can thus transform or synthesize with any culture it chooses. This is what brings forth the imbedded difficulties because now you are force to deal with cultures inside of cultures.

We must then attempt to penetrate Hip Hop by subverting the attention from the culture itself by placing emphasis upon the greater object, the Kingdom of God. Richard Niebuhr writes,  ” So in Christian ethics we may endeavor to understand how teleological striving after vision or kingdom of God comes to expression in individual men, groups, or movements.”[3] Thomas White explains the teleological approach to ethics:

“A teleological outlook is particularly appealing because it takes a pragmatic, common-sense, even unphilosophical approach to ethics. Simply put, teleological thinkers claim that the moral character of actions depends on the simple, practical matter of the extent to which actions actually help or hurt people. Actions that produce more benefits than harm are “right”; those that don’t are “wrong.”[4]

 

This causes a certain understanding that must be complete upon entering into the Hip Hop culture. There must be complete rendering to the context without any person’s presuppositions. One who is indigenous to the culture can in fact penetrate the culture much more effectively than an outsider. Due primarily to the fact that they are not trying to be something that they are not they are just choosing to submit to something greater. Within the context of Hip Hop one must managed to ascertain a street credibility without losing their sense of calling in the Lord Jesus. This gives them a twofold opportunity to engage the Hip Hop community that is unfamiliar with church and the church that are unfamiliar with the Hip Hop community.

With the indigenous, there must be an emphasis placed upon the message not the man. Being indigenous to the culture of Hip Hop one must seek to “display weighty Christianity.”[5] The intent is to show a connection with and in the culture but display distinct differences in characteristics as well. The Tonic[6] states,” He asked God to sanctify them by the truth, and not to remove them from the world. The Lord didn’t call us to be removed from the culture; therefore The Cross Movement is striving to infiltrate the culture with the message of God’s Holiness.”[7]  The goal must be to break the monotony of the hip hop mentality which seemed to project that there was no hope and wrong was right.

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[1] William Branch. “THE THESIS: Hear the Rhymes and Here’s the Reason.” The Ambassador Online.http://www.theambassadoronline.com/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=12772&columnid=2146

 

[2] Kenji Jasper and Ytasha Womack. Beats Rhymes & Life. (United States. Harlem Moon Books,2007) pg.23

[3] H. Richard Niebuhr. Christ ad Culture. (San Francisco. HarperCollins, 1951)pg. xxxvii

[4] Thomas White. “Revolve and Ethical Dilemma.” Ethics and Business. http://www.ethicsandbusiness.org/pdf/strategy.pdf (accessed March 01, 2008).

 

[5] Branch, Willam. “The Christian Living in Hip Hop Times.” The Ambassador Online. October 25,2005.http://www.theambassadoronline.com/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=14628&columnid=2416 (accessed August 10, 2008).

 

[6] Leader of the group Cross Movement.

[7] Stan North and Brenda Ingram. “The Cross Movement.” GospelFlava.com. April 23, 2003. http://www.gospelflava.com/reviews/crossmovementholyculture.html (accessed August 10, 2008).