Tuesday, April 1, 2008
James Cone is the founder and still the main proponent. He is professor at Union Theolgical Seminary in New York, which is one the most liberal seminaries in the U.S.
Black Liberation Theology is Liberation Theology applied to the opression experienced by African-Americans.
Cone wrote: “Black history is recovering a past deliberately destroyed by slave masters, an attempt to revive old survival symbols and create new ones. Black power is an attempt to shape our persent economic, social and political existence according to those actions that destroy the oppressor’s hold on black flesh. Black theology places our past and present actions toward black liberation in a theological context, seeking to destroy alien gods and to create value-structures according to the God of black freedom” (Black Theology and Black Liberation, “1085)
If Liberation Theology defines itself as the oppressor vs. the oppressed, and God is on the side of the oppressed, then Black Liberation Theology defines itself as White Vs. Black, and God is on the side of the Blacks. Yes, it is a Christian version of the Black Power movement of the 1960's.
Black theology is theology committed to liberating black people and defines itself as locked into a battle with white racism. Our religion, what we call orthodoxy, black liberation theologians call “white religion” or “whitianity” or “Christianity”. - Evangelical Dictionary of Theology edited by Walter Elwell
This view of Christianity as inherently racist may explain to you some of Jeremiah Wright's response to Hannity in the video clip I posted at the Liberation Theology post.
They certainly have some evidence in their favor. Early slave owners did distort Christianity so that the existing relationship between slave and master would not be challenged. Many racists used the Bible to justify their evil.
And in the church, blacks found the only place that they could define themselves, rather than being defined by society. Even now Cone points to all the portayals of Jesus as white, and says, "If they can do that, why can't we?"
The Black Muslim movement with emphasis on black pride and black power had a lot of influence in the 1960's. And so James Cone invented and developed "Black Liberation Theology."
Background and Beliefs
Like Liberation Theology, Black Liberation Theology teaches that God acts in history to save people, and that salvation means far more than just spiritual, but it must also include economic, physical, political and social liberation. They look at the Exodus as the model of how God works, and of God's mission on earth. Jesus' "failure" on the cross is seen as God identifying with blacks. Cone says that in order to understand the cross, we must understand the lynching of blacks.
Cone quotes Karl Barth “God always takes his stand unconditionally and passionately on this side alone, against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.” (Black Theology and Black Power, 45)
Cone finds suport in Psalm 10:17-18
You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.
And also in Psalm 72:12
For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help.
And because he sees blacks as the oppressed and the whites as the oppressors, Cone is able to say, "God is black."
Like Liberation Theology, Luke 4:18 is the foundational scripture.
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed...
Cone also points to Matthew 11:19 where he says that Jesus knows how to identify with the Black experience because he too has been falsely accused and villified.
The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' But wisdom is proved right by her actions."
And of course there is also Luke 7:22 -
So he replied to the messengers, "Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy[a] are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.
And so Black Liberation Theologians see Jesus' mission as one of liberation. Because God is identified with liberating the poor and the oppressed, then in the 20th century he would be identified with blackness. That is where God is today, they say. And obedience to God requires identification with the poor and oppressed, i.e. blackness.
The Great Satan – from an article sympathetic to Black theology
“Black Liberation Theology teaches that In the New Testament, Jesus comes into the world to destroy the works of Satan. If the preceding identification of the struggle of Jesus and that of African-Americans seeking liberation is true, then there must also be a Satan in the contemporary picture. Black Theology does not get bogged down in quaint personifications of Satan but sees him at work in the powers and principalities of this world that would enslave and demean human beings. And the most demonic of these powers in the black experience is that of racism.
Cone writes: "Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.' The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by demonic forces...Ironically, the man who enslaves another enslaves himself...To be free to do what I will in relation to another is to be in bondage to the law of least resistance. This is the bondage of racism. Racism is that bondage in which whites are free to beat, rape, or kill blacks. About thirty years ago it was acceptable to lynch a black man by hanging him from a tree; but today whites destroy him by crowding him into a ghetto and letting filth and despair put the final touches on death." http://www.wfu.edu/~matthetl/perspectives/twentyseven.html
In his article, "An Investigation of Black Liberation Theology," Dr. H. Wayne House wrote, "black theology (and liberation theology in general) seeks to speak to 'this-world' problems, rather than 'other-world' issues; to concrete circumstances, rather than abstract thought; to the sinfulness of man's plight in a ghetto rather than sin in man's heart; and to a savior who delivers man from earthly slavery, rather than a Savior who saves man from spiritual bondage. This is black liberation theology in a word."
(Note: Dr. House's article originally appeared in Bibliotheca Sacra, the theological journal of Dallas Theological Seminary. I first found the article when doing research on this last week. Since then it has been taken down. Numerous other bloggers have linked to it, but now their links are dead. If you can find it, read it, and tell me where to find it again! It's Excellent.)
(Further Note: More posts on this subject will be coming...)
I know this isn't the point, but I must ask. When you write:
According to what?I'm not trying to be argumentative. I really would like to know if there is some list out there that ranks or categorizes seminaries based on their theological viewpoints and/or academic reputation/rigor.
Back to the post:
The intial thoughts I have are summed up in the idea that whenever we place God in our context instead of placing ourselves in His context, we're messing up badly. God is bigger than racism and He is bigger than the ghetto. God isn't only concerned with those who are black and oppressed, as these "theologians" see it. He is also concerned with the white and hungry in Europe. He is concerned with the homeless asian. Where does the rest of the world who isn't dominated by a supposed white power structure fit into the plan of God if God's purpose is defined in liberating US blacks?