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What does the gospel of Jesus Christ have to do with the struggle of black people for liberation from white oppression?

      Black theology is a theology that equates liberation with salvation. It proclaims that the gospel affirms the black quest for freedom because the gospel of Jesus Christ is freedom. The relation between Jesus and the freedom of the oppressed means that God is revealed as the One who delivered Israel out of the house of bondage, the God whom the slaves believed would liberate them, and the God who sides with the oppressed today. Christ in black theology is not the blond-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned man who appears in European-American culture and art. Christ was poor, oppressed, despised, and persecuted. Christ died the death of a slave and rose again to witness the power of God over the forces of oppression. This is the Christ of black theology. The Holy Spirit in black theology is not simply that force which compels us to lead pious lives. The Holy Spirit is the presence of God in the world. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of freedom. Black theology, in essence, is the spiritual expression of the black power movement and the political expression of African American faith.

      Black theology is a church theology and a folk theology. It did not come from seminaries or divinity schools. As such it is not just an “intellectual” enterprise. This does not mean that there is no place for black theology in the academic setting; rather, it means that the criteria for its authenticity must be rooted in the black religious community. Black theology also represents the prophetic strand in African American religious thought. There are other strands within the tradition. More conservative black religionists tend to eschew the radicalism of black theology; others adopt a kind of agnosticism that sees the religion of black folk as a crutch for the weak. Both of these strands are subordinate within the tradition of black theology and almost always submit to canons of evaluation that are not drawn from the black community. Thus, for virtually all black theologians, prophetic black Christianity alone is authentic.

      Black theologians acknowledge their debt to the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as to the black power movement. While King had reservations about the black power movement and its strategies for liberation, he embodied a radicalism of his own that was fully consistent with the African American religious tradition of resistance. King’s work, like that of David Walker, Sojourner Truth, and Henry McNeal Turner, is a progenitor of today’s black theology.

      Although black theology is noted for its concentrated focus on the meaning of the gospel for black people, it is not monolithic. Black theology has always been a corporate enterprise. The first anguished utterances of black theology were not issued in a book-lined study but among a group of black clergy trying to make sense of the senseless suffering their people were experiencing. One of the dangers that black theologians face today is isolation from one another and from the black community. This isolation can easily happen when a black clergyman or clergywoman finds himself or herself the lone black faculty member on an otherwise all-white faculty or when an assignment takes him or her to some remote academic enclave. To counter this danger, black theologians must insist on creating opportunities for collegial work and communal witness. This is especially important because black theology is still developing. It is vital and alive. It is not a body of doctrine that has been set into stone but a way of believing that has been set in flesh. The study of black theology, then, is inquiry not into dead tradition but into living history.

      In spite of the pain and alienation caused by racial oppression, black theologians, like black people in general, remain open to the possibility of God’s redemption of the oppressors. This means that black theologians are willing to engage in dialogue with other theological perspectives that seek to confront the challenge of the message of liberation in the gospel. Process theologians and theologians of hope have been among the first white theologians to engage in this dialogue. Dialogue and even coalition are possible, given prior commitment to the liberation of the oppressed.

      Black theology is also applicable to the didactic or teaching ministry of the church. Black theologians have something to say to Christian educators in their churches, to college and university students in their quest for an accurate reading of black religion, and to graduate theological students. Without this applicability, black theology would be a mere pastime for seminary professors and their students.

      Finally, black theology continues to define the doctrinal affirmations of African Americans. What a people confess and believe says a great deal about who they are. Without the theological attempt at self-definition, the black church would be doomed to wander without a self-identity.

      Black theology is a third-world theology. It is the theological reflection of a third-world people living in a first-world nation. Black theology shares with other third-world theologies a focus on liberation as the content of the Christian gospel. Historically, black theology in the United States and Latin America liberation theology arose at about the same time. Independently of one another, these two expressions came to the conclusion that the Christian gospel was consistent with the struggle of the oppressed for their liberation. Thus, black theology is related to the majority of Latin American liberation theologies by virtue of its emphasis on praxis, concrete theological formulations, and liberation as salvation. Black theology is also the product of an African people and therefore shares with other theological expressions from the African continent and from Asian peoples a distinctive attitude toward history and religion. This perspective on the power of indigenous religion is apparent in the black folk religion, which is the religio-cultural basis of black theology.

      Black theology in the United States, Latin American liberation theology, and black theology in South Africa are political theologies in the sense that they are concerned about the ordering of the world in a more just fashion. God’s righteousness is seen as the demand to bring about right relationships between members of and groups within the human family. The major obstacle to justice and peace is the continued oppression of the poor by the rich. Wealth and poverty are both actual and symbolic conditions of human life. They are the primary divisions within the human family. The term “poor” has become a political designation for those in Latin America who actually suffer the lack of material resources, as well as for those who have entered into solidarity with the poor and thereby experience, albeit in a derivative fashion, powerlessness. In black theology in South Africa, blackness and whiteness have become political designations for those who are actually classified by the government as black, as well as for those who see their destinies intertwined with their black brothers and sisters and thereby experience the effects of racial humiliation.

      Black theology, African theology, and Asian theology are cultural theologies in the sense that they are concerned with the recovery and preservation of their indigenous traditions and history. The pre-Christian and non-Christian elements in both black religion and Asian religions are not seen as impediments to the full presence of Christian faith; nor are these ancient religions seen as only preparatory stages for the advent of the higher religion of Christianity. African traditional religions, their remnants in the black folk religions of the African diaspora, and the great Asian religions are vital traditions that still anchor their adherents in a positive sense of belonging to a sympathetic universe. As an African-Asian theology, black theology in the United States embodies certain tendencies and predispositions that are not traceable to any Western or European influence. This element of otherness distinguishes it from other Western theologies. In these African-Asian theologies, important topics include the nature of the primary social unit (i.e., family, clan, tribe), the social responsibilities of members of the community to care for one another, and the expansion of the concept of community to include those who are no longer living. In these theologies, culture is the basis for assessing the identity of the human group. By turning inward, so to speak, and rediscovering the inner resources in its ritual, worship, and communal life, the community may resist the deadening effects of political, economic, and social oppression. In this instance God is affirmed as One who is present in the culture of the oppressed and who is made manifest in the symbols of holiness within that culture. Because the God is an immanent God rather than a God who shuns the particularity of culture, the theology that results is cultural discourse. That is, black theology, African theology, and Asian theology focus on their cultural and religious uniqueness as a sign of God’s presence.

      Theology as cultural discourse has flourished in those situations where the oppressed have suffered the religio-cultural

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