Jesus in the Black Christian Imagination, Pt. 2

by | Oct 22, 2014 | Headline News | 1 comment

In the second wave of Black Theology, African-American Christian women emerged as scholars and theologians. Drawing from the work of writer Alice Walker, self-identified “womanist” theologians began to articulate their experience of the Divine as black women of faith living within the United States. While standing in solidarity with their black brothers, womanist theologians critique the longstanding racism of the larger white culture (including the blind spots within white feminist religious and secular discourse) and the persisting sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia of the highly patriarchal institutional Black Church and society. One of the earliest publications within womanist thought dealt with the topic of Christology. Systematic theologian and ordained African Methodist minister Jacquelyn Grant, who is also a former student of James Cone, published “White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response” (1989), a groundbreaking treatise that critiqued white feminist theologians’ views of Jesus Christ and provides a Christology in light of the experience of African-American Christian women. In an earlier published essay, “Womanist Theology, Black Women’s Experience as a Source for Doing Theology, with Special Reference to Christology,” Grant follows her teacher Cone in affirming the symbol of the black Christ, yet she presses the symbol further to include the lived experiences of black women. In the womanist tradition, Grant observes, black women affirmed Jesus as God incarnate and the divine “co-sufferer.” Black women shared with Jesus an experience of suffering and oppression. “They identified with Jesus because they believed that Jesus identified with them.”[i] Although he was God incarnate, Jesus identified with the sufferings of black women by coming alongside them, being their constant friend, and answering their earnest prayers for deliverance, consolation, and liberation. Moreover, Jesus elevated black women’s humanity, thus undermining the patriarchy within both white Christianity and the Black Church. He affirmed them as God’s beloved, created in the divine image. Jesus’ solidarity with black women also signified the end to their suffering. Jesus was a “whole Saviour” (Jarena Lee) who not only liberated black women but called them to proclaim his good news of liberation to the “least of these.” For Grant, womanists differ from their white feminist counterparts by affirming that significance of Christ is found in his humanity not his gender. Therefore, African-American Christian women are more inclined to accept Jesus as their Savior and Liberator, despite his maleness.

Moreover, Grant contends that Cones’ christological title of the “Black Christ” rightly signifies God’s identification with marginalized peoples, but failed to emphasize the particularity of black women’s experiences of poverty, racism, and sexism as a “tri-dimensional” reality in his earlier work. What makes the black Christ universal is his ability to identify with the lived experiences of all oppressed peoples, specifically black women’s experience. Following the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matt. 25:31-46), Grant argues that if Christ makes solidarity with the most vulnerable then, “Christ among the least must also mean Christ in the community of Black women.”[ii] By this she means that the Christ fully identifies with the tri-dimensionality of black women’s experience. Therefore, the black Christ symbol must faithfully represent the One who suffers with black women in all of their particularity. Also, Grant emphasizes that the resurrection of Christ signifies for black women that their suffering does not have the final word. Therefore, Christ is not only divine co-sufferer but the Liberator of black women from all levels of structural oppression. To make the black Christ more inclusive, Grant suggests that new symbols for Christ (e.g. the stranger, the outcast, and the poor) must replace traditional symbols which privilege whiteness and maleness. In so doing, Grant’s Christological reconfiguration points to the universality of Christ’s significance among all oppressed peoples. In another way, in Grant’s view the presence of the liberating Christ becomes so concrete among oppressed peoples, specifically black women, Grant emphatically declares, “Christ, found in the experience of Black women, is a Black woman.”[iii]

TheBlackChristIn “The Black Christ” (1993) womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas, another former student of Cone, surveys the history of the image of the black Christ in African-American Christian experience.[iv]  In the book Douglas argues that the image of the Black Christ does not deal with merely Jesus’ physical appearance but symbolizes his commitment to advancing the freedom for not only black women but for all oppressed peoples. While affirming the symbol of the black Christ as conceived by both black and womanist theologians, Douglas also offers a rigorous critique of their work for their narrow and rigid symbolization of Christ which fails to account for the diversity of lived experiences of all members of the Black community, including black gays and lesbians, poor blacks, and black men who stand in solidarity with black women. To remedy this failure, Douglas contends that both womanist theologians and their black brothers and sisters must engage in both socio-political and religious-cultural analyses of wholeness which critiques the interlocking systems of oppression (i.e. racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism) within both the church and the larger culture. For Douglas, the black Christ as a theological symbol is only viable when all black Christians use a diversity of symbols which express the mystery of the living Christ active within the midst of a people struggling for freedom. Thus, the black Christ is two-sided—it not only symbolizes Jesus’ actions, but it also symbolizes the prophetic actions of black people in their struggle to liberate themselves and others from the intersecting structures of oppression.

For African-American Christians, to re-image Jesus as “black” means to affirm Jesus Christ in his radical particularity. Not only was Jesus of Nazareth a Jew, he was a Jew who lived in poverty and under the rule of the Roman Empire. To affirm Christ as black also means that Jesus was the One who was and is presently among those who suffer and who fight for their liberation from systemic and structural sin and evil. Thus, African-American Christians take seriously the Matthean witness where it says that Jesus was called Emmanuel—God with us. The black Christ stands in solidarity with black people and delivers them from slavery—spiritual, physical, social, and political. Thus, black Christ disempowers white oppressors and dismantles racism.

The black Christ emerges from the black experience and stands as a universal theological symbol for all oppressed peoples. What remains to be further explored is black Christians’ relationship with classical Christianity’s Christological development during the Patristic Era. There tends to be a lack of critical engagement on the part of black and womanist theologians with the classical Christian tradition. In fact, James Cone famously quipped that Athanasius’ question concerning the Incarnation was not a “black question.” However, such a witty dismissal of the ancient Christian tradition does the black church a disservice. Today, more African-American Christians have access to the history of the Christian church. Unfortunately, few are aware that some of the earliest Christian thinkers were of African origin and contributed to Christological discourse. While first generation black and womanist theologians rightly critique the ancient creeds’ absence of affirming Jesus’ life and ministry among the poor, women, and the outcast, they fail to consider that many black believers desire to understand the metaphysics of Christ’s nature and how it relates to their Christian faith and lived experience. More must be done to connect the chasm between classical Christology (done mostly by white theologians) and black lived experience.[v] Classical Christian sources do not belong exclusively to white Christians alone but are for the benefit of the whole body of Christ.

African-American Christians offer to the whole church and the whole world an image of Jesus Christ that reflects the heart of the gospel attested in their concrete lived experience. For black Christians, Jesus is Savior, Friend, Co-Sufferer, Liberator, and One who empowers us to do the work of liberating ministry. The black Christ symbolizes the reality that God makes God’s presence known among the poorest and most despised of humanity and lifts them up toward full humanization. It is their witness to the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us to break the yokes of oppression and set the captives free.   The black Christ is the Christ who says “Yes” to their freedom and “No” to their bondage. The black Christ is simply the Christ who is attested in the Bible and who is present by the Spirit in black peoples’ struggles for a better today and a greater tomorrow.

Bibliography

[i] Jacquelyn Grant, “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Experience as a Source for doing Theology, with Special Reference to Christology,” in James H. Cone and Gayraud S. Wilmore, eds., Black Theology: A Documentary History, 1980-1992 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 281; See also Grant’s fuller treatment White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response. Brown Studies in Religion, Book 84 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989).

[ii] Ibid, 285.

[iii] Ibid, 287.

[iv] Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993).

[v] Fortunately, some African American theologians like M. Shawn Copeland, Karen-Baker Fletcher, J. Kameron Carter, and Willie James Jennings appropriate the wealth of sources from the classical Christian traditions (and insights from contemporary white European and American Christian theologians, among others) in order to construct liberating theological discourse.

Jason Oliver Evans is a licensed Baptist minister. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Speech Communication from Millersville University of Pennsylvania. He also earned a Master of Divinity at Duke University and a Master of Theology from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. His research interests cross the intersection of theology, ethics, and critical cultural studies. Evans is especially interested in the meaning of the Christian life and its relationship with sexuality, race, and gender in Afro-Christianity. He plans to pursue doctoral studies. Follow Evans’ blog, I Am a Son of God. Follow him also on Twitter at @joliverevans and Facebook. 

Jesus Christ in the Black Christian Imagination, Pt. 1

by | Oct 20, 2014 | Headline News |

“Who do you say that I am?”

For centuries, Christians have struggled to answer this question that Jesus posed to his disciples concerning his identity and mission (Matt 16:15; Mk 8:29; Luke 9:20). Christian theologians developed many Christologies—doctrinal interpretations of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection. Mainstream Christian denominations (e.g. Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) hold the Creeds of Nicaea (which affirms that the incarnate Son is “of the same substance” with God the Father) and Chalcedon (which affirms that the Son is fully human and fully divine) as normative boundaries for “orthodox” Christological reflection. While African-American Christians have generally affirmed the “orthodoxy” of the creeds, they have predominantly interpreted the person and work of Jesus Christ through the lens of their historical experience of oppression and their struggle for freedom in the United States. For many black Christians, Jesus is not only “Lord and Savior,” but he is “Liberator,” the One sent by God to take side with oppressed peoples and empowers them to liberate themselves from the forces of structural oppression.

In the history of Christian theology, European and white American theologians dominated Christological discourse. In addition, Western churches, both Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, commissioned artists to paint, sculpt, draw, and mold images depicting Jesus of Nazareth along with other biblical figures. All of these depictions of the Christ and the saints of old were modeled after (white) Europeans and were installed in churches, cathedrals, royal galleries, and cities across Europe and the Western Hemisphere. The acclaimed masterpieces like Michelangelo’s Pietà (c. 1498-1499) and Rembrandt’s Head of Christ (c. 1648) are just some of the many religious art pieces that captured the liturgical, religious, social, cultural and political imagination of Western civilization.

jesusblackxian-resizeIn the United States, white European depictions of Jesus were captured in the stained-glass windows of many churches, including black churches. Yet for many African Americans, the “white Jesus” which hung on the walls in many church vestibules and sanctuaries legitimated white supremacy, racism, and chattel slavery. Therefore, making the image of white Jesus a standard religious icon in black churches betrays the meaning of Christ in the Afro-Christian imagination. Even as white Christian preachers and slaveholders proselytize enslaved Africans, blacks appropriated the message of the Gospel and the Exodus narratives as a way to affirm their humanity and to struggle for their freedom from slavery.

For black Christians, the re-imagining of Jesus Christ as “black” counteracts predominate white images of Jesus which legitimate white Christian theology’s silence on racism in the United States. This incipient black Christ was found in the slave narratives and the African American spirituals.[i] According to the testimonies of the enslaved saints, Jesus Christ was one who was intimately aware of “the trouble which slaves’ seen”[ii] as they endured much hardship. Jesus was not only a transcendent divine figure, but a fully divine-human intimate friend of those who suffer and struggle for a sense of “somebodiness.”[iii] Moreover, the African slaves envisioned not only a “gentle” Savior that saved their souls from sin but a politically revolutionary figure that would transform their present condition (hence the title “Messiah”). It is this figure, which stood in the tradition of the Old Testament prophet and liberator Moses, which deeply influenced preacher and slave revolt leader Nat Turner and slave liberator Harriet Tubman.[iv]

Jesus-and-the-Disinherited-9780807010297While black Americans have reflected on Jesus’s life and ministry since the nineteenth century, formal black Christologies arguably began with the publication of Howard Thurman’s “Jesus and the Disinherited” in 1949.[v] Systematic theologian James Evans notes that Thurman’s little treatise served as a transitional text between earlier black reflections on Jesus and more systematic theological presentations during the rise of the Black Theology of the late 1960s. In his book the Baptist minister, scholar, and mystic reflected on the significance of the life and teachings of Jesus for “people with their backs against the wall.” For Thurman, the meaning of the “historical” Jesus’ identity is deeply relevant for the poor, the disinherited, and the downtrodden. Thurman appeals to the biblical narratives to excavate three central features of Jesus: 1) his Jewish identity, 2) his socio-economic status (i.e. Jesus was a poor Jew), and 3) his membership within an oppressed group, namely the Palestinian Jews under Roman imperial rule. These three central features prove vital for understanding Jesus’ own religious development. In Thurman’s view, Jesus’ religion was an alternative form of political and social resistance against the Roman Empire. Jesus’ religion was deeply influenced by the prophets of Israel. Drawing from their vision for a just world, Jesus’ preaching on the “kingdom of God” provides the poor and the oppressed a practical guide for surviving and transforming their present world. According to Thurman, the salvation or liberation which Jesus proclaimed was both internal and external. By this he means that Jesus’ message affected the total person. Thurman decried the “otherworldliness” which traditional Christology and soteriology (doctrine of salvation) held because they failed to address the concrete situations in which oppressed peoples find themselves. In Thurman’s Christology, Jesus came for the transformation and restoration of both bodies and souls of the disinherited.

Nearly twenty years after the publication of “Jesus and the Disinherited” a new generation of black Christian clergy and theologians responded to the growing unrest among African Americans with the ongoing racism within the United States. As the developing Black Power movement provided an alternative social consciousness to Martin Luther King’s integrationist and nonviolent resistance principles, the Black Theology movement responded to the predominantly secular movement’s dismissal of Christianity as a “white man’s religion.” The Black Theology movement not only affirmed the message of the Black Power but also proclaimed that its very message lies at the heart of the gospel.

From its inception, the Black Theology movement put the question of the meaning of Jesus Christ at the forefront of its concerns. In 1968, the late Black Nationalist leader and Bishop of the Pan African Orthodox Church Albert Cleage, Jr. published a series of essays and sermons titled “The Black Messiah.” In an essay with the same title, Cleage argued for the literal blackness of Jesus that overturned the dominant images of Jesus as a white man. For Cleage, the proliferation of the image of white Jesus was directly connected to the white domination of the world. Therefore, Cleage sought to debunk the centuries-old lie that Jesus was of European descent in order to free black Christians from a perilous image. In Cleage’s view, Jesus was born into a non-white race, a Zealot who was a leader of non-white people struggling for liberation from the tyranny of a white nation (read: the Roman Empire). Moreover, Cleage admonished black Christians to disregard the notion of individual salvation and to “put down this white Jesus which the white man gave us in slavery and which has been tearing us to pieces.”[vi]

For Cleage, Jesus was a political revolutionary that freed his people from the oppressor. Cleage affirmed the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as normative and rejected Paul’s message of individual salvation and a “spiritualized” Jesus found in his letters. “We, as black Christians suffering oppression in a white man’s land,” Cleage argued, “do not need the individualistic and otherworldly doctrines of Paul and the white man.”[vii] Instead, Cleage called for the retrieval of the social-political message of Jesus, namely nationalism and freedom, which was at the core of the Old Testament prophets and Jesus’ revolutionary message.

While Cleage’s Christology might be viewed by some as an extreme position within the Black Theology movement, James Cone proved to be the movement’s most influential pioneer and voice. Throughout his work, Cone argued for the appropriation of blackness as a legitimate theological symbol for understanding Christ. For Cone, to say that “Christ is black” is not merely to suggest that Jesus was literally a black man. Rather, it is to say that Christ, as God incarnated in the person of a poor, oppressed Jew, makes his solidarity with the despised, oppressed peoples of history, specifically black people in their struggle for freedom. Therefore, God becomes “black” in the sense that God becomes one with oppressed people. Moreover, the blackness of Christ has implications for salvation. In the cross of Jesus, God expresses God’s willingness in Jesus Christ to suffer the evils of systemic oppression for the sake of God’s people’s liberation. In raising Jesus from the dead, God reveals God’s universal plan to liberate all who suffer. Thus, for Cone, blackness symbolizes both Christ’s victimization and his victory.[viii] In affirming the blackness of Christ, Cone counteracts both the explicit imaging of Jesus as white and the subtle “colorless” Christ, which, on its face, seeks to elevate the Christ beyond the question of race, but in fact, silently reinforces the “whiteness” of Christ in white liberal Christians’ imagination.[ix]

Come back on Wednesday for part two of this exploration of Jesus in the Black Christian Imagination.

Bibliography

[i] James H. Evans, We Have Been Believers: An African-American Systematic Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 81.

[ii] “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” is a spiritual song created by enslaved African peoples in the United States. See Bruno Chenu, The Trouble I’ve Seen: The Big Book of Negro Spirituals (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2003); James Weldon Johnson, The Books of American Negro Spirituals (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002).

[iii] James H. Cone, The God of the Oppressed, revised edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 5: “What is the significance of Nicea and Chalcedon for those who knew Jesus not as a thought in their heads to be analyzed in relation to a similar thought called God? They knew Jesus as a Savior and friend, as the ‘lily of the valley and the bright and morning star.’”

[iv] Evans, We Have Been Believers, 81.

[v] In the following, I’m indebted to Evans’ summary of Thurman’s book. See Evans, We Have Been Believers, 83-85.

[vi] Albert B. Cleage, Jr., “The Black Messiah,” in James H. Cone and Gayraud S. Wilmore, eds., Black Theology: A Documentary History, vol. 1: 1966-1979, second edition, revised (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 101.

[vii] Ibid, 102.

[viii] Evans, 89.

[ix] James H. Cone, “The White Church and Black Power,” in Cone and Wilmore, Black Theology, 70. For a mature discussion of Cone’s thought on Jesus, see also Cone, God of the Oppressed, 99-126.