Black Power/Black TheologyWilliam SoutherlandApril 20, 2015

Stokely Carmichael, while on James Meredith’s 1966 Mississippi March Against

Fear, introduced the concept of Black Power into the discourse of the larger black

freedom struggle in America. This action and the ensuing tension between Martin Luther

King’s nonviolent focus on inclusion with its amorphous concept of “Freedom” and

Carmichael’s new twist on a black nationalism that extends through Malcolm X to

Marcus Garvey and beyond, formed a creative dialectical-synthetic moment, an

epistemological starting point for a new set of black nationalist-inspired thought. With

the advent of Black Power, although it took two years to ripen, came Black Theology,

with James H. Cone at the forefront. This new Black Power version of theology,

characterized by a focus on both an expanded definition of blackness (which would be

disputed), a focus on collective black experience as the final measure of theological

worth, and a “black view” of both God and Christ, would grow in influence, albeit

briefly, in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. In the end Black Theology falls out of

practice because of structural resistance and internal, conceptual flaws, but during its

lifetime it challenged even the doctrines and practices of the Catholic church in America.

The March Against Fear and the Entry of Black Power

The 1966 Mississippi March Against Fear was an enigma from its start. The

brainchild of James Meredith, who had desegregated the University of Mississippi four

years prior, the Memphis-to-Jackson march began as the personal, somewhat muddled

political statement of an eccentric and unpredictable man. The established movement

organizations of the time, from Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership

Conference (SCLC) to Stokely Carmichael’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Committee (SNCC), had no immediate designs on Mississippi at the time. Freedom

Summer was two years gone, and the Mississippi Freedom Democrats, although still

funded and directly supported by SNCC, were running largely autonomously in their

continued Congressional challenges. This is not to say that these organizations had given

up on the state, but 1966 saw the beginning of the decline of this “heroic era” of the

larger civil rights movement. Goals, strategies, and tactics were in flux, as so much of

the initial work of the movement had been accomplished: 1963’s March on Washington,

1964’s Civil Rights Act, and 1965’s Voting Rights Act. By 1966 Mississippi itself

remained largely unchanged, with the forces of white supremacy firmly entrenched in

structures of power and violence. The simple truth is that Mississippi remained too hot,

too volatile, and too dangerous to be considered as a location of continued direct action,

particularly during a time when movement priorities and directions were unclear and

shifting.

But James Meredith forced the hand of SCLC and SNCC with regard to

Mississippi, as well as The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), The National

Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that white gunman Aubrey James Norvell forced the

hand when he shot and injured Meredith on the first day of the march. The larger

movement bodies and their representatives had been involved, hesitantly, in the

organization of the march, even going so far as to issuing a manifesto that, though largely

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authored by Meredith, was signed by King and Carmichael, although CORE’s Floyd

McKissick, NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, and The National Urban League’s Whitney Young

withheld their signatures, unable to agree on some of the manifesto’s more radical, black

nationalist-rooted, points. When Meredith was no longer able to complete his march due

to the shooting, these same leaders stepped in to fill the void of (at least symbolic) march

leadership, putting all the organizations in a conflict of control; as the march continued

and as the message of the march, never clearly defined to begin with, changed in tone,

SNCC and SCLC in particular found themselves at odds as to who would control the

march, particularly in the public eye. On June 15, 1966 in the Mississippi Delta city of

Greenwood, this conflict would reach its public peak, birthing a new slogan and a new

(although deeply rooted) movement: Black Power.

In the days leading up to June 15, the decision was made by march leaders (again,

a mix of SCLC and SNCC that were often at odds with each other) to detour the march

from its initial, direct Memphis-to-Jackson route on Mississippi Highway 51 westward

into the Mississippi Delta. The Delta had been a freedom struggle battlefield since the

earliest activist years of the 1950s, the land of Emmett Till, James O. Eastland, and

Fannie Lou Hamer. The move was both strategic and symbolic, reflecting the ongoing

tensions — the focus on voter registration, which SNCC had forced to the front of the

march’s activities, would (SNCC leaders reasoned, although incorrectly) find a greater

audience among the many Delta blacks still disenfranchised; King and SCLC leaders

reasoned on the connection that could be made to prior movement activities in the Delta,

and they openly desired to take the struggle into the land most gravely affected. This was

a distinctly risky move. White hostility was open and active in the Delta, and the

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expectation of threats, roadblocks, and continued harassment were fulfilled. White

resistance to the march, combined with conflicting march leadership, made for a volatile

mix, the catalyst behind the emergence of Black Power.

The drama began in earnest in the Delta town of Holcomb. Unlike previous

marches in the movement, the March Against Fear was very unsophisticated logistically.

Provisions for food, water, and shelter for the marchers were largely happenstance,

figured out on a town-by-town, last-minute basis with minimal scouting. This led,

naturally, to conflict after conflict as march organizers sought sources that were not

intimidated into inaction by white pressure. The biggest sticking point, a drama that

played out on a nightly basis, was locating sites for the marchers’ tents. Public parks

became the primary target, as was the case in Holcomb on the night of June 14, although

the properties of black churches and black schools were also used. The Holcomb housing

conflict, when town officials refused the marchers permission to camp in a local park,

became direct confrontation, with Carmichael being arrested (for the twenty-seventh

time) and jailed. He would be free by the next day, but this arrest combined with the next

day’s housing difficulties would serve to be a tipping point.

The Delta strategy was misled, a fact which became apparent very early on in the

detour. The extreme rural nature of the Delta, with blacks limited to off-limits

plantations, isolated from the marchers and from each other. SNCC lost its voter pool,

and SCLC lost its audience. The march became stuck in a barren Delta cul-de-sac,

shrinking in numbers and losing press attention. King temporarily left the march before

Holcomb, going back to Atlanta for organizational meetings, and was thus absent as the

march entered Greenwood, a town with a legacy of racial violence that included open

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assaults and numerous acts of arson during Freedom Summer. It was a dangerous place,

but a strategically sound move; march resistance (with the noted exception of the

Meredith shooting) to date had included police harassment and arrests, but had been

largely nonviolent (a fact which would change in days to come as the march entered

Canton and Philadelphia, Mississippi). Just as march organizers experienced the

expected resistance to their setting up tents in a Greenwood city park, resistance that

included physical and legal intimidation, Carmichael was delivered from jail and onto the

Greenwood scene. Thus, at the microphone, in the presence of white intimidation, and in

the absence of King, Carmichael issued the opening salvo:

“We been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we got to start saying now is Black Power!” He said it again and again, “We want Black Power! We want Black Power” (Goudsouzian 143)!

With the utterance of “Black Power” came a critical shift in the black freedom

movement,

With these two words Carmichael signaled a broad tactical and ideological shift in black freedom struggles…the guiding precepts of black freedom struggles changed from faith in law to faith in direct action; from faith in individualist remedies to faith in collective and community-based remedies; from faith in American pluralism to faith in black nationalism and radicalism” (Cressler 102).

Black Power quickly became the word of the day, and Carmichael appeared on all the

Sunday talk shows to defend and explain his position. King, accordingly, was forced to

do the same. Just as King’s supporters in the march countered the growing cries for

Black Power with the continued chant of “Freedom Now”, King found himself in front of

the press, publicly working through developing a response to Carmichael’s challenge:

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King never uttered the words “Black Power”, but he did try channeling the slogan into the democratic tradition…Straddling the widening gap between liberals and radicals, he promised that “when we get this power, we will try to achieve a society of brotherhood” (Goudsouzian 148).

Martin and Malcolm: Black Theology and Black Power

James H. Cone, the leading theologian of what would become the Black Theology

movement that arises directly out of Black Power, identifies this moment, Carmichael’s

introduction of Black Power into the larger black freedom struggle, the response of King,

and the continuing tension between the two stances as epistemic, a point in history when

a new idea, a new way of knowing and interpreting the world, steps into the public

consciousness. As Cone describes it, there were actually two new paradigms introduced:

Black Power and Black Theology. For Cone, the two are inextricably linked, and that

linkage takes shape, in part, in the connection that was created between Malcolm X’s

black nationalism, the ideological antecedent to Carmichael, and King’s theology, in the

moment that became defined by Black Power and its cohort black theology:

…Martin King and Malcolm X [are] one voice because each spoke a truth that was essential in the black freedom struggle. The “black” in black theology came from Malcolm X, and the “theology” in the phrase came from Martin King. Malcolm gave black theology its blackness, and King gave it its Christian identity (Cone 2010).

In addition to the marriage of Malcolm and King that Cone sees in Black

Theology, there are two major aspects of Black Power that translate, as shall be shown

below, into Black Theology: freedom and self-determination. There is, as a synthesis of

both Malcolm and Martin develops, the continued legacy of freedom that is reflected in

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God as liberator (as opposed to afterlife savior) of the oppressed, directly involved in the

ongoing struggle of blacks on the worldly plane.

There is, then, a desperate need for a *black theology*, a theology whose sole purpose is to apply the freeing power of the gospel to black people under white oppression (Cone 1969).

There is, as well, a continuation of black nationalist self-determination, a

consideration of the collective black will and hermeneutic lens that traces through

Malcolm and into the ecclesiasticism of Garvey. This is reflected in direct action in the

cause of God’s liberation, centered on scripture that is read through black eyes.

Black Power is an affirmation of the humanity of blacks in spite of white racism. It says that only blacks really know the extent of white oppression, and thus only blacks are prepared to risk all to be free (Cone 1969).

Cone further argues the self-determination of Black Theology with a link to established

Protestant theology:

A further clarification of the meaning of Black Power may be found in Paul Tillich’s analysis of the “courage to be”, which is “the ethical act in which man affirms his being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation” (Cone 1969).

Thus, with the birth of Black Power came the birth of a new Black Theology that,

although initially slow to develop, would find a voice within the next few years.

Black Power would grow and change in the years between Greenwood and the

1969 publication of Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power. The months after the

March Against Fear saw King’s nonviolence attacked on several fronts, including in a

failed attempt at a direct action challenge to racist real estate practice in Chicago.

Carmichael, under his new moniker of Kwame Ture, published the definitive document

of the movement, Black Power, in 1967. The greatest single catalyst for Black Power

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was King’s 1968 assassination and, more significantly, the urban rioting that followed.

Black Power grew as a major shift in the wake of the event, with the spread and increased

visibility of the Black Panthers in major American cities and the ramification of black

nationalism filling in the void left in the movement by the downfall of nonviolence. The

church was not left behind in this shift, particularly in an increased activism among

blacks in the mainline Protestant and Catholic faiths. Cone’s work codifies the moment,

incorporating Black Power into a new Christian belief construct that reflects the facts on

the ground. Cone is explicit: “This is Black Power, the power of the black man to say

Yes to his own black being” (Cone 1969).

Black Power/Black Theology: James Cone

But what are the characteristics of this “Black Theology” that professes its unity

with Black Power? The first thing that must be said of black theology,insofar as it is

proposed by Cone, is that it is a stern refutation of “slave religion”. Initial reticence to

introducing Christianity into slave populations in the US was quickly overcome when the

slaveholder came to know the strength of scripture as a tool of enslavement. The

slaveholder could justify his position, and the subordination of the slave, by simply

turning to scripture. From Genesis (the curse of Ham, Gen. 9:20-27) to the Pauline letters

(Philemon), the planter class was able to manipulate the Christian message to their end

for generations. The shift to a focus on the afterlife reward for the obedient servant was

made complete, or at least for a time. Certainly, the moral measure was made: the threat

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of black religious assembly (and the degree of autonomy that assembly affords) against

the benefit of nothing less than spiritual control of the oppressed race.

It is, then, a trick of history that the experience of the black church becomes such

a centerpiece of the American black freedom struggle of the 1950s-1970s — the space

that was allowed for the practice of slave religion did indeed live up to its liberative

potential, or at least to the extent that it was able given the environment. Black Christians

shut out of white churches, or relegated to back rows and balconies, created a new

autonomy in black denominations; in those black spaces a new theology could be brought

forth, and that theology could reflect the needs of the current day as much, or more, than

the ‘pie in the sky’ of the master’s God. By creating Christian spaces in the black

community as an enforcement of slave religion, the dominant white community made the

mechanism by which its counter could be produced — the foundations of a Black

Theology that stretches back to the centuries of slavery.

Consider the “counter-scriptures” that formulate the Black Theological challenge

to slave religion — among the black churches, in direct response to the afterlife-reward

model of the slave churches, the Exodus narrative is dominant. God freed Israel from

slavery; God is doing so for the African slave and the black sharecropper alike. This is a

critical point, because the deliverance narrative lays both an added Christological and

eschatological burden on Black Theology which, as shall be seen, have a strong

conceptual influence on Black Theology as a whole. In a sense, the liberation was

present in the condition on the ground in the black church (to the degree that the term can

be used inclusively), ready for the theology to find it.

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There are two broad “arms” to Black Theology which are expansive enough to

form its first layer. First and foremost, this Black Theology is experiential, which is to

say that the collective black experience, an experience sharpened by racism, is

authoritative; what is offered up in terms of scripture or ceremony must have some

bearing on this collective experience, and must be informed by it:

The fact that I am black is my ultimate reality…Therefore, if a higher Ultimate Reality is to have meaning, it must relate to the very essence of blackness (Cone 1970).

Divine revelation is present in and only in the person/event of Jesus, but the scriptures are

still a map to God, valid to the extent that they can be validated by the community’s

encounter with being oppressed under the reign of a God of the oppressed. God is found

in God’s own work toward the liberation of blacks. God is not for the afterlife; God is

for liberation now. This is all based in Cone’s concept of “the black situation”, which

must serve as “the locus for reflection and action” for all theological work (Beckford

2009, 492). This, of course, begs the question as to the qualities of this collective black

experience, remembering in particular that *Black Theology and Black Power* was

written on the heels of the Martin Luther King assassination and, of great meaning for

Cone, the ensuing riots. Thus black consciousness, or at least black Christian

consciousness, is under pressure here, at this particular historical moment.

The second arm of black theology, at least in the largest approach, is the concept

of blackness, which flows naturally from any consideration of collective black

experience. On this point, Cone is clear. There is a physiological dimension to

blackness, but there is also an ontological core, which opens the door to a more inclusive

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conception. It is worth quoting at length from one of Cone’s later works, A Black

Theology of Liberation:

First, blackness is a physiological trait. It refers to a particular black-skinned people in America, a victim of racist brutality. The scars of its members bear witness to the inhumanity committed against them. Black Theology believes that they are the only key that can open the door to divine revelation. Therefore, no American theology can even tend in the direction of Christian theology without coming to terms with the black-skinned people of America. Second, blackness is an ontological symbol for all those who participate in liberation from oppression. This is the universal note in Black Theology. It believes that all human beings were created for freedom, and that God always sides with the oppressed against the oppressors (Cone 1970).

These two over-arching concepts, black communal experience and a broadened concept

of blackness, open the door for Cone’s other theological concerns. Both theologically

and Christologically, any identification with blackness — a black God, a black Jesus —

has been permitted by Cone’s open, ontological view of blackness. God is a liberator;

God is doing the work of liberation for the black community just as He freed Israel from

Egypt. He has identified with the oppressed, therefore He has identified with the black,

therefore it makes perfect sense to speak of God as black. The incarnate Christ in turn

takes on blackness, returning to the historical figure of Jesus a skin hue that had long

been denied him by white Christianity. This consideration of Christ’s blackness is

essential far beyond any concerns of popular identification with the figure; for Cone,

Christ’s unity with the oppressed, meaning the black oppressed in America, is the very

nature of his saving work:

Jesus is not safely confined in the first century. He is our contemporary, proclaiming release to the captives and rebelling against all who silently accept the structures of injustice. If he is not in the ghetto, if he is not where men are living at the brink of existence, but is, rather, in the easy life of the suburbs then the gospel is a lie (Cone 1969).

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The image of the lynched God, a soteriological point that Cone focuses on in

more recent work, will be addressed later in this essay. Above all, it is the eschatology of

Cone’s black theology which stands out strongest, as it is on the ground of eschatology

that black theology’s final derailment of slave religion is found. For Cone, the eschaton

is now; God’s liberating work is among us in the present day. In order to remove the last

foothold of the “life ever-after” set from the black theological mind, Cone moves the end

of times to current times:

Unless the future can become present, thereby forcing blacks to make changes in

this world, what significance could eschatology have for those who believe that

their self-determination must become a reality now (Cone 1970).

This is precisely where Black Power enters the discourse, in this insistence that God’s

saving work is taking place among and for the oppressed. As detailed above, the

unification of Malcolm and Martin into a single message, as insisted by the very

existence of Black Power, not to say its existence on a King-led march through

Mississippi in 1968, conjures both thoughts of freedom (from oppression, led by God, as

Israel was from Egypt) and self-determination, as a race whose liberating journey is

through faith and action. Black Power, with Carmichael, takes the stage in a call-and-

response “What do you want?” “Black Power!” and with it comes the nascent black

theological movement (Goudsouzian 143). Within three short years, with the publication

of Cone’s work, Black Theology grew into something larger, if somewhat short of a

force, in the American theological world, and there would be ramifications in American

churches. Black Theology is Black Power, Black Power is Black Theology, and Black

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Power, according to Cone, “…means complete emancipation of black people from white

oppression by whatever means that black people deem necessary” (Cone 1969).

Black Theology and Vatican II

One cannot discuss American theology in the 1960s without addressing the

Second Vatican Council. The concurrence of Vatican II and the rise of Black Theology

in America had the interesting result of several practical manifestations of a new black

view of Christianity. Matthew Cressler chronicles the experience of a largely black

Catholic church in the south side of Chicago, St. Dorothy, and demonstrates that, for

some, Black Power, Black Theology, and the new church policies of Vatican II arose as

one.

Two points from Vatican II are applicable here. On the one hand, there is, under

council mandate, an increased focus on the ministry of the laity (a greater focus on the

participatory aspects of the “People of God”). On the other is aggiornamento, the drive

initiated by Pope John XXIII to “modernize” church doctrine dogma, or more mildly,

“bring them up to date” (Cressler 101). The former prompts a significant change in lay

involvement in the leadership and direction of the American Catholic church, opening the

door to the entry of new, popularly-founded input into church practices. The latter calls

on the church to respond to the signs of the times, to commit to an active exegesis of the

moment, and to change church practice accordingly. Major shifts after Vatican II, such

as the move away from Latin for liturgies, as well as minor, such as the Chicago

introduction of an “African Mass”, carried out the tasks of aggiornamento.

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St. Dorothy’s African Mass featured brightly colored vestments, including vestments in

the colors of black nationalism, drumming (to the point that it was referred to as “Drum

Mass”), even to the extent of

…a black man stripped to the waist process\[ing] to altar with the chalice, along the way performing an interpretive dance “to the beat of jungle music” (Cressler 99).

The liturgy of the word, the first part of the Catholic mass (before the liturgy of the table,

the eucharist itself, which also came under Black Theological challenge), was

significantly changed with the introduction of active black theology, right down to the

pre-eucharistic praters, recently congregationally collectivized (as opposed to

individualized) into the Prayers of the People by Vatican II, again reflecting the expanded

dimensions of activity in the People of God allowed by the council.

That more of Our Black Brothers and Sisters might be brought the One Black

Fold, Lord, hear our prayer.

That we as Black People may never stop striving for Our place in the sun, Lord,

hear our prayer.

That we might recognize our Blackness as a thing of pride and beauty, Lord, hear

our prayer (Cressler 106)

The masses were attended not only by overflow crowds of laity, but also overflow

crowds of clergy, as priests, ministers, and pastors of numerous congregations throughout

Chicago, representing several denominations, joined the services as assisting celebrants.

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Most significantly, the services were attended by the Black Panthers, as protection and as

an outward demonstration of Panther presence in the community.

Of course there was white resistance across the diocese, as demonstrated by the

many letters to the editors of Chicago papers as well as church publications. Conflict in

leadership at St. Dorothy, in which the African Mass founder was passed over by the

archbishop for leadership of the parish, expanded the African Mass meetings beyond the

church and into convention halls, some services topping three hours in length. These

services were not only manifestations of Black Theological thought, but they were

political as well, full of protest, with a photo of Martin Luther King on the altar and

homilies meant to be heard as direct challenges to white church leadership, including the

archbishop by name. But with the lack of diocesean support demonstrated in the

leadership crisis, the African Mass movement, and the active application of Black

Theology in Chicago, began to wane after a brief period. As Cressler states, the only

effective challenge to affect the creation of a black liturgy depends on the response of

church leadership, and as long as that leadership is white, the response will be limited,

Doing anything about black liturgy in the Catholic church in the United States…had to be unauthorized…since hobody in authority was black (Cressler 117).

As is detailed below, the lack of blacks in leadership roles, which affected the Protestant

as well as Catholic churches, was not the only problem with Black Power-created

theology. A number of structural flaws combined with resistance from the white church

on a conceptual level also led to what has been labeled the “demise” of Black Theology.

The Demise of Black Theology

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With the exception of a brief flurry of interest surrounding the Latino form of

liberation theology (the larger school under which black theology can be included) during

the 1980s era of the US-Soviet proxy wars in Central and South America, broad interest

and application of Cone’s brand of theology waned rapidly, complicated by the necessity

of addressing issues falling beyond the realm of the American black struggle (i.e.

Vietnam), white reactionary fear of black violence arising out of Black Power, and the

alienation of white supporters. Apart from these functional challenges, there were

structural flaws as well. Scholar Alistair Kee in 2006 decried the demise of black

theology, and pointed to three fundamental problems.

The first issue limiting the scope and impact of black theology is its cavalier and

somewhat reductionist attitude toward scripture. This can be seen in two ways. On the

one hand, Cone’s emphasis on the primacy of the black experience and the use of that

experience as the hermeneutical blueprint for interacting with Christian scripture reduces

the primacy of scripture to a point that made many uncomfortable, church layman and

theologian alike. On the other, the “coloring” of scripture limits the scope of that

scripture, locking others out of the divine message. Is it, in this light, fully acceptable

that black theology co-opts the Exodus narrative and makes it a central locus of its

formation? Applying the Exodus narrative to American blacks living in an oppressive

system to such a great and specific extent in its turn also reduces scriptural authority in

that the stories become allegorical and ahistorical. Kee focuses his attention on the New

Testament as well, although he does not challenge Black Theology’s claim to Paul,

particularly the letter to Philemon and other anti-slavery texts. Instead, Kee brings the

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critical focus to black theology’s use of the gospel, with much the same critique as he

gave Exodus. Keep pays particular attention to Luke 4:18, a critical part of black

theology’s scriptural framework:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good

news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and

recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.

The problem here, again, is one of black identification with scripture; Kee expresses

concern that the raced takeover of the Gospels can only serve to alienate, never to unify

with, other populations who lay claim to the same Gospels. Given that Black Power

itself was having to address the alienation of white supporters from the day of its entry

into the discourse of the black freedom struggle, this is certainly a fair point of critique.

Kee’s second and third points in his eulogy for Black Power are related, and can

thus be treated as two parts of the same idea: the lack of class analysis in Black

Theology. When it comes to standpoint and intersection, concerning class and gender as

well as race, there is none of the needed multidimensionality. Oppression in Black

Theology is, always, race oppression, first and foremost (or first and only). The color-

line becomes absolute (despite Cone’s call for a more inclusive blackness), as it must be

in a theology so grounded in a collective racial experience, meaning that no other critical

approach, particularly a critique of the capitalist system that underlies race-based

oppression, has room in the discourse. A different definition of blackness emerged as

enduring, identified by Black Power activist and Catholic Religious Sister Martin de

Porres Grey:

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Blackness is the sum total of all the ideas, attitudes, actions, and creations that stem from the African’s attempt to accommodate himself to, dig this, to integrate into, to coexist with, and separate from the West” (Cressler 114).

An additional point that Kee addresses in his critique of black theology, although

it could be seen as a corollary to the steadfast color line, is the propensity of black

theology to essentialize white people, white culture, and white Christianity (Cressler

491). If the God of the oppressed is a black God, as Cone’s system would have it, and

the sacrificed Christ is likewise, then the only role left for the white person, even the

white Christian, is oppressor. By the same token there is an essentializing of blackness in

its unity in oppression (or in support of the oppressed) which verges on a glamorization

of suffering.

Not all the blame can be laid at the feet of Black Theology itself, however. As

Cone notes in a recent work, and just as was witnessed in Chicago, white resistance to

Black Theological involvement, particularly in the mainline denominations, has led to an

incomplete assimilation of Black Theological discourse into the greater theological

picture. Of particular note here is soteriology, the saving grace of the sacrifice of the

Christ. In short, as Cone states, the white church has failed to make the connection

between the image of the suffering God and the reality of lynchings. Because God stands

in, as the sacrifice, for the oppressed, there is a mutual being between Christ (fully man)

and Christian. The stronger the representation, the stronger the bond, and what stronger

representation of unity with the collective black experience could there be but the

lynched God, hanging on the tree (Cone 2011)? Cone reveals to us here an obvious, but

somehow obfuscated, connection — the unity between lynching victims and the Christian

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sacrifice in the crucifixion. For blacks, Cone argues, the connection is inherent, and is at

the core of black expressions of salvation, a salvation that is not in the near future, but in

the here and now. Not only do white mainline Christians, in denying (or at the very least,

not recognizing or not admitting to) the lynched God, separate themselves from the true

saving qualities of the sacrifice, they separate themselves from the fellow black church

men and women. The failure to address the lynched God is the failure to address the

challenge of Black Theology, as white theology maintains its blindness toward the

meaning of the most core Christian symbol.

Illustrative of this is a 1963 radio dialogue between prominent, if not most

prominent, Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and author James Baldwin. Recorded

in the wake of the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church that took the lives of four

children, the dialogue shows a wide gulf between the two men — while they both are

able to recognize the cruelty of the act, they do not agree on a theological or otherwise

symbolic application. On the subject of the missing face of Jesus in the church’s stained

glass window, blown out by the bombing, Baldwin is able to make the symbolic

connection: “The absence of the face is something of an achievement, since we have

been victimized so long by an alabaster Christ” (Cone 2011).

Although Niebuhr does respond that the missing face “represented a deep moral

crisis”, he failed to go any further. Cone’s indictment of Niebuhr, a fair representative of

dominant white theology, is clear. Consider the popular notion that Simon, regarded as

black within the black community, volunteered to carry the cross of Jesus, when he was

instead, Cone argues, compelled, “just as some African Americans were compelled to

suffer lynching when another could not be found”:

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Niebuhr could have explored this story with theological imagination, seeing blacks as crucified like Jesus and forced like Simon to carry the crosses of slavery, segregation, and lynching. But he did not (Cone 2011).

Cone goes a step further:

Was not lynching alone enough for Niebuhr to know that white supremacy could not be ignored in searching for economic justice, or explicating the meaning of the Christian gospel in America (Cone 2011)?

Thus white theology remains blind to the lynched God, and therefore remains blind to

what Black Theology brings to the discourse of American theology. The Black Theology

of the sixties, like the Latino liberation theology of the eighties, atrophies from lack of

attention.

Along with the era of the Freedom Rides in 1961-2 and Freedom Summer of

1964, Carmichael’s 1966 Delta moment and the rioting and national tension of 1968 are

notable moments of the black freedom struggle. 1968 saw the black man and black

woman in turmoil after King’s assassination and the following violence within the black

communities. Ground had been won in the earlier heroic period of the struggle, but white

oppression of blacks, legal or not, maintained itself for the most part unabated. As Cone

notes, a sense of bankruptcy was in the air at that time:

Yes, when blacks in Chicago hear about blacks being lynched in Mississippi, they are enraged. When they heard about Martin Luther King’s death, they burned, they looted, they got Whitey. In fact, when blacks hear about any injustice, whether it is committed against black or white, blacks know that their existence is being stripped of its meaning (Cone 1969).

For a time, black theology, coterminous with Black Power as the theological wing of a

political movement, held out an answer for this loss of meaning in the black community.

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References

Beckford, Robert. 2009. “The Rise and Demise of Black Theology: Home Sweet Home in Babylon. Scottish Journal of Theology 62 (4) (November 2009): 490-5.

Cone, James H. 2011. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, Kindle edition.

———. 2010 (1970). A Black Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, Kindle edition.

———. 2010. “Some Brief Reflections on Writing Black Theology and Black Power”. Black Theology: An International Journal 8 (3): 264-5.

———. 1997 (1969). Black Theology and Black Power. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, Kindle edition.

Cressler, Matthew J. 2014. “Black Power, Vatican II, and the Emergence of Black Catholic Liturgies. Washington, DC: U.S. Catholic Historian 32 (4): 99-119.

Goudsouzian, Aram. 2014. Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

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