Advent is the four weeks before Christmas. More precisely, it is three full weeks plus whatever fraction of a week is needed to get to Christmas. What we usually do around here at this time of year is pick an Advent-related topic and talk about it for four weeks.
This year we will be talking about A Black Theology of Liberation by James H. Cone, a work which I believe to be timely in this cultural moment.
Written in 1970, this book has become one of the classics of black theology. Cone’s work parallels many of the emphases of liberation theology, which was developing in Central and South America at around the same time, though Cone was unaware of this at the time. In Cone’s view, theology is all about understanding what God is doing in the world, which centers first and foremost around liberation of the oppressed. Last week we looked at chapter 6, which deals with the role of Jesus Christ in black theology. This week we will be covering chapter 7, which deals with the concepts of church, world, and eschatology in black theology.
I gave this warning in prior weeks and will repeat it this week: If you are a white person reading A Black Theology of Liberation and you are not uncomfortable, you’re not reading A Black Theology of Liberation. This work will expose every raw nerve of white fragility in your entire being, but we must all do the work and get through this. If what Cone says is true, then we are not in a good place and much that we have believed as white Americans and white Christians needs to change.
First we come to the church.
The Christian church is that community of persons who “got the hint,” and they thus refuse to be content with human pain and suffering. To receive “the power of God unto salvation” places persons in a state of Christian existence, making it impossible for them to sit still as their neighbors are herded off to prison camps. The hint of the gospel moves them to say no to the rulers of the world: “If our brothers and sisters have to go, it will be over our dead bodies.” They are the ones who believe in the gospel of liberation, convinced that personal freedom is more important than “law and order.”
The church is never on board with anyone’s notions of “law and order”. Almost a century ago now, Hitler came to power in Germany promising “law and order” in much the same language that American politicians have used since then. Over six million Jews paid with their very lives for Hitler’s notions of “law and order”. Today, millions of blacks and other minorities are rotting away in our prisons, and thousands upon thousands have lost their lives at the hands of racist police officers, all as part of the price to be paid for “law and order” here in America.
If you are part of the church, then that is not okay with you.
I don’t care what you really think about this. I’m telling you: If you are part of the church, then that is not okay with you.
According to Cone, the task of the church is threefold. First, it proclaims the reality of divine liberation, that is, it preaches the gospel. What “preaching the gospel” looks like today is telling blacks that their time of slavery has come to an end and telling whites to let go of the chains. Second, the church shares in the struggle for liberation. Although their time is up, the powers-that-be in the old order of white supremacy try to act like they are still in charge. It is the church’s job to stand up and say “No you’re not. Your time is up, now shut up and go away.” Third, the church is to be a visible manifestation that the gospel message which it preaches is a reality. For too long the church has lived as if the message of liberation for the oppressed is not a reality, and that has to stop.
Next we come to the world.
The world is earthly existence, the place where human beings are enslaved. It is where laws are passed against the oppressed, and where the oppressed fight back even though their efforts seem futile. The world is where white and black persons live, encountering each other, the latter striving for a little more room to breathe and the former doing everything possible to destroy black reality.
The world is not a metaphysical entity or an ontological problem, as some philosophers and theologians would have us believe. It is very concrete. It is punching clocks, taking orders, fighting rats, and being kicked around by police officers. It is where the oppressed live. Jews encountered it in concentration camps, Amerindians on reservations, and blacks on slave ships, in cotton fields, and in “dark” ghettos. The world is white persons, the degrading rules they make for the “underprivileged,” and their guilt-dispelling recourse to political and theological slogans about the welfare of society “as a whole.” In short, the world is where the brutal reality of inhumanity makes its ungodly appearance, turning persons into animals.
So how does the church engage with the world? Retreating from the world is not an option. This is a luxury that oppressed people cannot afford because it is contrary to their daily lived experience. Oppressed people, by their very nature as oppressed people, have no place to go and no means to escape the reality of their oppression which confronts them every waking moment of their existence. Thus, for the church to retreat from the world is to deny its very calling to proclaim the gospel of liberation for the oppressed, to take up the struggle for liberation, and to live as if the gospel message is a reality.
Embracing the world is not an option for the church either. “Embracing the world” does not mean that we have a lightshow and keyboards and drums in the worship band, or that the service has taken on a “seeker-friendly” format. Instead it means that we have conflated Christianity and Christian values with nationalism, capitalism, and everything that Donald Trump is all about. It means that we are willing to link arms with the worst specimens of humanity for the sake of a political leader who is himself one of the worst specimens of humanity but promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who share our political sympathies. It means proclaiming for all the world to hear that God is VERY OFFENDED at the so-called slaughter of millions of unborn children yet has absolutely nothing whatsoever to say about the centuries of blatant injustice that blacks and native Americans have endured at the hands of white supremacist America.
To think of the church in this society is to visualize buildings with crosses and signs designating Sunday morning worship. It is to think of pious white oppressors gathering on Sunday, singing hymns and praying to God, while their preachers talk endlessly about some white cat who died on a cross. For some reason, it never enters the minds of these murderers that Jesus Christ does not approve of their behavior. Christ dies not to “save” them but to destroy them so as to recreate them, to dissolve their whiteness in the fire of judgment, for it is only through the destruction of whiteness that the wholeness of humanity may be realized.
Finally we come to eschatology. Any theology that is worth anything has to address the question of what happens to us after we die. “Eschatology” is a big fancy word that smart church people love to throw around which refers to what happens after we die. White theology deals with the question of what happens after we die by basically not dealing with it. White people devise all manner of diversions to evade the issue of death: hobbies, vacations, big houses and fancy cars and all the other nice things that money can buy. White theology concerns itself with idle speculations: harps, pearly gates, streets paved with gold, all in the great by-and-by. The world is gonna go to shit but don’t worry, we will all be raptured away before it all goes down.
Black theology, by contrast, cannot afford the luxury of idle speculation. White supremacist oppression is part of the everyday lived experience of black people, consequently the possibility of death is an ever-present reality. Any eschatology offered by black theology must take this into account.
Life-and-death questions are not hypothetical questions, and answers are not found in a theology or philosophy class. The answers to questions about the end come when we face the reality of future nonexistence in the context of existence that is characterized by oppression and liberation. We know what the end is when we face it head-on by refusing, at the risk of death, to tolerate present injustice. The eschatological perspective must be grounded in the historical present, thereby forcing the oppressed community to say no to unjust treatment, because its present humiliation is inconsistent with its promised future.
Eschatology in black theology does not consist of idle speculation about the rapture and an eternity of heavenly bliss in some far-off place and time that has nothing to do with present reality, waiting idly for said heavenly bliss while enduring all manner of injustice in the here and now. Instead, the eschatology of black theology is a very down-to-earth thing in which we all work to make the promise of supposed future bliss a reality in the here-and-now. The possibility of death is an ever-present reality, yet we do not fear it and we do not let it stop us.
We now believe that something can be done about this world, and we have resolved to die rather than deny the reality expressed in black self-determination. With this view, heaven is no longer analyzed the way it used to be. Heaven cannot mean accepting injustice in the present because we know we have a home over yonder. Home is where we have been placed now, and to believe in heaven is to refuse to accept hell on earth.
Some final words as we circle the plane and prepare to land:
The big idea of Cone’s work is that God is black. Not in the sense of being a literal dark-skinned being, but in the sense of being deeply and profoundly identified with blacks as an oppressed people and working with them to secure their liberation, along with the liberation of all oppressed peoples on the earth. In order to become part of what God is doing in the world, we must give up our whiteness and become black. Not in the sense of injecting our skin with melanin, but in the sense of ending our participation in the systems and structures of white supremacy in our world and taking our place alongside blacks in their struggle for liberation. Not because we pity blacks or feel sorry for them, but because it is simply the right thing to do if you are a decent human being, or a human being at all for that matter.
Black theology has been a lifeline for me in my post-evangelical journey. Over the past four years I watched my faith sell its very soul out from under me, linking arms with some of the worst specimens of humanity in order to elevate one of the worst specimens of humanity–someone whose life and message are the exact opposite of anything even remotely connected to Jesus Christ–to the highest office in our nation’s government, and then claiming that I am compelled to support the whole shitshow on the basis of my Christian faith. Over the past four years, and especially the past year, I have seen things that I cannot unsee and that I refuse to unsee. Now black theology comes along (in actuality it’s been here all along and I am just now discovering it), promising that everything I’ve wanted to believe and hoped was true about God is true after all: that God is on the side of the oppressed and will hold the oppressors of this world to account. That God sees exactly what I have seen over the past four years and especially this past year, and does not denounce me as fucking crazy for having seen what I have seen or felt what I have felt about it.
Advent is the four weeks before Christmas. More precisely, it is three full weeks plus whatever fraction of a week is needed to get to Christmas. What we usually do around here at this time of year is pick an Advent-related topic and talk about it for four weeks.
Advent is the four weeks before Christmas. More precisely, it is three full weeks plus whatever fraction of a week is needed to get to Christmas. What we usually do around here at this time of year is pick an Advent-related topic and talk about it for four weeks.
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