Christian Century has an engaging article reviewing three recent works by African-Americans giving a theological account and critique of traditional theology and “race.” I mentioned one of those works yesterday: J. Kameron Carter’s Race: A Theological Account. But the article also reviews two other important books along these lines: Brian Bantum’s Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity (Baylor University Press, 2010) and Willie J. Jennings’ The Christian Imagi­nation: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale University Press, 2010).  The article, “The New Black Theology: Retrieving Ancient Sources to Challenge Racism,” is well worth the read.

One of the things that caught my attention and encouraged me was the review’s highlighting of the fact that each of these authors reach back into pre-Enlightenment Christian tradition for resources to reformulate “race” and challenge racism.  That methodology is encouraging in its own right, but it’s all the more heartening since each of these men stand somewhat close to Cone’s school of Black Theology.  Hence the reviewer’s speculation about the emergence of a “new Black Theology.”  Such an emergence, representing a re-appropriation of classic Christian sources rather than a rejection of them (a la Cone), would be a huge move toward theological health.  I suspect there would still be tendencies and conclusions we’d all differ on at places, but re-centering Christian dogmatics and tradition significantly improves the viability of “Black Theology” as unqualified theology.

If you’re interested in thinking more along these lines, I’d encourage a read of the article/review.  Here are the final three paragraphs:

In other words, black theology is reclaiming the theological tradition as its own and, under the banner of orthodoxy, taking on all comers. By rethinking the Enlightenment’s promises of enlightenment and rearticulating racial existence in the language of the church’s most sacred doctrines, black theology is now (or once again) making a case that cannot be denied. The debate is no longer fixed on racial identity politics (a quagmire from which none can escape); rather, it takes place on the level playing field of orthodoxy.

The new theology reminds us that it was a mistake to call black theology “black theology” in the first place. Consistency at least would have required that European theology equally bear the burden of qualifications (“colonizing theology”). To be sure, patronizing name-calling allowed black theology to develop its own voice in its own time, just as the segregated black church developed its own styles, saints and stories. But because the margins were managed by white theologians, those voices were heard by whites, and when heard they were regarded as less than equal and so were not allowed to challenge white hegemony and help white theology be anything other than white theology.

Accordingly, the new black theology is best described as the new theology, no (dis)qualifying adjective necessary. In it we see Christian theology at long last incarnating the material conditions whereby the good news becomes good news.

That question has dogged me for the last two weeks.  It came up two weeks ago during a prayer and planning meeting with fellow African-American pastors in Atlanta.  The question arose again while meeting last week with African-American pastors and college students in Los Angeles.  I notice that it’s a topic being addressed at a conference sponsored by Anthony Bradley.

It was also the subject of a roundtable discussion sponsored by Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS) and Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life in October 2010 at Union Theological Seminary.  My man Louis Love sent the link to me. The discussion takes place in 12 YouTube parts and features several academics and pastors, including:

Reverend Otis Moss III, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago
Reverend Eboni K. Marshall, Abyssinian Baptist Church, New York
Josef Sorett, Assistant Professor of Religion at Columbia University
Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania
Eddie Glaude, William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University
Fredrick C. Harris, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University
Obery Hendricks, Jr., Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.

Eddie Glaude called the question in a post at the Huffington Post in February 2010, and the roundtable picks up where Glaude left off. You can find the audio here. Below are the YouTube segments.

Part 1–Introductions and Opening Question

Part 2–One Thing the Black Church Struggles to Do

Part 3– [Video missing]

Part 4–”Theological Exotic Dancers” (End of opening remarks), and the Substance of Being “Black and Christian”

Part 5–”You May Own My Body but God Owns My Soul”

Part 6–Rev. Ike Won the Battle with Dr. King

Part 7–What Is the Mission of the Church?

Part 8–Church, Class, Community, Gender, and Love in Action

Part 9–Sexual Ethics and Hermeneutics in the Black Church

Part 10–”Allowed to Be James Brown at Least Once Per Week”

Part 11–”Too Many Christians Take Too Much Pride in Being Christians… The New Heavens and the New Earth Means All of Humanity”

Part 12–Final Remarks; Is the White Evangelical Movement Over in 20 Years?

Based on this panel, I’d say the Black Church is indeed dead. What do you think? Can these bones live again?

Thanks to C.E. Moore for this kind review of The Decline of African American Theology.  Here’s Moore’s opening paragraph:

Thabiti Anyabwile’s The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity is a triumph. Let’s admit it—theology isn’t a very sexy topic. When you couple the subject of theology with the subject of history, you’re likely in for a mind-numbing experience. But,The Decline was a book I couldn’t put down. As far as I know, there are no books about this topic in the popular market. Anyabwile has helped fill that void and hopefully this book will spark some much-needed dialogue on such an important matter.  Read the entire review.

If you’re not familiar with cogito/credo, you might want to check out their site.  Some very helpful and interesting things offered there.

Well, I’m still on vacation, which means I’m still alternating periods of swimming with the kids, reading by the beach, and drooling through naps.  I’ve decided that a “good vacation” for me includes frequently asking, “What day is it again?”, and memories of my boyhood.  Today’s memory: hot summer days without air conditioning in humid N.C. lying on the floor in front of a box fan.  Those were the good ol’ days (lazy days).

On this lazy day (with air conditioning!  Some things–like N.C. humidity and box fans–only need to be fondly remembered!) I’ve completed reading Anthony Bradley‘s book, Liberating Black Theology: The Bible and the Black Experience in America (Crossway, 2010).  Ordinarily theological critiques don’t make my vacation reading list.  I’m usually more interested in fiction and “lighter” reads.  But Bradley’s work zoomed to the top of my reading pile when I received a copy of Dwight N. Hopkins’ unfavorable review of the book.  Hopkins might be regarded as the successor to James Cone as the leading proponent of Black Theology.  Ahhh… a theological food fight I can’t resist.  So, having read Bradley, I thought I’d offer a brief review of Liberating Black Theology and a brief response to Hopkins’ review.

Liberating Black Theology

Premise.  On the whole, Bradley writes as a well-read critic of Black Theology (BT) interested in seeing this field of theology reformed according the Scripture.  Bradley believes that BT, as formulated by Cone in the 1970s, was doomed to fail because it abandoned biblical presuppositions in favor of black victimology and an inadequate cultural and theological view of man (anthropology).  ”This book suggests that for any black theology to serve the black church in the future, it must be formulated within biblically constrained presuppositions.”  Bradley contends, “Black theology has a future only if it presupposes the triune God and seeks to interpret the black experience through the lens of the whole of Scripture” (p. 15).

Liberating Black Theology does not offer the reader a broad review of BT, but focuses more specifically on BT’s definition of “Blackness” and the black experience and its use of sources for doing theology other than the Scripture.  At points, Bradley leans heavily on John McWhorter‘s definition of black victimology and Thomas Sowell‘s critique of Marxism as an inadequate alternative for liberating the oppressed, the central aim of BT.

Organiztion.  Bradley addresses the subject in six chapters:

1. Setting the Stage: Defining Terms and Theological Distinctions
2. America the Broken: Cone’s Sociopolitical Ethical Context
3. Cone’s Theological Scaffolding
4. Victimology in the Marxist Ethics of Black Theology
5. Biblical Interpretation and the Black Experience
6. Is There a Future for Black Liberation Theology?

With this organization, one expects Bradley to move from a general introduction of Black Theology, to a program of evaluation and critique, to a proposal for the future.

Strengths. Bradley shows familiarity with the widening body of BT and its contributors. On the whole, he takes the writers he surveys seriously and responds charitably. Liberating Black Theology includes a helpful engagement with the Marxist underpinnings of BT, bringing the writings of Marx (via Thomas Sowell) into dialogue with BT. Ultimately, Bradley calls on Marx to invalidate some of the claims made by Cone and Cornel West. I haven’t seen this done as effectively and concisely as Bradley manages in Liberating Black Theology.

In my opinion, Bradley is strongest in chapters 4-6, where he steps back from Black Theology to offer some solutions for going forward. Bradley’s own theological convictions come forward with clarity and insight. I especially appreciated the analysis of Marxism (chap. 4) and his engagement with BT’s hermeneutical approach (chap. 5). Chapter 5 helps us see that we can and ought to raise many of the contextual concerns of BT without throwing the baby of sound biblical hermeneutics and contextualization out with the bath water of historical abuses of Scripture and indifference to African-American concerns. Bradley serves us well at this point. Chapter 6 gives us a series of critiques offered by others inside and outside BT. The range of responses help elucidate some foundational problems in BT and set the stage for Bradley’s contention that BT can only be resuscitated if it moves to firmer biblical presuppositions.

Weaknesses. Though charitable throughout, Bradley’s critique of BT–especially his introduction of victimology–begins far too early in the book. For example, the opening chapter, “Setting the Stage: Defining Terms and Theological Distinctions,” begins with only five paragraphs answering the question “What is Black Theology” immediately followed by three pages of Bradley’s introduction of “victimology.” The reader doesn’t feel he’s been properly introduced to BT before being moved on to Bradley’s criticism. While Bradley summarizes key ideas in BT throughout the first couple chapters, he rarely summarizes BT without inserting his victimology critique. I felt proponents of BT might have been better represented if the victimology construct had been left for a later chapter, after presenting black theologians “in their own words.” I suspect that most proponents of BT will not regard themselves as perpetuating “victimology” in the way Bradley via McWhorter contends, and therefore may find Bradley’s correct critique too easy to dismiss.

I also found myself wanting Bradley to articulate the biblical gospel in sharper contrast to the “gospels” offered in BT. I was surprised, given how radically BT distorts “the gospel” as liberation along economic, social, political, gender, and sexual lines, that Bradley gave very little space to saying “this is what the gospel is according to the Bible.” If there is a revision in the future, I hope the author will give greater attention to this issue.

A Question. Finally, I’m left wondering, “Why should Black Theology be revived as Bradley seems to suggest it ought?” To be clear, Bradley regards the Conian approach to BT dead from inception because it abandons orthodox Christian formulations. I agree with Bradley in this assessment. But why try to breathe life into something so radically contrary to biblical Christianity? The contribution of BT is its effort to raise questions that theologians from other ethnic backgrounds fail to raise. The questions are legitimate. But we don’t need BT to raise them. As Bradley points out, the questions have more to do with application and contextualization rather than exegesis and hermeneutics (where BT situates the questions and Black experience as the controlling principle of interpretation). Given that, aren’t we better off letting dead dogs lie in order to move on with appropriate responses to these important questions? I think so.

Beyond the necessary questions themselves (“How does the gospel of Jesus Christ speak to the particular experiences of African Americans?”), BT provides little help to us and rests on a Bible-denying, anti-Christian foundation. Surely our energies are better invested in consructive proposals, which Bradley gives attention to in his closing. I wish he had given more ink to offering us a more detailed statement on the way forward.

Conclusion. If you’re looking for a premier on Black Theology, perhaps Bruce L. Fields’ Introducing Black Theology: Three Crucial Questions would be a better starting place. If you’re looking for a more thorough critique of BT’s view of man, Marxist underpinnings, and hermeneutics, then I highly commend Bradley’s Liberating Black Theology. Bradley gives us a smooth read and penetrating insight into a deadly flaw in BT.

Responding to Dwight Hopkins

Hopkins begins his review and critique of Liberating Black Theology with an ad hominem attack.  He doesn’t deal with Bradley’s statements about the weaknesses of BT.  Instead, he questions Bradley’s bona fides as a black man.  Hopkins writes:

In the opening of his work, Bradley mentions his research focus on Black theology of liberation (BLT) for the last ten years. The back of his book describes his affiliation as a visiting professor of theology at the King’s College, New York and as a research fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. Yet, though he claims his decade of expertise in BLT, his identity and his community remain a mystery. To what country does he belong (i.e., Germany, Greece, etc.)? Is he a Christian or a member of a church? What is his group of accountability—Black liberation theologians, pastors, lay people, clergy, or administrators? Is he familiar with Black church ministries?

Finally, Hopkins’ critique of Bradley illustrates why Bradley’s work needs to be more intentional and precise in articulating the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ.  Consider the second and fourth fallacies Hopkins sees in Bradley’s book:

The second fallacy is an unfamiliarity with Black American churches that preach and practice Jesus’ Good News for poor, working-class, and marginalized communities, especially, but not exclusively, in urban areas and ghettoized suburban spaces. Jesus gives hope and joy to these people that God is with them in oppressive structural situations and in personal emotional predicaments. Furthermore, what these churches claim is a celebration of God’s connection with them through Christ Jesus and the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, despite it all, “joy comes in the morning.”

Fourth, the book is weak on theology. Theology is part of the Church in that it works in the Church and calls it to be accountable and faithful to the life of Jesus Christ. With a weak theological understanding, the writer misconstrues BLT. BLT has never said it would be the leader in transforming America or personal sins. Originating in the Church, BLT challenges the Church to have faith in God’s word. That Word, Jesus, offered creation a divine mission and a human mission. Lk. 4:16–21. give Jesus’ self-identified earthly mission—to be with the poor, oppressed, and the abused. And in Matt. 25:31–46, Jesus tells us explicit criteria to enter heaven—our earthly mission to be with the poor, oppressed, and the abused. The reason God sent Jesus to earth was to fight the kingdom of Satan, sin, and suffering and to realize a new liberated and saved life for creation. The Hebrew Scriptures say Yahweh God heard the cries of suffering and poverty of slaves in material oppression. Yahweh worked with them to liberate them from oppression and helped them to reach a new life of milk and honey on earth.

Notice that Hopkins equates the Good News with Christ’s comfort of those in suffering and the eradication of “oppressive structural situations and … personal emotional predicaments,” reminding them that their suffering won’t always last (2nd fallacy). Then, he contends that Jesus “tells us explicit criteria to enter heaven—our earthly mission to be with the poor, oppressed, and the abused” (4th fallacy). We must regard this as “another gospel,” which really is no “gospel” at all.

Those of us critical of BT, must be sure to keep the main thing the main thing. However useful we may find some questions and challenges posed by BT, we should never leave unstated how it is God reconciles sinners to himself, redeeming them from sin, justifying them in His holy presence, and glorifying them with himself. He does it on the sole basis of Jesus’ active obedience and atoning sacrifice on the cross, through the Son of God’s glorious resurrection, and our union with Christ through faith in Him. We enter heaven by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone–not by works we have done, including our care for the poor and marginalized. This, the Bible tells us, is “of first importance.” May all of our writing guard and advance this Good News.

Bob Kellemen at RPM Ministries offers a gracious review of Glory Road: The Journeys of Ten African-Americans into Reformed Christianity.  Kellemen is a good student of African-American theology and church history and offers a warm critique of Glory Road.

For my part, I think Glory Road could be one of the most important, helpful, and encouraging books published in the last ten years on African-American Christianity.  I think its warmth, humor, honesty, and theological integrity

could be a winsome tool in capturing the hearts of many people who have not come to know the wonderful truths and history of the Reformed tradition.  If you haven’t read this book, rush out and make it a stocking stuffer or New Year’s read.  It’ll reward you.

HT: Phoenix Preacher

This is a video clip from Cone’s appearance at Tavis Smiley‘s State of the Black Union a few years back. I can agree with some of Cone’s critique of the predominantly African-American (and for that matter, American0 church, but notice the distortions. How many can you count in this 7-minute clip?

And it’s the stuff that he almost gets right that is the most poisonous and dangerous. Can anybody seriously maintain that this man, a professor of systematic theology, inadvertently misquoted Matthew 16:25 at the end of his comments? What he distorts is so critical to understanding everything that the misquote is sinister.

One question that people frequently ask authors is, “Why did you write this book?”

It’s a fair and a good question. If you put something in print and work through the process of communicating, refining, and sometimes defending ideas, trying to get others to read and understand and possibly agree with you, you probably have some deep-seated reason that drives you to write. That reason for writing probably lies somewhere close to the author’s heart. It’s part of her or his outlook, a glimpse into their inner workings. And many readers want such a glimpse. They want to make contact not just with the ideas but with the person and motivation behind the ideas. At bottom, I think a lot of people are fairly ad hominem in our reading, especially of polemics.

I’ve searched for a good answer to the question, “Why did you write The Decline of African American Theology?” I wandered through a a handful of answers, all of them true but none of them quite right.

Tonight I watched an episode of Bill Moyers Journal, a PBS program that sometimes focuses on religious themes and ideas. It was an interview with African-American theologian, professor and author Dr. James H. Cone of Union Theological. Dr. Cone is the author of a number of books very influential among African-American academics and religious thinkers. He is the father of the Black Theology movement, an attempt to do theology with a liberationist ethic from the distinct vantage point of African American experience.

The Moyers interview was prompted by a 2006 lecture that Dr. Cone delivered at Harvard (watch). The lecture used American lynching as a metaphor for understanding the cross of Christ. The entire interview is worth watching if you’re inclined. You’ll see into the heart and thinking of perhaps the most influential African-American theologian in the last 50 years.

There is much that could be said about the interview. But rather than comment at length, pasted below are two brief exchanges between Mr. Moyers and Dr. Cone. I copy the comments because they finally helped me to say briefly what my motivation was for writing The Decline.

BILL MOYERS: And you say, “The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles usually reserved for hardened criminals, rebellious slaves, rebels against the Roman state and falsely accused militant blacks who were often called black beasts and monsters in human form.” So, how do the cross and the lynching tree interpret each other?
JAMES CONE: It keeps the lynchers from having the last word. The lynching tree interprets the cross. It keeps the cross out of the hands of those who are dominant. Nobody who is lynching anybody can understand the cross. That’s why it’s so important to place the cross and the lynching tree together. Because the cross, or the crucifixion was analogous to a first century lynching. In fact, biblical scholars– when they want to describe what was happening to Jesus, many of them said, “It was a lynching.”

And all I want to suggest is if American Christians say — they want to identify with that cross, they have to see the cross as a lynching. Any time your empathy, your solidarity is with the little people, you’re with the cross. If you identify with the lynchers, then, no, you can’t understand what’s happening. That in the sense of resistance– what resistance means by helpless people. Power in the powerless is not something that we are accustomed to listening to and understanding. It’s not a part of our historical experi– America always wants to think it’s gonna win everything. Well, black people have a history in which we didn’t win. We did not win. See, our resistance is a resistance against the odds. That’s why we can understand the cross.

**************
BILL MOYERS: Do you believe God is love?
JAMES CONE: Yes, I believe God is love.
BILL MOYERS: I would have a hard time believing God is love if I were a black man. I mean, those bodies swinging on the tree. What was God?Where was God during the 400 years of slavery?
JAMES CONE: See, you are looking at it from the perspective of those who win. You have to see it from the – perspective of those who have no power. In fact, God is love because it’s that power in your life that lets you know you can resist the definitions that other people are being– placing on you. And you sort of say, sure, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows my sorrow. Sure, there is slavery. Sure, there is lynching, segregation.

But, glory, hallelujah. Now, that glory hallelujah is the fact that there is a humanity and a spirit that nobody can kill. And as long as you know that, you will resist. That was the power of the civil rights movement. That was the power of those who kept marching even though the odds are against you. How do you keep going when you don’t have the battle tanks, when you don’t have the guns? When you don’t have the military power? When you have nothing? How do you keep going? How do you know that you are a human being? You know because there’s a power that transcends all of that.
BILL MOYERS: So, how does love fit into that? What do you mean when you say God is love?
JAMES CONE: God is that power. That power that enables you to resist. You love that! You love the power that empowers you even in a situation in which you have no political power. The– you have to love God. Now, what is trouble is loving white people. Now, that’s tough. It’s not God we having trouble loving. Now, loving white people. Now, that’s– that’s difficult. But, King — you know, King helped us on that. But, that is a– that is an agonizing response.

While I don’t want to press it too far, I do think there are some interesting parallels between lynching and the cross that can help us better understand the gospel. But what God and the Cross are reduced to in this interview is appalling. No biblically recognizable cross and no glory.

The Decline of African-American Theology is a jeremiad, a long lament over a deep fall. Some will lament the decline, and others will lament The Decline. Of that I’m sure.

But after listening to Moyers and Cone tonight, I realized that I wrote the book because I am deeply sad. I’m sad about the state of the church in African American communities, and the very real eclipse of the gospel where African Americans gather and worship. And I’m sad because I love the Lord, His gospel, His people, and the nations who need the Lord, His gospel, and His people. The book isn’t sad, I don’t think, but its author is.

To be sure, my motives are alloyed with pride and some other things that need the sanctifying grace of Christ. But at bottom, I grieve that “my people perish for lack of knowledge” of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I pray this little book may be used by the Lord in the hands of good and faithful saints to turn the mourning of many into laughter.