Black theology

**This entry comes by special request from someone with the initials NN.**

The blogosphere has been buzzing about one presidential hopeful's ties to an inner-city Chicago church that espouses what has come to be known as Black theology.

These PC Pundits point to the website of Barack Obama's home church, where he was baptized more than 20 years ago, and cry foul over its decidedly Black overtones.

You be the judge.

What follows is taken verbatim from the official website of Trinity United Church of Christ:

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.

The Pastor as well as the membership of Trinity United Church of Christ is committed to a 10-point Vision:

A congregation committed to ADORATION.
A congregation preaching SALVATION.
A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION.
A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.
A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION.
A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION.
A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA.
A congregation committed to LIBERATION.
A congregation committed to RESTORATION.
A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY.

The movement on this issue in conservative circles is fairly predictable. First, conservative hand-wringers wax and wane about a ridiculous scenario in which "Black" is replaced with "White" and then speculate on the fallout that would ensue.

Second, they have sought to attach one of the church's "ten points" (actually, number ten) to a communist ideology--coloring the issue, and by connection the candidate, red.

It is, however, striking that the life of Christ (were it to be characterized as one or the other) is certainly more socialist than capitialist in character.

(Where is the Protestant Ethic when our conscience needs it?)

This is certainly not the first time this sort of bait and switch tactic has been used in a presidential election, nor will it be the last. But, I would be remissed if I didn't take the opportunity to clear up a few things.

Black theology

Black theology grew out of a much larger doctrine of liberation in the Catholic Church (circa 1963).

Liberation theology, as it is called, was borne out of the New Testament's admonition to bring about justice in the world--and often with a sword.

It is a theology of powerful versus oppressed, weak versus strong.

The story of Jesus in the New Testament is replete with examples of intercession in the lives of the oppressed; and the freedom for which Christ fought was not just freedom of the mind, soul and spirit, but freedom from physical bondage.

Historical underpinnings

The Liberation Theology movement was brought to the fore primarily in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s when the poor were being subjugated by rogue governments, opportunistic capital and, at times, even the U.S. military (undergirding puppet governments to stave off populist movements that, historically, are bad for business).

(Perhaps the most famous [or at least contemporary] liberation theologist was Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide, pictured right. Aristide, a devout Catholic and populist president of Haiti, was deposed twice by military coups. He was an ardent opponent of globalization.)

This movement was almost strictly Latino in character, though such an ideology has currency all over the world.

Black theology, specifically, branched out of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa in the 1970s, when millions of Africans were being oppressed by a minority of whites, holdovers from a vast Christianizing mission that eventually colonized the South Africa (and the rest of the continent with it).

That Black theology served as a unifying ideology in South Africa is wholly ironic in that it was missionaries who converted and colonized Africans with the ethos of Christianity.

Christianity, and by connection its liberation theology (though not yet codified), would have been an alien doctrine before the age of colony in Africa.

Why Black Theology?

For those among us who contend that Black theology is divisive, I have only this: history matters.

The experience of Blacks in the West (and by extension Christendom) has not been a good one, historically speaking.

To call Black theology divisive belies and understanding of this fact: Whites are not all guilty for the continuing presence of racism in the world, but we're all responsible.

This is our inheritance.

We created difference every chance we got and we've reaped a whirlwind for it.

When separation wasn't organic, we wanted to make it appear as if it was. That is the legacy of our ancestors; that is our legacy.

Black theology, then, is a forseeable consequence of historic inequality.

It's legitimate in that it is representative of continuing inequality between the races all over the world. It admits into evidence a reality that many Whites (and others) simply do not want to believe: that being created equal has meant little to nothing for Blacks in this country and elsewhere.

Obama's adherence to such an ideology should make him more, not less, electable.

But, I'll bet it doesn't.