Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1842161
P. Hess
This volume is part of a series that seeks “to examine fundamental questions of life, touching on the meaning, purpose, and mission of education from a variety of spiritual and religious perspectiv...
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Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1826652
Jamall A. Calloway
ABSTRACT There has been much criticism – and an overall unfortunate dismissal – of William R. Jones' Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology (1973) in the literature of Black liberation theology. What is undertheorized, however, is the constructive possibilities of Jones' work. Analyzing the theological debate between Jones and James H. Cone provides us with the necessary material in order to construct a Black theology that commences with the assumptions of Jones' theodicy. I argue that theodicy is a useful “controlling category” for Black liberation theology, but only – and here I am following Kant – as a result of how its collapses rational arguments for believing in God/liberation. And it is precisely this failure that makes it profoundly useful as an avenue into understanding the contours of “Black faith” that undergirds Black liberation theology.
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Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1833968
Earle J. Fisher
ABSTRACT Rev. Albert Cleage’s contemporary and counterpart, Dr. James Hal Cone, emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a premier academic voice in Black theology. Cone and Cleage’s collegiality is complicated. Yet, their works on Black theology and Black power complement each other when read in contrast. This essay looks intently at excerpts from Cleage’s sermons, “Brother Malcolm,” and “Dr. King and Black Power” and puts them in conversation with excerpts from Cone’s book “Martin and Malcolm in America.” This work shows the variance in perspectives and theological convictions, as well as the rhetorical strategies employed by Cleage and Cone to make their case for the most faithful engagement to Malcolm and Martin’s contributions to civil rights, Black power, and Black theology.
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Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1842162
Anthony G. Reddie
One of the most important developments in contemporary Christian theology (particularly that of missiology), and faith-based practice, is the phenomenon of “World Christianity”. The growth of Chris...
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Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1840828
Marzia A. Coltri
ABSTRACT This article discusses the development of a hermeneutical, phenomenological approach to Sacred Scriptures emerging from a “Third World” Liberation Theology. Referring to a study of Rastafari theology, I focus on a postcolonial interpretation of the rituals in the Rastafari movement. The adoption in Rastafari livity of the Bible and of apocryphal books such as the Kebra Nagast, The Holy Piby, and The Promised Key explores the meaning of Black identity and of Liberation Theology. This paper undertakes a review of these sacred texts within the Rastafari movement. Indeed, the Rasta spiritual canons create a new category in biblical studies and thus apply a postcolonial discourse and criticism within a “Third World” Theology. This can be seen even in food and music. In 1960s reggae music, scriptural themes are imbued with Ethiopian Christianity. Charismatic figures such as Bob Marley have contributed to vocalising the importance of Black consciousness in the world, and more recently with Ital food, Rastas has marinated eating habits with scriptural themes.
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Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1842164
Anthony G. Reddie
In my own formative narrative as a Black liberation theologian and decolonial educator, I had to traverse the comparatively narrow Wesleyan evangelicalism into which I had been nurtured as a child. This was initially, no easy thing, given the fixed parameters of biblical authority, Holiness, Christian Perfection, and the doctrine of Assurance that permeated my Christian nurture and discipleship as a teenager in inner city Bradford. One of the early attractions of Black theology was the way in which it affirms contestation. Black theology has supported a systematic critique of orthodox, Western Christian theology, challenging long held and often cherished epistemological norms. Suddenly, I was no longer wedded to a colour bind, contextless perspective on the Christian faith. Rather, now I was in possession of a set of conceptual tools and religious praxis that amplified my lived realities and enabled me to become, a more critical thinker and advocate for justice and faith inspired models of liberation. This issue of our journal has been constructed like the last one against the backdrop of Black LivesMatter and the necessity of contesting the aberrant notion that our lives are somehowdisposable and of little consequent worth against the seemingly unyielding edifice that is White supremacy. The articles in this issue all share a commitment to exploring notions of contestation and asserting alternative truths. Whether through reinvestigating earlier iterations of Black theology thinking, or outlining new ways of interrogating existing religious phenomena, the articles in this issue are seeking to provide new avenues for contesting prevailing notions of Black disposability and the appropriation of Black suffering and pain. Allan Aubrey Boesak is one of the towering elders of the Black theologymovement and we honoured to publish what is his first article in our journal. This article is concerned with the necessity for Black oppressed peoples to cultivate a belief in a "fighting God" who is unequivocally committed to Black freedom. Central to this work is the iconic figure of Steve Biko. Even though Biko’s reflections on Black theology per se were sparse, they are extremely important in Boesak’s view, as they open up new avenues for Black theological reflection and praxis as regards the fundamental questions of integrity and authenticity in global struggles for freedom, equity and dignity. Boesak’s believes that in these struggles Black liberation theology is not only relevant but necessary. This article discusses the contexts within which modern South African Black theology came into being. It explores Biko’s definitions of Black theology and how they can give rise to a renewed praxis in post-apartheid South Africa and beyond. J. Andrew Calloway’s article explores the interface between what remains the major polarized philosophical and theological fault line in Black theology, namely, the divide between James H. Cone and William R. Jones. The former’s
作为一名黑人解放神学家和非殖民化教育家，在我自己的形成过程中，我不得不穿越相对狭窄的卫斯理福音主义，我从小就受到这种教育。起初，这并不是一件容易的事，因为圣经的权威、圣洁、基督教的完美，以及确信的教义，这些都是我十几岁时在布拉德福德市中心接受的基督教教育和门徒训练的固定参数。黑人神学早期吸引人的地方之一是它肯定争论的方式。黑人神学支持了对正统的西方基督教神学的系统批判，挑战了长期以来人们所珍视的认识论规范。突然间，我不再拘泥于对基督教信仰的色彩束缚和没有背景的看法。相反，现在我拥有了一套概念工具和宗教实践，它们放大了我的生活现实，使我成为一个更具批判性的思想家，倡导正义和信仰的解放模式。这期杂志和上一期一样，是在“黑人的生命也很重要”的背景下编写的，也是在有必要挑战一种反常的观念的背景下编写的，这种观念认为，我们的生命在某种程度上是可以随意支配的，因此没有什么价值，反对白人至上主义这个看似毫不动摇的大厦。本期的文章都致力于探索争议的概念，并主张另一种真理。无论是通过对早期黑人神学思想的重新研究，还是对现有宗教现象提出质疑的新方法，本期的文章都在寻求提供新的途径，来反驳黑人被抛弃的普遍观念，以及对黑人苦难和痛苦的侵占。Allan Aubrey Boesak是黑人神学运动的元老之一，我们很荣幸地在我们的杂志上发表了他的第一篇文章。这篇文章关注的是受压迫的黑人必须培养一种信仰，相信一个明确致力于黑人自由的“战斗的上帝”。这项工作的核心是史蒂夫·比科的标志性人物。尽管Biko对黑人神学的反思本身是稀疏的，但在Boesak看来，它们是极其重要的，因为它们为黑人神学的反思和实践开辟了新的途径，关于在全球争取自由，平等和尊严的斗争中的完整性和真实性的基本问题。Boesak认为在这些斗争中黑人解放神学不仅是相关的，而且是必要的。本文探讨了现代南非黑人神学产生的语境。它探讨了比科对黑人神学的定义，以及这些定义如何在种族隔离后的南非及其他地区引发一种新的实践。J. Andrew Calloway的文章探讨了黑人神学中仍然存在的主要极化哲学和神学断层线之间的界面，即詹姆斯·h·科恩和威廉·r·琼斯之间的分歧。前者对犹太-基督教传统中上帝无条件的自由品质的主张遭到了后者对科恩黑人神学概念中基于信仰的有神论品质的批判的反对。卡洛维的文章开始对琼斯的开创性著作《上帝是白人种族主义者吗?》进行文本分析。:《黑人神学序言》(1973)。接下来，本文将继续研究詹姆斯·h·科恩的作品，看看他在琼斯批判之前和之后是如何处理神正论和苦难的，以了解围绕这场辩论的问题是否改变了他后来的建设性项目。分析琼斯和科恩提出的类似问题，以及他们随后的辩论，为我们提供了必要的材料，以便构建一种黑人神学
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Pub Date : 2020-08-10DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1792744
Marvin E. Wickware
Following James Cone’s death, black male theologians must ask how we might properly honour his influence upon our ongoing work, while reckoning with its limits in relation to his struggle to fully ...
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Pub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1781342
Anthony G. Reddie
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Pub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1781340
Edgar “Trey” Clark
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Pub Date : 2020-05-03DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2020.1785732
Anthony G. Reddie
This editorial is written against the backdrop of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement following the callous murder of George Floyd at the hand of the police in Minneapolis. As heinous as George Floyd’s murder was, we need to recognize that most Black people do not experience the same extreme level of police violence, in their daily operations of life. Rather, what we face is a litany of often covert forms of racism that are not so visible and dramatic as brutal murder caught on camera. The racism that many of us experience is systemic in nature, often hidden in “plain sight”, which the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed as being more than just our paranoia or having “chips on our shoulders”. The “Black Lives Matter” movement emerged to counter the patently obvious fact that, throughout the so-called “developed” world, Black lives do not matter. This is not just a question of economics or materiality; it is also about seemingly intangible matters such as the impact of racism on our psyche and associated questions of representation and spirituality. The articles in this issue all address aspects of Black Lives Matter in the differing thematic and intellectual frameworks deployed by the various authors. The creation of Black theology, first as a lived, experiential resource responding to the terror of slavery and Black oppression on the plantations of the Americas and the Caribbean, to becoming a systematic, rational study of the nature and the being of God in response to the continued negation of Blackness in the latter half of the twentieth century; this intellectual movement has always asserted that Black Lives Matter. Given this overarching theme for this issue, it is no wonder, then, that we should commence it with an extended piece detailing the life and intellectual biography of the greatest of all Black theologians, the inimitable, James Hal Cone. This piece is the longest article we have ever published in this journal, but it is fitting to do so, as one could legitimately argue that the discipline of Black theology, and therefore, this journal might not exists without James Cone. The need to assert that Black Lives Matter is in itself an outrage. The many years of White silence and inertia is a testament to a culture in which the normality of White supremacy was so embedded in our structures and systems that most decent, law abiding, White people remained untroubled at the existence of Black suffering and pain. The articles in this issue are a poignant reminder of the substantive cause that lies at the heart of Black theology, namely, that of Black agency and self determination as a riposte to the stultifying presence of anti-Black racism and White supremacy.
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