Showing posts with label African American. Show all posts
Showing posts with label African American. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 5- a recommended book list
Recommended Books:
This is not an exhaustive list. I am putting a star by those books that up-hold good orthodox and/or Reformed theology.
I began this study by reading two books in opposition to each other. One book was recommended to me by Rev. Mark Lomax pastor of First African Presbyterian Church in Lithonia, Georgia. That is Black Religion and Black Radicalism by Gayraud S. Wilmore.
It is written by a professor who was himself a part of the various civil rights and Black Nationalist events in the sixties.27 That makes the end of his book something of an oral history and very interesting. However, I do add some caution. Wilmore is very liberal and he tends to turn stories of early Christian slaves into those seeking mainly power and earthly liberation. That is a half truth.
The book I countered this with was written by a Reformed Baptist Pastor, Thabiti M. Anyabwile. His book *The Decline of African American Theology: from Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity, is laid out in a unique way.
He looks at a different biblical doctrine in each chapter and then assesses the historical theology of African American Christians from slavery to the present day under that heading. Anyabwile's stories of early Reformed African American Christians are uniquely uplifting but of course sad. He also provides excellent information on both Liberation theology and some of the heretical teachings of the Charismatic movement.
Another good Reformed book written by an African American is *On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African-American Christian Experience, by Anthony J. Carter.
I will explain this book by quoting John Piper, “When I met Anthony Carter several years ago, I detected a rigorous mind, a righteous concern for racial justice, and a Reformed vision of God-a rare combination. Since then I have wanted to be a listener. Now this book makes that easier. May the Lord of nations use it to shape a powerful movement of God-centered Christians from all peoples who have tasted suffering.” An important part of this book is the inclusion of three confessions of the sin of racism by, The Assemblies of God, The Southern Baptist Convention and The Presbyterian Church in America.
On Africa and history I will recommend several books. Thomas c. Oden's book, *How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity, is meant to encourage the reader to return to the early African Church Fathers and Mothers.
Oden wants the reader to understand that these men and women were truly African and their Christianity was orthodox. One particularly interesting part of this book is his tracing of early Christianity along the Nile and other inland areas of Africa. This book is part of a project, “The Center for Early African Christianity,” meant to interest scholars in the study of ancient Christianity in Africa.
Edwin M. Yamauchi, in his book *Africa and the Bible sets out to disprove some of the more persistent untruths about Africa and the Bible. Here is material that refutes racist's ideas from both sides including the “curse of Ham.” Yamauchi's text is also helpful in simply studying the Bible. Africa and the Bible has a comprehensive section on Afrocentric Christianity.
For those who wish to pursue simply the study of African religions, another book recommended to me by Rev. Lomax is African Religions and Philosophy by John S. Mbiti. I found it very helpful although I did not always agree with some of his definitions.
27 See “Activist James Forman being remembered as change agent for the Church” PNS http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2005/05026.htm
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 4
This is the concluding part of this article except for a short reading list I will post next.
Black Nationalism:
There is a long history of Black Nationalistic movements. One that is often referred to in African American history began in Jamaica in 1914 and was founded by Marcus Garvey. 'The Universal Negro Improvement Association' became a large and important movement among African Americans in the United States.19 Garvey's movement gave many African Americans a sense of dignity and hope. While Garvey pushed for equality for African Americans, his main goal was to free Africa from all other nations and establish it as a nation for all African peoples including those living in the United States. Garvey wrote:
"I asked, `Where is the black man's Government?' “Where is his King and his kingdom?' `Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?' I could not find them, and then I declared, `I will help to make them.'"20
Garvey was a separatist, to be precise, he felt that there should be neither intermarriage nor intermingling of the races. And he was eccentric to say the least. He agreed to interview and be interviewed by the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
One of his reasons was that he felt the KKK was behind the United States Government. Another reason was he felt that he and the Grand Wizard held the same view points about their own people's needs. In a speech he stated:
"So you realize that the Universal Negro Improvement Association is carrying out just what the Ku Klux Klan is carrying out-the purity of the white race down South-and we are going to carry out the purity of the black race not only down South, but all through the world."21
A sad part of the history of Garvey is his extreme views on race and nationalism. But it is a lesson and should be noted. The Editor of Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, Bob Blaisdell, writes:
"His [Garvey's] hard, long-standing, and narrow adherence to, and belief in, nationalism now led him to identify and sympathize with such European tyrants as Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, and Nazi leader Adolph Hitler, of Germany. In March 1934, in Garvey's magazine, The Black Man, he recommended that his readers peruse Mein Kampf, expressing his hope that one day the black race would produce its own Hitler: “Hitler has a lesson to teach and he is teaching it well.' To a long-time U.N.I.A. supporter in 1937, Garvey boasted, `We were the first Fascists. We had disciplined men, women and children in training for the liberation of Africa. The black masses saw that in this extreme nationalism lay their only hope and readily supported it. Mussolini copied fascism from me, but the Negro reactionaries sabotaged it".22
Strangely, Garvey, who fought with compassion for his own people's equality, failed to grasp the essential evil and destructiveness of any kind of racism. The problem continues.
Many Black Nationalists, not unlike the white Neo-Nazi movement leaders, believe they are at war with the United States government. They view any prisoner connected to such groups as the Black Panthers as political prisoners. Likewise much of their rhetoric is fed by conspiracy theories. For instance, one theory is that the United States government used the Mafia as spies during the Second World War. Therefore after the war the government, allowed the Mafia free rein in the ghettos to sell drugs to young black men.23
These views become scary when they blend with the Black Nationalist's concepts of homeland and black unity. They believe they must work toward a united Africa and/or for an independent nation within the United States for those who live in Diaspora.
In the sixties, the push for an independent land for African Americans within the United States was part of the call for reparations within a document entitled the “Black Manifesto.” The document was directed toward Churches and Synagogues at the Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit in 1969. The Black Manifesto among other quests asked for five-hundred million dollars from the mainline religious bodies for the African American community. James Forman, at one time the executive director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, wrote and presented the preamble to the Black Manifesto at the conference. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Professor and Presbyterian Pastor in his book, Black Religion and Black Radicalism writes of the presentation:
"The preamble was a caustic indictment of black accommodation and white racism. It called for the identification of black America with Africa and the repudiation of capitalism and imperialism. `We are dedicated,' said Forman, `to building a socialist society inside the United States …led by Black people …concerned about the total humanity of the world.' He broadly hinted at the seizure of state power and guerrilla warfare and declared the control of the conference was being justly seized by virtue of `revolutionary right.'"24
And indeed, some groups that are nationalistic are willing to turn to violence in order to procure their demands. For instance, a contemporary black nationalist organization, the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement, states on their web site, “we are building a network of Black/New Afrikan activists and organizers committed to the protracted struggle for the liberation of the New Afrikan Nation - By Any Means Necessary!"25
They also have as their goal a nation within the United States; referring to a part of their movement known as New Afrikan Independence Movement, they write:
“The NAIM, is part of the Black liberation Movement in North Amerikka [a supposedly African way of spelling America] that wants independent Black Nation on land in north amerikka. The land identified by the New Afrikan Independence Movement is primarily known as South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as other areas of what is now called the Black-Belt South, where Afrikan people are in the majority or have a historical/economical/socio-cultural relationship to.”26
But now the water gets very murky and troubling. There are under-currents of connections that exist between some Radical Afrocentric Churches, Black Liberation Theologians and Black Nationalist groups such as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the Nation of Islam.
All see civilization emerging out of Africa. Likewise they see all concepts of a monotheistic God, as in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, emerging out of Africa's indigenousness religions. All three groups insist that all African people are ethnically inter-connected and therefore should be referred to as Africans or Africans in Diaspora. They work together on the same projects, few denouncing the other's racism or heresy. They honor as well as give and accept awards from each other irrespective of the racism and violence promoted by their separate organizations. And most of them believe that Evangelical, orthodox and/or Reformed Christianity is a white religion and alien to their own black faith.
The King and His Kingdom: God's Gift
White Americans have sinned in their racism and their disregard for African Americans. White Christians have sinned in their failure, in the past and today, to denounce slavery and discrimination. African Americans, like Israel before them, have sinned in their disregard for the biblical Lord who has been with them in all of their sorrows and despair. They have also sinned by turning to the same kind of racism that white America has been infected with for so long. But the two kneel before the same Lord. They are one body. They must be one body. “Now you are Christ's body and individually members of it.” (1 Cor 12:27)
And unlike Garvey who sought for a king and a kingdom for his people, this one body the Church, black, white and every ethnicity from every tribe on earth have a King and a Kingdom. Neither African American Christians nor white Christians can atone for all of these sins but they have a Redeemer, the work of redemption was His. It is now done. The Church needs to gather at that cross making common cause, in the faith, with one another and with Him, the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ.
And they sang a new song, saying,
Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” (Rev. 5:9-10)
19 Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, Editor Bob Blaisdell, “Introduction,” (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications: 2004), iii-v.
20 “The Negro's Greatest Enemy,” Current History Magazine, September 1923, found in, Ibid, 3.
21 “Hon. Marcus Garvey Tells of Interview with the Ku Klux Klan: The Ku Klux Klan is the invisible government of the United States of America.” Liberty Hall, New York City July 9, 1922, found in Ibid, 81.
22 Ibid, “Introduction,” x, Editors footnotes, The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Volume 7. 580-581. & J. A. Rogers, World's Great Men of Color (1947) quoted by Tony Martin in Race First, 60., “Garvey's most fervent admirers have not been able to explain away these deplorable alliances and sentiments.”
23 For all of this information read, “A brief History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle,” by Sundiata Acoli at http://www.prisonactivist.org/pubs/brief-hist-naps.html" http://www.prisonactivist.org/pubs/brief-hist-naps.html.
24 Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, tenth printing, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books 2006), 235; See also “A Black Manifesto,” Time 1969, at, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902585,00.html.
25 See http://mxgm.org/web/about-mxgm/putting-in-work.html.
26 See http://mxgm.org/web/programs-initiatives/why-we-say-free-the-land.html.
27 See “Activist James Forman being remembered as change agent for the Church” PNS, http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2005/05026.htm.
Black Nationalism:
There is a long history of Black Nationalistic movements. One that is often referred to in African American history began in Jamaica in 1914 and was founded by Marcus Garvey. 'The Universal Negro Improvement Association' became a large and important movement among African Americans in the United States.19 Garvey's movement gave many African Americans a sense of dignity and hope. While Garvey pushed for equality for African Americans, his main goal was to free Africa from all other nations and establish it as a nation for all African peoples including those living in the United States. Garvey wrote:
"I asked, `Where is the black man's Government?' “Where is his King and his kingdom?' `Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?' I could not find them, and then I declared, `I will help to make them.'"20
Garvey was a separatist, to be precise, he felt that there should be neither intermarriage nor intermingling of the races. And he was eccentric to say the least. He agreed to interview and be interviewed by the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
One of his reasons was that he felt the KKK was behind the United States Government. Another reason was he felt that he and the Grand Wizard held the same view points about their own people's needs. In a speech he stated:
"So you realize that the Universal Negro Improvement Association is carrying out just what the Ku Klux Klan is carrying out-the purity of the white race down South-and we are going to carry out the purity of the black race not only down South, but all through the world."21
A sad part of the history of Garvey is his extreme views on race and nationalism. But it is a lesson and should be noted. The Editor of Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, Bob Blaisdell, writes:
"His [Garvey's] hard, long-standing, and narrow adherence to, and belief in, nationalism now led him to identify and sympathize with such European tyrants as Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, and Nazi leader Adolph Hitler, of Germany. In March 1934, in Garvey's magazine, The Black Man, he recommended that his readers peruse Mein Kampf, expressing his hope that one day the black race would produce its own Hitler: “Hitler has a lesson to teach and he is teaching it well.' To a long-time U.N.I.A. supporter in 1937, Garvey boasted, `We were the first Fascists. We had disciplined men, women and children in training for the liberation of Africa. The black masses saw that in this extreme nationalism lay their only hope and readily supported it. Mussolini copied fascism from me, but the Negro reactionaries sabotaged it".22
Strangely, Garvey, who fought with compassion for his own people's equality, failed to grasp the essential evil and destructiveness of any kind of racism. The problem continues.
Many Black Nationalists, not unlike the white Neo-Nazi movement leaders, believe they are at war with the United States government. They view any prisoner connected to such groups as the Black Panthers as political prisoners. Likewise much of their rhetoric is fed by conspiracy theories. For instance, one theory is that the United States government used the Mafia as spies during the Second World War. Therefore after the war the government, allowed the Mafia free rein in the ghettos to sell drugs to young black men.23
These views become scary when they blend with the Black Nationalist's concepts of homeland and black unity. They believe they must work toward a united Africa and/or for an independent nation within the United States for those who live in Diaspora.
In the sixties, the push for an independent land for African Americans within the United States was part of the call for reparations within a document entitled the “Black Manifesto.” The document was directed toward Churches and Synagogues at the Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit in 1969. The Black Manifesto among other quests asked for five-hundred million dollars from the mainline religious bodies for the African American community. James Forman, at one time the executive director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, wrote and presented the preamble to the Black Manifesto at the conference. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Professor and Presbyterian Pastor in his book, Black Religion and Black Radicalism writes of the presentation:
"The preamble was a caustic indictment of black accommodation and white racism. It called for the identification of black America with Africa and the repudiation of capitalism and imperialism. `We are dedicated,' said Forman, `to building a socialist society inside the United States …led by Black people …concerned about the total humanity of the world.' He broadly hinted at the seizure of state power and guerrilla warfare and declared the control of the conference was being justly seized by virtue of `revolutionary right.'"24
And indeed, some groups that are nationalistic are willing to turn to violence in order to procure their demands. For instance, a contemporary black nationalist organization, the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement, states on their web site, “we are building a network of Black/New Afrikan activists and organizers committed to the protracted struggle for the liberation of the New Afrikan Nation - By Any Means Necessary!"25
They also have as their goal a nation within the United States; referring to a part of their movement known as New Afrikan Independence Movement, they write:
“The NAIM, is part of the Black liberation Movement in North Amerikka [a supposedly African way of spelling America] that wants independent Black Nation on land in north amerikka. The land identified by the New Afrikan Independence Movement is primarily known as South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as other areas of what is now called the Black-Belt South, where Afrikan people are in the majority or have a historical/economical/socio-cultural relationship to.”26
But now the water gets very murky and troubling. There are under-currents of connections that exist between some Radical Afrocentric Churches, Black Liberation Theologians and Black Nationalist groups such as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the Nation of Islam.
All see civilization emerging out of Africa. Likewise they see all concepts of a monotheistic God, as in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, emerging out of Africa's indigenousness religions. All three groups insist that all African people are ethnically inter-connected and therefore should be referred to as Africans or Africans in Diaspora. They work together on the same projects, few denouncing the other's racism or heresy. They honor as well as give and accept awards from each other irrespective of the racism and violence promoted by their separate organizations. And most of them believe that Evangelical, orthodox and/or Reformed Christianity is a white religion and alien to their own black faith.
The King and His Kingdom: God's Gift
White Americans have sinned in their racism and their disregard for African Americans. White Christians have sinned in their failure, in the past and today, to denounce slavery and discrimination. African Americans, like Israel before them, have sinned in their disregard for the biblical Lord who has been with them in all of their sorrows and despair. They have also sinned by turning to the same kind of racism that white America has been infected with for so long. But the two kneel before the same Lord. They are one body. They must be one body. “Now you are Christ's body and individually members of it.” (1 Cor 12:27)
And unlike Garvey who sought for a king and a kingdom for his people, this one body the Church, black, white and every ethnicity from every tribe on earth have a King and a Kingdom. Neither African American Christians nor white Christians can atone for all of these sins but they have a Redeemer, the work of redemption was His. It is now done. The Church needs to gather at that cross making common cause, in the faith, with one another and with Him, the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ.
And they sang a new song, saying,
Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for you were slain and purchased for God with your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” (Rev. 5:9-10)
19 Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey, Editor Bob Blaisdell, “Introduction,” (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications: 2004), iii-v.
20 “The Negro's Greatest Enemy,” Current History Magazine, September 1923, found in, Ibid, 3.
21 “Hon. Marcus Garvey Tells of Interview with the Ku Klux Klan: The Ku Klux Klan is the invisible government of the United States of America.” Liberty Hall, New York City July 9, 1922, found in Ibid, 81.
22 Ibid, “Introduction,” x, Editors footnotes, The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Volume 7. 580-581. & J. A. Rogers, World's Great Men of Color (1947) quoted by Tony Martin in Race First, 60., “Garvey's most fervent admirers have not been able to explain away these deplorable alliances and sentiments.”
23 For all of this information read, “A brief History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle,” by Sundiata Acoli at http://www.prisonactivist.org/pubs/brief-hist-naps.html" http://www.prisonactivist.org/pubs/brief-hist-naps.html.
24 Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, tenth printing, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books 2006), 235; See also “A Black Manifesto,” Time 1969, at, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,902585,00.html.
25 See http://mxgm.org/web/about-mxgm/putting-in-work.html.
26 See http://mxgm.org/web/programs-initiatives/why-we-say-free-the-land.html.
27 See “Activist James Forman being remembered as change agent for the Church” PNS, http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2005/05026.htm.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 3
In this third part, once again notice that numbering for endnotes begins with the first posting.
Black Liberation Theology:
Radical Afrocentric Christianity is often a part of Black Liberation Theology. The two movements generally agree that the Hebrew Bible and biblical faith are rooted in black culture and black history. Sometimes this is explained in a very radical and rather anti-Semitic manner such as in the works of Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, the author of We The Black Jews: Witness to the `White Jewish Race' Myth.12
Often, it is, instead, slanted in a different, but still racist and heretical way, in the more academic works of such authors as Dwight N. Hopkins and James H.Cone who are mentioned in the first posting.
In Hopkins' book, Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, he explains that all cultures are given by God as a spark within and therefore he does not insist on “some movement to bring God to the side of a narrow nationalist cultural self-glorification. Nor is it the hubris of privileging one branch of human kind (that is, the black race) over another (the white race.)”13 And yet, writing further he states:
"The image of God in the black poor is the deeply entrenched Spirit that God's grace gave black folk at creation and that, now through generation after generation, exists by nature.
In addition, this Spirit within summons the black marginalized sectors of society to further liberate their captivity to false white normativity (sic) by claiming biblical indicators and pointers of black presence in the Bible itself. Biblical passages refer to Jesus with hair like wool and skin of bronze color. In fact, the only white people in the Christian Scriptures during the time of Jesus' birth are the European Roman exploiters and colonizers. Not only was Jesus not white, Jesus was from African and Asian ancestry.
Moreover, prior to debates about Jesus' ancestry, arguments continue to surface about the Garden of Eden being located in Northeast Africa. The implication suggests that even in the mythos of the creation narrative, Eve and Adam were Africans. Though the Spirit of liberation dwells in all people, no matter how much it might be submerged and surrounded by one's effort to turn away from it and thereby from God, God, in one sense, projected God's African-Asian image into the first human creation. When God said let us make human beings in our own image and created the first human beings in Africa, on a logical level, God was an African who reflected the divine self into human beings on the African continent."14
Likewise, but in a much more strident manner, writing about God's redemptive dealings with humanity, Cone states:
"For white people, God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people; and if they are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God's presence on earth. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches. They want God without blackness, Christ without obedience, love without death. What they fail to realize is that in America, God's revelation on earth has always been black, red, or some other shocking shade, but never white." 15
A horrific progression to this is that Cone wrote, Black Theology & Black Power, using Karl Barth as his guiding theologian. He quotes him incessantly. But, Cone in his thought's about God's revelation displaced Barth's theology. His idea that African Americans “are a manifestation of God's presence on earth” is without question anti-Barth. He later retracted his use of Barth in his preface to the 1989 reprint, writing:
"Barth's assertion of the Word of God in opposition to natural theology in the context of Germany during the 1930's may have been useful. But the same theological methodology cannot be applied to the cultural history of African Americans or to Africans and Asians on their continents. …
As in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom.”16
Both of the quotes by Hopkins and Cone are racist, heretical and explainable in the context of liberation theology. Liberation Theology began in South American and was a liberal but compassionate focus on the poor and oppressed in South American. It began among Catholic theologians who attempted to locate the revelation of Jesus Christ in the presence of the poor as a means of combating some oppressive governments.
Marxism was a part of the mix as a way of contextualizing the theology, changing the system and attempting to avoid relativism. That is to say, one looked within the society or culture to arrive at both the definition of sin and the presence of God. But, one begins with one's own awareness or suspicions, not with Scriptures. Sin was generally found anchored to the political system with some support in the community, God was found within the oppressed.
God is now manifested in any culture deemed oppressed. In fact according to some, culture is the bearer of God's revelation. On the web site of one Afrocentric Presbyterian Church, within their Credo, are the words "We beleive (sic) that human cultures are the containers of Divine Self -Revelation and that as such, the culture of every human being is to be respected.”
Yes, clearly, cultures are to be respected but even more clearly cultures are not the containers of God's revelation. When God's truth is revealed in some other way then through Jesus Christ alone as he is revealed in the Old and New Testaments, biblical Christianity begins to lose its way.
It happened in Germany during the Romantic period. Barth refers to this as he points to the “despised eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” while suggesting that the heresy of his own day was nothing new.17 Liberation theology began with Christ found in the poor, accordingly, God is now revealed in black culture subsuming all other oppressed people, including LGBTQ under their theology.18
A great peril arises when race, culture or religion (and here I am speaking of false religion) is seen as the true manifestation of God and so is worshiped in one manner or another. When this new manifestation of God speaks its words they will only be human words and often they will be false words and destructive to the Church.
12 Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan, We the Black Jews: Witness to the `White Jewish Race' Myth, Vol. I & II, reprint (Baltimore: Black Classic Press 1993).
13 Hopkins, Down, Up, and Over, 262.
14 Ibid., 263.
15 James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Orbis 1997) 150.
16 Ibid., xii.
17 Karl Barth, Theological Existence To-Day: A Plea for Theological Freedom, (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1933) 53.
18 Black Liberation theology is not alone in using their theology to pull in all other problems. For instance feminist ideology subsumes all other perceived oppression under its concepts. For instance the pollution of the environment is seen as a way of oppressing women because it is felt that nature and women are alike in some of their characteristics.
Black Liberation Theology:
Radical Afrocentric Christianity is often a part of Black Liberation Theology. The two movements generally agree that the Hebrew Bible and biblical faith are rooted in black culture and black history. Sometimes this is explained in a very radical and rather anti-Semitic manner such as in the works of Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan, the author of We The Black Jews: Witness to the `White Jewish Race' Myth.12
Often, it is, instead, slanted in a different, but still racist and heretical way, in the more academic works of such authors as Dwight N. Hopkins and James H.Cone who are mentioned in the first posting.
In Hopkins' book, Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, he explains that all cultures are given by God as a spark within and therefore he does not insist on “some movement to bring God to the side of a narrow nationalist cultural self-glorification. Nor is it the hubris of privileging one branch of human kind (that is, the black race) over another (the white race.)”13 And yet, writing further he states:
"The image of God in the black poor is the deeply entrenched Spirit that God's grace gave black folk at creation and that, now through generation after generation, exists by nature.
In addition, this Spirit within summons the black marginalized sectors of society to further liberate their captivity to false white normativity (sic) by claiming biblical indicators and pointers of black presence in the Bible itself. Biblical passages refer to Jesus with hair like wool and skin of bronze color. In fact, the only white people in the Christian Scriptures during the time of Jesus' birth are the European Roman exploiters and colonizers. Not only was Jesus not white, Jesus was from African and Asian ancestry.
Moreover, prior to debates about Jesus' ancestry, arguments continue to surface about the Garden of Eden being located in Northeast Africa. The implication suggests that even in the mythos of the creation narrative, Eve and Adam were Africans. Though the Spirit of liberation dwells in all people, no matter how much it might be submerged and surrounded by one's effort to turn away from it and thereby from God, God, in one sense, projected God's African-Asian image into the first human creation. When God said let us make human beings in our own image and created the first human beings in Africa, on a logical level, God was an African who reflected the divine self into human beings on the African continent."14
Likewise, but in a much more strident manner, writing about God's redemptive dealings with humanity, Cone states:
"For white people, God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people; and if they are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God's presence on earth. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches. They want God without blackness, Christ without obedience, love without death. What they fail to realize is that in America, God's revelation on earth has always been black, red, or some other shocking shade, but never white." 15
A horrific progression to this is that Cone wrote, Black Theology & Black Power, using Karl Barth as his guiding theologian. He quotes him incessantly. But, Cone in his thought's about God's revelation displaced Barth's theology. His idea that African Americans “are a manifestation of God's presence on earth” is without question anti-Barth. He later retracted his use of Barth in his preface to the 1989 reprint, writing:
"Barth's assertion of the Word of God in opposition to natural theology in the context of Germany during the 1930's may have been useful. But the same theological methodology cannot be applied to the cultural history of African Americans or to Africans and Asians on their continents. …
As in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom.”16
Both of the quotes by Hopkins and Cone are racist, heretical and explainable in the context of liberation theology. Liberation Theology began in South American and was a liberal but compassionate focus on the poor and oppressed in South American. It began among Catholic theologians who attempted to locate the revelation of Jesus Christ in the presence of the poor as a means of combating some oppressive governments.
Marxism was a part of the mix as a way of contextualizing the theology, changing the system and attempting to avoid relativism. That is to say, one looked within the society or culture to arrive at both the definition of sin and the presence of God. But, one begins with one's own awareness or suspicions, not with Scriptures. Sin was generally found anchored to the political system with some support in the community, God was found within the oppressed.
God is now manifested in any culture deemed oppressed. In fact according to some, culture is the bearer of God's revelation. On the web site of one Afrocentric Presbyterian Church, within their Credo, are the words "We beleive (sic) that human cultures are the containers of Divine Self -Revelation and that as such, the culture of every human being is to be respected.”
Yes, clearly, cultures are to be respected but even more clearly cultures are not the containers of God's revelation. When God's truth is revealed in some other way then through Jesus Christ alone as he is revealed in the Old and New Testaments, biblical Christianity begins to lose its way.
It happened in Germany during the Romantic period. Barth refers to this as he points to the “despised eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” while suggesting that the heresy of his own day was nothing new.17 Liberation theology began with Christ found in the poor, accordingly, God is now revealed in black culture subsuming all other oppressed people, including LGBTQ under their theology.18
A great peril arises when race, culture or religion (and here I am speaking of false religion) is seen as the true manifestation of God and so is worshiped in one manner or another. When this new manifestation of God speaks its words they will only be human words and often they will be false words and destructive to the Church.
12 Yosef A.A. ben-Jochannan, We the Black Jews: Witness to the `White Jewish Race' Myth, Vol. I & II, reprint (Baltimore: Black Classic Press 1993).
13 Hopkins, Down, Up, and Over, 262.
14 Ibid., 263.
15 James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Orbis 1997) 150.
16 Ibid., xii.
17 Karl Barth, Theological Existence To-Day: A Plea for Theological Freedom, (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1933) 53.
18 Black Liberation theology is not alone in using their theology to pull in all other problems. For instance feminist ideology subsumes all other perceived oppression under its concepts. For instance the pollution of the environment is seen as a way of oppressing women because it is felt that nature and women are alike in some of their characteristics.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 2
This is the second part of "Radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black Liberation Theology & Black Nationalism: Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community." Please note that I have continued on with the same numbered end noting.
Afrocentric Christianity
Afrocentric Christianity has partly emerged because of the racists attitudes of Western scholars since the Enlightenment. Many scholars, including anthropologists, during the Enlightenment until the middle of the twentieth century believed the religions of Africa were simplistic and primitive. Along side of this they insisted that Africa was an inconsequential continent.
Various scholars have refuted such ideas. Edwin M. Yamauchi, Professor of History emeritus at Miami University, Ohio, in his book Africa and the Bible, pinpoints those guilty of maligning the peoples of Africa. He names several, including David Hume, George Hegel, and C. G. Seligman “who applied social Darwinism to African ethnography, formulated the `Hamitic hypothesis,' which held that Caucasian Hamities, including the Egyptians, created everything of value in Africa.”6 This was an attempt by Seligman to insist that only light skinned peoples contributed to civilization in Africa.
Another scholar, Thomas C. Oden, recently retired Professor of Theology at The Theological School of Drew University, in his book How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity, writes of the greatness of early African Christianity. He concludes that early Christianity in Africa has been, at least partly, discounted by religious scholars because they simply, in their modernity, rejected ancient Christianity.
He writes of the “young Africa,” stating that “It is at once a very youthful survivor of wearisome modernity, and a most ancient, early, and, in that sense, young expression of both early Christianity and ancient Africa.” 7 Thus the Church of the centuries was shaped in its beginning by the early Church Fathers and Mothers of Africa.
African scholars, both American and others, have written extensively on the culture and religions of Africa in a successful project that disproves many of the caricatures of African religion.8
One important book is by a Pastor and Professor at the University of Bern, John S Mbiti. His book is African Religions and Philosophy. Another is The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a common Moral Discourse, by Peter J. Paris, Professor of Social Ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary. All of this scholarship feeds into the attempt by some African American Christians to return to their religious and cultural roots.
Radical Afrocentric Christianity: The divide among various Afrocentric Churches comes in the context of religion which for some passes over into racism and heresy. That is, some look back to indigenousness African religions, mixing them with their Christianity. They then lift up their culture beside a weakened and distorted Christianity. Those who have began syncretizing other religions with Christianity or including culture as a means of God's revelation I am referring to in this paper as radical Afrocentric Christians.
An example of this is one Presbyterian Afrocentric Pastor who has suggested naming the biblical God using African names such as “'Amen' `RA' and `Olodumare.'” He states that such naming would be acceptable since the African views of a high God are like the biblical view of God.9 But the gods he has named, while they may indeed have some common traits with the biblical God, such as omnipresence and omniscience, are neither Triune nor redemptive. In fact writing of the religions of Africa, John S Mbiti points out that none of them offer redemption in their belief system. He writes:
"This remains the most serious cul-de-sac in the otherwise rich thought and sensitive religious feeling of our peoples. It is perhaps here then, that we find the greatest weakness and poverty of our traditional religions compared to world religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism. These traditional religions cannot but remain tribal and nationalistic, since they do not offer for mankind at large, a way of `escape', a message of`redemption' (however that might be conceived).10"
One must quickly add, it is only Jesus Christ dying on the cross, God coming to us in flesh and offering himself up in sacrifice, that is truly redemptive. The God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the truly redemptive God. It is the Incarnation and the redemption of Jesus Christ which sets Christianity apart from all other religions
Non-radical Afrocentric Christianity: On the other hand, other Afrocentric Churches and Christians are simply seeking roots in their own ethnic cultures. For instance, they attempt to re-value African cultural norms by focusing on the community and family rather than the individual. They incorporate African dress, music and even rites of passage that are grounded in African culture.
Some African Americans, who are not Afrocentric, nonetheless suggest ways the black experience can enhance the whole Church, both black and white. Anthony J. Carter, who is a Reformed Christian, reaches back to biblical themes rather than indigenousness Africa religions. He sees that the early and contemporary African American Christians bring to the whole American Church a great gift, that is, its knowledge of how to be the Church in the midst of suffering. In Carter's book, Being Black and Reformed, he writes:
"If the predominantly white church in America desires to know the reality of a providential relationship with God in the midst of oppression as repeatedly demonstrated with ancient Israel, she need only plumb the depths of the rich heritage of her darker brothers and sisters. There she will not only find the most illustrative analogy of ancient Israel, but also find a people who have struggled with the pain of oppression and often tyrannical forms of discrimination and yet have joyfully witnessed the sustaining hand of God.11"
6 Edwin M. Yamauchi, Africa and the Bible, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2004), 206-207.
7 Thomas C. Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity,(Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press 2007), 30-31.
8 See, “Peter J. Paris, The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1995); John S Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, reprint, (Heinemann 2006); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made, (New York: Vintage Books 1974); Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, third edition (New York: Orbis Books 2006).
9 In E-mail on file.
10 Mbiti, African Religions, 96-97.
11 Carter, On Being Black and Reformed, 84.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community -part 1
I stated in my last posting that I would post my article, "Radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black Liberation Theology & Black Nationalism: Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community" in parts for my next several postings. I feel the article is relevant for the discussion on the Belhar Confession in all manner of ways. One may understand from this article that all are sinners in need of a Savior. Also one can begin to understand how one kind of evil, white racism, breeds another kind of evil, black racism. We are all guilty and so we need to bring discernment to the task ahead.
Radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black Liberation Theology & Black Nationalism:
Facing Racism and Heresy in the African American Community
"I grew up in a very racist family. My mother wished for an African American cook, my father would have thrown the food away if her wish had come true. We argued about their racism though out my teenage years. Teen age rebellion? Perhaps. More than likely it was my constant reading which included stories about the Quakers and the Underground Railroad. It was also friends, the Bible and my teenage conversion to Christ.
But the truth is I am still arguing. I have been writing articles on racism for almost twenty years. My first articles about racism were on the white Neo-Nazi groups called “Identity.” The last article was on some white pagan groups called Ásatrú and Odinist. Those groups worship the gods and goddesses of old European tribes including Odin and Thor. I wrote of the pagan groups, “The factor that either, makes them racists, or gives them the potential for racism, is their insistence on religion as a genetic development as well as an intrinsic part of the human essence.”1
In fact one recent piece of hate mail I received from an Ásatrú member stated, “The word `hate' in your context is clearly an attempt to distort perception and imply some kind of guilt at the very idea of unity among Native Europeans … You would have to be living in a cave not to see that most ethnic groups unit, (sic) march, organize, for the purpose of strength, preservation of culture, religion, heritage, borders etc....” The writer goes on to write about genetics and religion and how all of civilization is due to the European peoples.
But the movement I am now writing about is different; it is about African Americans who are also either racists or potential racists. It is also about a theology that is, as one African American Reformed Christian states, “little more than a mirror of much of the racist white theology against which it posited itself.”2 The movement is theological, cultural and political and is a combination of Black liberation theology, radical Afrocentric Christianity and various kinds of Black Nationalism.
The movement affects both white and African American believers. This is true because those African Americans who hold to an orthodox and biblical faith are being categorized under the title white.3 So most of what I write about this particular movement's antagonistic attitudes toward biblical and orthodox Christianity applies in just the same manner to orthodox and reformed African American Christians.
These three movements, black liberation theology, radical Afrocentric Christianity and Black Nationalism are fed by many streams. Emotionally they are fed by anger over past wrongs, terrible wrongs.4 But they are also fed by different theological, religious and political movements. For instance when reading Dwight N. Hopkins, Associate Professor of Theology at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, one finds a combination of liberation theology and either/or both process theology and `new thought.' The first type of theology follows the writings of Professor James H. Cone, the father of black liberation theology, the latter follows the early twentieth century founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Mosiah Garvey. 5
I will look at what I have defined as radical Afrocentric Christianity, Black liberation theology and Black Nationalism showing how they overlap and work together. Above all, my main focus will deal with the problem of grounding Christian theology and God's revelation in either culture, `religion' and/or race. I also want to recommend several helpful books and articles on this subject."
1See The NeoPagan Movement and Racism http://www.naminggrace.org/id59.htm Taken from, Watchman Expositor, Vol. 18, No. 4, 2001.
2 Anthony J. C. Carter, On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African-American Christian Experience, Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing 2003) 16.
3 For instance, see Asa G. Hilliard III, African Power: Affirming African Indigenous Socialization in the Face of Culture Wars,” (Gainesville, FL: Makare Publishing Company 2002), 4.
4 One excellent article dealing with both the horrible treatment of both slaves and contemporary African Americans is, “Bringing the Reformation to the African-American Church: An Interview with Pastor Ken Jones,” in Modern Reformation, “Grace Over Race,” Vol 17 #1 Jan/Feb 2008.
5 See, Thabiti M. Anyabwile, The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity, (Downers Grove: IVP Academic 2007), 78-79. For statements that sound like new thought in Dwight N. Hopkins works see Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2000) For instance, “This divine nature or image of God (or imago dei) has been dormant or subject to attacks on all sides, both internal and external, spiritual and material. Jesus comes as a process of action and dynamism and literally re-turns the poor to the path of their full potential.” (226)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)