The gospel and the liberation of the poor
How can theology be black if the sources used for its explication are derived primarily from the white Western theological tradition?
What has the gospel of God to do with the weak and helpless and their struggle for freedom in human society? This question, the most critical issue that has shaped my theological consciousness, first achieved its importance in the particularity of the black religious experience during my early childhood in Bearden, Arkansas. Although the formulation of the question was not always precise, the everyday experience of black suffering, arising from black people's encounter with the sociopolitical structures controlled by whites, created in my consciousness a radical conflict between the claims of faith on the one hand and the reality of the world on the other.
Being Christian in a Racist Society
I remember discussing with my brother Cecil this conflict between the Christian faith and black suffering, and no rational explanation seemed to satisfy either of us. "If God is good," we asked, "and also capable of accomplishing his will, why then do black people suffer so much at the hands of white people? What was the reason for black slavery and our subsequent oppression? What does God plan to do about righting the wrongs inflicted upon our people?" These and similar questions occupied much of our intellectual reflection as we attempted to reconcile the reality of our everyday experience with our faith in Jesus Christ.
The conflict between faith and suffering was exacerbated by the fact that most of the brutality inflicted upon black people was done by white persons who also called themselves Christians. Whites who humiliated blacks during the week went to church on Sunday and prayed to the God of Moses and of Jesus. Although blacks and whites expressed their faith in their separate worship services in quite different ways, the verbal content of their faith seemed similar. That was why many blacks asked: How could whites be Christian and yet do such horrible things to black people? And why does God permit white people to do evil things in the name of Jesus Christ? During my childhood in Bearden, the exclusion of black people from white churches was the most obscene contradiction that I could imagine.
