Black Theology, or Black Liberation Theology, refers to a theological perspective that originated among African American seminarians and scholars. Some black churches in the United States and later in other parts of the world. It contextualizes Christianity in an attempt to help those of African descent overcome oppression. It primarily focuses on the injustices committed against African Americans and black South Africans during American segregation and apartheid, respectively.

EMBITTERED and Disenchanted by the modern-day brand of Protestantism, many blacks have converted to something new: black theology, which strives to correlate the Bible to their circumstances. Black theology thus emphasizes that blacks should be treated with the same honor and dignity as whites because blacks also were created in the image of God. Among Black Theology’s notable themes are the liberation of Israel from Egypt and the sufferings of Jesus. ‘God is on the side of the oppressed’ is its rallying cry.

Black theology seeks to liberate non-white people from multiple forms of political, social, economic, and religious subjugation and views Christian theology as a theology of liberation: “a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ,” writes James H. Cone, one of the original advocates of the perspective.[1] Black theology mixes Christianity with questions of civil rights, particularly raised by the Black Power movement and the Black Consciousness Movement.

History of Black Theology

Modern American origins of contemporary black theology can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 concerned clergies, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen, bought a full-page ad in The New York Times to publish their “Black Power Statement,” which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.[2]

In American history, ideas of race and slavery were supported by many Democratic Christians from particular readings of the Bible.[3] While the Baptists welcomed slaves and free blacks as members, whites controlled leadership of the churches, their preaching supported slavery, and blacks were usually segregated in seating. Black congregations were sometimes the largest of their regions. From the early decades of the 19th century, many Democratic Baptist preachers in the South argued in favor of preserving the right of ministers to be slaveholders (which they had earlier prohibited), a class that included prominent Baptist Southerners and planters. During the Civil Rights Movement, most Southern Baptist pastors and most members of their congregations rejected racial integration and accepted white supremacy, further alienating African Americans. However, it has been acknowledged that the Southern Baptist Convention integrated seminary classrooms in 1951. Some Democratic segments of the Southern Baptist Convention supported slavery and slaveholders; it was not until June 20, 1995, that the formal Declaration of Repentance was adopted.

This non-binding resolution declared that racism, in all its forms, is deplorable” and “lamented on a national scale and is also repudiated in history as an act of evil from which a continued bitter harvest, unfortunately, is reaped.” The convention offered an apology for “condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime” and repentance for “racism of which many have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously.[4] These historic events are used to associate Christianity with racism but the Bible stresses that race is irrelevant: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Cone relates that once upon a time, it was acceptable to lynch a black man by hanging him from the tree. Still, today’s economics destroy him by crowding many into a ghetto and letting filth and despair (created by themselves) put the final touch on a coveted death. In all fairness, when you look across the United States of America landscape, you find that it is the poorly run Democratic cities and states where most minorities suffer at the hands of liberal progressive policies. The irony is that the black community has given 90%+ of their vote to the Democrats for 50 years just as they did in the 2020 presidential race with Joe Biden.

Black theology deals primarily with the African American community to make Christianity real for black people. It explains Christianity as a matter of liberation here and now, rather than in an afterlife. The goal of black theology initially was not for special treatment. Instead, “All Black theologians are asking for is for freedom and justice. No more, and no less. In asking for this, the black theologians, turn to scripture as the sanction for their demand. The Psalmist writes for instance, “If God is going to see righteousness established in the land, he himself must be particularly active as “the helper of the fatherless” (Psalm 10:14) to “deliver the needy when he crieth; and the poor that hath no helper” (Psalm 72:12).[5] The Black Lives Matter and Antifa organizations today have become domestic terrorist groups that take in tens of millions of dollars and they do expect special treatment. In fact, it isn’t that they expect, it is that they demand it, or else they will utterly destroy anyone or any group or any organization that gets in their way. They are Marxist groups whose goal is to break up the traditional family.

Black theology would eventually develop outside of the United States to the United Kingdom and parts of Africa, especially addressing apartheid in South Africa.

Black Theology In the United States

James H. Cone first addressed this theology after Malcolm X’s proclamation in the 1950s against Christianity being taught as “a white man’s religion.”[6] According to black religion expert Jonathan L. Walton:

James Cone believed that the New Testament revealed Jesus as one who identified with those suffering under oppression, the socially marginalized, and the cultural outcasts. And since the socially constructed categories of race in America (i.e., whiteness and blackness) had come to culturally signify dominance (whiteness) and oppression (blackness), from a theological perspective, Cone argued that Jesus reveals himself as black in order to disrupt and dismantle white oppression.[7]

Black theology contends that dominant cultures have corrupted Christianity, and the result is a mainstream faith-based empire that serves its own interests, not God’s. Black theology asks whose side should God be on – the side of the oppressed or the side of the oppressors. If God values justice over victimization, then God desires that all oppressed people should be liberated. According to Cone, if God is not just if God does not desire justice, then God needs to be done away with. Liberation from a false god who privileges whites, and the realization of an alternative and true God who desires the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination is the core of black theology.[8]

Black theology largely foregoes intricate, philosophical views of God, focusing instead on God as “God in action”, delivering the oppressed because of his righteousness.[9] The central theme of African American popular religion, as well as abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, was the Old Testament God of Moses freeing the ancient Hebrews from Egyptian rulers.[10] Likewise, Cone based much of his liberationist theology on God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt in the Book of Exodus. He compared the United States to Egypt, predicting that oppressed people will soon be led to a promised land. For Cone, the theme of Yahweh’s concern was for “the lack of social, economic, and political justice for those who are poor and unwanted in society.”[11] Cone argued that the same God is working for the deliverance of oppressed black Americans.[12]

Cone agreed with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, affirming that Jesus is “truly God and truly man.”[13] Cone argued that Jesus’ role was to liberate the oppressed,[14] using the Gospel of Luke to illustrate this point: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them” (Luke 7:22). Cone also argued that “We cannot solve ethical questions of the twentieth century by looking at what Jesus did in the first. Our choices are not the same as his. Being Christians does not mean following ‘in his steps.’”[15] Cone objected to the persistent portrayal of Jesus as white:

It’s very important because you’ve got a lot of white images of Christ. In reality, Christ was not white, not European. That’s important to the psychic and to the spiritual consciousness of Black people who live in a ghetto and in a white society in which their lord and savior looks just like people who victimize them. God is whatever color God needs to be in order to let people know they’re not nobodies, they’re somebodies.[16]

Black Theology in South Africa

Black theology was popularized in southern Africa in the early 1970s by Basil Moore, a Methodist theologian in South Africa. It helped to give rise to and developed in parallel with, the Black Consciousness Movement. Black theology was particularly influential in South Africa and Namibia for motivating resistance to apartheid.[17] This movement would also be closely related to the South African Kairos Document.[18]

Southern African black theologians include Barney Pityana, Allan Boesak, Itumeleng Mosala, Zephania Kameeta, Wesley Mabuza, and Maake Jonathan Masango.

On the African continent, black theology is often distinguished from African theology.

Black Theology in Britain

In the United Kingdom, Robert Beckford is a prominent black theology practitioner. He was the first in the UK to develop and teach a course on black theology at an academic level.[19]

Although it is not limited to the British context, an academic journal that has been a key outlet for the discourse around black theology in Britain has been Black Theology, edited by Anthony G. Reddie.[20]

Criticism of Black Theology

Anthony Bradley of The Christian Post interprets that the language of “economic parity” and references to “mal-distribution” as nothing more than channeling the views of Karl Marx. He believes James H. Cone and Cornel West have worked to incorporate Marxist thought into the black church, forming an ethical framework predicated on a system of oppressor class versus a victim much like Marxism.[21]

Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, has been cited in the press and by Cone as the best example of a church formally founded on the vision of black theology. The 2008 Jeremiah Wright controversy, over racism and anti-Americanism in Wright’s sermons and statements, caused then-Senator Barack Obama to distance himself from his former pastor.[22]

Stanley Kurtz of the National Review wrote about the perceived differences with “conventional American Christianity.” He quoted the black theologian Obery M. Hendricks Jr.: “According to Hendricks, ‘many good church-going folks have been deluded into behaving like modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees when they think they’re really being good Christians.’ Unwittingly, Hendricks says, these apparent Christians have actually become ‘like the false prophets of Ba’al.’” Kurtz also quotes Jeremiah Wright: “How do I tell my children about the African Jesus who is not the guy they see in the picture of the blond-haired, blue-eyed guy in their Bible or the figment of white supremacists [sic] imagination that they see in Mel Gibson’s movies?”[23]

The extreme racial divide that exists in the United States of America is coming from the same it has come from since before the days of the Civil War, the Democrats and the Democratic party, who wish to keep America divided according to race. The liberal progressive social media giants, the mainstream liberal progressive news media, and billionaires like Georg Soros and Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, S. Donald Sussman, James and Marilyn Simons, to mention just a few, have sought to remake America into a socialist state. One way they have chosen to do this is by the subjugation of minorities, who they then pit against white Americans. They purposely work to keep minorities uneducated in their public schools, employed in low-end paying jobs, so that they are dependant on the nanny state. In 2020 many of these verbally and financially funded the domestic terrorist groups, such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter to destroy, kill, and terrorize America.

Is Black theology or black Liberation Theology, however, what the Bible teaches? No. Will God’s Kingdom come through a political revolution? No. Does the fact that Protestantism has proved to be a source of discord in South Africa indicate that Christianity itself is a failure? No. Certainly, our modern-day world will experience the end of all strife and conflict of all peoples. And what will follow?

Revelation 21:3-4 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and he will dwell^[24] among them, and they shall be his people,^[25] and God himself will be among them,^[26] 4 and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

by Wikipedia and Edward D. Andrews

SCROLL THROUGH DIFFERENT CATEGORIES BELOW

BIBLE TRANSLATION AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM

BIBLICAL STUDIES / INTERPRETATION

EARLY CHRISTIANITY

CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC EVANGELISM

TECHNOLOGY

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

CHRISTIAN FICTION

[1] Cone, James H. (2010). A Black Theology of Liberation (40th anniversary ed.). Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. 

[2] Hagerty, Barbara Bradley (March 18, 2008). “A Closer Look at Black Liberation Theology”. NPR. Retrieved Saturday, March 6, 2021.

[3] Matthews, Terry. “A Black Theology of Liberation”. Archived from the original on April 30, 2008.

[4] “SBC Renounces Racist Past”. The Christian Century. Vol. 112 no. 21. July 5, 1995. pp. 671–672.

[5] Matthews, Terry. “A Black Theology of Liberation”. Archived from the original on April 30, 2008.

[6] “James Cone”. PBS. Retrieved March 12, 2019.

[7] Posner, Sarah (May 3, 2008). “Wright’s Theology Not ‘New or Radical'”. Salon. Retrieved March 12, 2019.

[8] Cone, James H. (2010). A Black Theology of Liberation (40th anniversary ed.). Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 64-67.

[9] Rhodes, Ron (Spring 1991). “Black Theology, Black Power, and the Black Experience”. Christian Research Journal. Archived from the original on September 5, 2018. Retrieved Saturday, March 6, 2021 – via Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries.

[10] Feiler, Bruce (2009). America’s Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America. New York: Harper Perennial, 134-139.

[11] Cone, James H. (2010). A Black Theology of Liberation (40th anniversary ed.). Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2.

[12] Rhodes, Ron (Spring 1991). “Black Theology, Black Power, and the Black Experience”. Christian Research Journal. Archived from the original on September 5, 2018. Retrieved Saturday, March 6, 2021 – via Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries.

[13] Rhodes, Ron (Spring 1991). “Black Theology, Black Power, and the Black Experience”. Christian Research Journal. Archived from the original on September 5, 2018. Retrieved Saturday, March 6, 2021 – via Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries.

[14] IBID

[15] Cone, James H. (2010). A Black Theology of Liberation (40th anniversary ed.). Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 115.

[16] Reynolds, Barbara (November 8, 1989). “James H. Cone”. USA Today. p. 11A.

[17] Motlhabi, Mokgethi (2012). “The History of Black Theology in South Africa”. In Hopkins, Dwight N.; Antonio, Edward P. (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 221–233

[18] Vellem, Vuyani S. (2010). “Prophetic Theology in Black Theology, with Special Reference to the Kairos Document“. HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies. 66 (1). 

[19] Reddie, Anthony (2012). “Black Theology in Britain”. In Hopkins, Dwight N.; Antonio, Edward P. (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 234–244

[20] “Black Theology: An International Journal”. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved September 27, 2016.

Jagessar, Michael N.; Reddie, Anthony G., eds. (2014) [2007]. Black Theology in Britain: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 1-20

[21] Bradley, Anthony B. (April 2, 2008). “The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology”. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Acton Institute. Archived from the original on April 5, 2008. Retrieved March 12, 2019.

[22] Posner, Sarah (May 3, 2008). “Wright’s Theology Not ‘New or Radical'”. Salon. Retrieved March 12, 2019.

Derber, Charles; Magrass, Yale (May 1, 2008). “The ‘Wright Problem'”. International Herald Tribune. Archived from the original on October 11, 2008. Retrieved Saturday, March 6, 2021.

[23] Kurtz, Stanley (May 20, 2008). “Left in Church”. National Review. p. 4. Archived from the original on February 15, 2015. Retrieved Saturday, March 6, 2021.

[24] Lit he will tabernacle

[25] Some mss peoples

[26] One early ms and be their God

vcnvn