Black Liberation Theology: Response and Responsibility

Who is the judge?

The judge is God.

Why is He God?

Because He decides who wins or loses. Not my opponent.

And who is your opponent?

He doesn’t exist.

Why doesn’t he exist?

He is a mere dissenting voice to the truth that I speak.

Speak the truth.

I watched the Great Debaters again (repeatedly) in the past few weeks. And my mind keeps replaying the scene when character James Farmer, Jr. lodges his closing arguments against the Harvard debaters. He opens with the grim statement: “In Texas, they lynch Negroes.”

Following the dramatized version of history, I open this essay with the thought – in Mississippi, they lynch Negroes. I spoke with my Father earlier today, and he recounted the story of his discovery of a dead man in 1966 in Greenwood, Mississippi. Daddy would’ve been eight years-old then. He was in the woods along with his stepfather, when he looked up – there he was hanging helplessly. A young man. His age was uncertain. But his fate was clear. He had been lynched. Left there lifeless. Waiting on someone to discover him and restore a semblance of dignity that his life ever mattered. And so, it was that my Daddy – as a little child – was tarnished with morbid image of the punishment for simply being Black.

He has never shared intimate details with me. Only the bare necessity of factual information so that I could understand the truth. Having blocked out the memory until he was 28 years-old, he tried desperately to erase it from his psyche for the early part of his young adult years. But it never could be erased nor washed anew. It was there. Not gone, and not hardly forgotten. And, it occurs to me, that this is where Black Liberation Theology finds itself – smack dab in the middle of ugliness of lived experience of oppression and the freedom found in the love of God.

In God of the Oppressed by James Cone, he outlines the basic truth of Black Liberation Theology. He says:

Jesus Christ is not a proposition, not a theological concept which exists merely in our heads. He is an event of liberation, a happening in the lives of oppressed people struggling for political freedom. Therefore, to know him is to encounter him in the history of the weak and the helpless. That is why it can be rightly said that there can be no knowledge of Jesus independent of the history and culture of the oppressed. It is impossible to interpret the Scripture correctly and thus understand Jesus aright unless the interpretation is done in the light of the consciousness of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation (Cone, 32).

Cone asks a very provocative question that he says Black theologians must face head-on: “To what extent is the God in Black Theology limited to the biological origin of its advocates (Cone, 77)?”  It is to this question that I gather in my mind and spirit an insight that I do not readily know the answer to. My Daddy told me that his Father, my Granddaddy, taught him this one very important thing as a Black man: dying is better than bowing down to any White man. My paternal Grandfather was a reverend who was the product of a slave owner and slave – and he vehemently rejected every part of the White in him. Similarly, my maternal Granddaddy – an austere deacon and Civil Rights activist – lived to his dying age of 93 still calling White people peckerwoods (which is a derogatory name for Whites). There is a liberty that I think my Grandparents never got to experience for themselves. Regardless of the good of Black Liberation Theology, I do not think that it was able to help my Grandparents (and people with similar experiences) see a God past the limits of biological origin.

Maybe Black Theology was never supposed to help them get past this vision of Jesus. Maybe it was only supposed to help them achieve liberation from racism. Yet, I often times wonder about if my both my Granddads, along with the other great cloud of witnesses to Black Jesus, ever got to see just Jesus. It is not as though I am trying to negate the prime necessity for Black Theology. Nor am I trying to overturn its credence. But I struggle with knowing if Black Theology really gave our people, my people, an applicable knowledge of how to overcome oppression and how to rightly identify with Jesus by treating others with love and grace. If so, then why are there so many oppressions that presently exist within the Black Church. We preach liberation, yet are we really free? I believe that we like to think that freedom is the absence of oppression. But this is not so. Taking from the laws of physics, it is darkness that is the absence of light. Therefore, it is oppression that is the absence of freedom. Anywhere there is injustice, there is no freedom. And if my foremothers and forefathers felt that the proper response, in light of Black Theology, to their own oppression was to secretly (or publicly) disdain, mistreat, or look down upon White people, women, gays, or any other group of people – then we have failed.

Black Theology must distinguish its origin and its action. It has equipped us with a response to hatred and bigotry. But has it showed us our responsibility? Yes? No? Maybe? Those are all valid responses – yet it would be irresponsible of us to simply say ‘I don’t know.’ We need to know what kinds of implications a Black Liberation Theology has had on those who have reared us. Did Black Jesus help wash my Dad's memory as white as snow? Did He liberate him from the understanding of race or just the reality of racism? We must ask our parents and grandparents the tough questions about their understanding Christ and Church. For it is their experiences that taught them. And without engaging them on those experiences, we miss out on some of the directives of Black Theology.

Who is the judge?

The judge is God.

Why is He God?

Because He decides who wins or loses. Not my opponent.

And who is your opponent?

He doesn’t exist.

Why doesn’t he exist?

He is a mere dissenting voice to the truth that I speak.

Speak the truth.

Who's the Judge?

The Great Debaters at MOVIECLIPS.com

Cone, James. 1997. God of the Oppressed. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

I am American-African.

             

              In the later portion of the 20th century, a very controversial publication of ‘The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave’ sprang forth and has since stirred much discourse about the issue of slavery in America. Though the origins of the letter have some controversy in matters of credibility, I posit that its contents include an exceptionally valid school of thought to be considered. In the speech given by Willie Lynch, the slave-owner shares methods he has predicated for the successful enslavement of African peoples. Within his sermon-like speech, he outlines specific ways to gain willful subservience:

Keep the body, take the mind! …[and] for further severance from their original beginning, we must completely annihilate the mother tongue of both the new nigger and the new mule, and institute a new language that involves the life’s work of both. You know a language is a peculiar institution. It leads to the heart of a people.¹

Severance from the beginning essentially defines the principle Peter J. Paris sets out to disprove in his work The Spirituality of African Peoples. Though the African Diaspora and subsequent enslavement of its patrons in America mounted a vehement vehicle for the loss of cultural identity, Paris engages the truth that all African culture was not vanquished within the realization of chattel transaction. Instead of the termination of a people, African culture, traditions, and spirituality were transferred into a new tongue and translated to fit into the confines of a new place. In the face of monstrous adversity, the African spiritual truth ‘I am because we are’ abounds and transcends the oppression meant to strip its people of their cultural identity.

                In my line of work, we use transmitters to relay a signal that makes sense to a person operating some piece of machinery. For tanks, we use level transmitters to display how full or empty the tank is. For pipes, we use flow transmitters to gauge the amount of flow going into or out of a vessel. And so on for any process application needing surveillance. Transmitters, all have the basic tenant of functionality conducting their purpose – to read a process signal and output it in a way that is understandable to the context of its use. Therefore, if an operator does not easily understand a tank level in terms of inches of Mercury (which is a standard in some places), the display can be configured to feet.  Just because the units of measure of the level in the tank are changed, doesn’t mean that the actual level in the tank is any different. What’s more is that if you take the contents of that vessel and pour it into a different container, without spilling any drops, the same amount of media is still in the new tank. Though a different level may be reflected due to the differing dimensions of the original vessel versus the second vessel, neither the contents nor its quantity has been altered. Conceptually, this is the stance Paris goes to great lengths to appropriate as it relates to African culture. African spirituality was not totally changed or annihilated, rather it was just re-captured and transmitted in a different way with much of its inherent identity and original substance intact.

                What is consciously significant to me about The Spirituality of African Peoples is that the author goes to great lengths to propose a foundational commonality between ancient African traditions and contemporary African American culture. I believe this deliberation envelopes an effort to embrace an Africanized viewpoint as a genesis for philosophical existence. There is undoubtedly the harsh reality that the subjugation Africans and Africans in the Diaspora faced subsequent to slave-trade caused such a violent upheaval of African culture which intended to sever the people from their identity. Yet, even in the throes of this systematic oppression and isolation, a sense of cultural resilience was successfully sustained. Rather than the complete termination of the culture indigenous to the African people, an “enculturation” occurred allowing an amalgamation of African culture to essentially be retrofitted with Westernized civilization; thus, creating a uniquely new yet congruent way of life for Africans. If this be so, then Westernized progression of thought must be sidelined and an investigation of African ideas of culture and religion must be put to work.

While I normally identify myself as Black, the absence of the word African should have no bearing on the effect of African traditions in my life. As I consider this knowledge, I realize how much it is not necessarily a revelation for the things that comprise my idea of identity, morality, spirituality, and community. Rather, it is a reminder. Ways of being, thinking, and acting, as a Black person in America, cannot simply be explained away by such dismissive statements like ‘this is just the way I am’ or ‘it’s a Black thing, you wouldn’t understand.’ Instead, there is an intrinsic reason that I am the way that I am. There is an unspokenness to how I view family and community. And, both of these things are circularly related. Their interconnectedness is seamless and natural. While it is easy to know that my personhood is a reflection of my roots, there must be an intentional introspection and appropriation for why my lens is shaped and colored the way that it is – and this introspection must discard any and every negative view of an African or Black identity that has been indoctrinated by a European society. This must be done individually and corporately as Black persons in America post-Diaspora. Rather than rejecting our Afrocentric foundations, whether it is done intentionally or unintentionally, there must be a willingness to analyze our modality outside of a solely American context. There must be a reconciliation of what it means to be Black inclusive of our rich heritage through African ties and exclusive of the social construct of the Black race as proscribed by society.

Paris does an excellent job in the exegesis of African spiritual ideologies in relation to a Christian belief held by African-Americans during and after the Diaspora. Instead of a separation from their African spiritual understanding, the result of slavery justified a new appropriation of spiritual meaning for their new environment:

Hence… the acculturation of the Africans to their new environment did not result in a total loss of their religious and moral understandings. On the contrary, Africans in the diaspora were able to preserve the structural dimensions of their spirituality.²

In further examination of Paris’ work, the profound sense of community and family was of paramount importance in the African perspective. Working in conjunction with a Supreme Deity, Africans venerated their ancestral legacies as a part of their responsibility in life. This value system in which communal good and familial honor was the ultimate goal can still be seen in today’s historically Black churches. According to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 2007, Black people comprise a significant amount of those affiliated with a religion. Where 83% of all Americans associate themselves with some religious belief, the survey found that a startling 87% of Blacks align themselves with a religious affiliation.³ Blacks continue to place high value on a sense of community and family as found within a church membership.

                Personally, in reading The Spirituality of African Peoples, I have to admit that I was swiftly convicted by my somewhat elementary notions of African tradition. Though I always linked my affinity for movement and soulful music in my church experience with my African heritage, I diminished the possibility that how I view a Christian God had anything to do with that heritage. As easily as the American society tried to strip all Blacks of their true African identity, there was also an effort to coerce Blacks into associating all things African with negativity or uncivility. Within the vein of dismantling the pride in African customs, it became commonplace for me to wrongly pre-suppose that anything having to do with African spirituality was automatically going to be paganistic. There was an unfair assumption that the Christianity I knew and practiced was only related to my African identity in certain modes of worship, dance, or song. While an African beat can be seen in the pulse of this portion of Christianity, it is important that the blood line of our Christian faith can be attributed to the substance of African spiritual understanding of God as our Creator.

                As I’ve come to understand and appreciate the premise of African spirituality and its direct effect on my own Christian theology, I wonder more about the current spirituality of Africa. Accepting the effect of the African identity on western Christianity, how is Christianity now effecting Africa? Where has Christianity not become available in Africa? What indigenous modes of religion mimic our ideal of Christianity and could Christianity be easily introduced?

References:

1.)    ‘Willie Lynch,’ The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave (African Tree Press, 2011).

2.)    Peter J. Paris, The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Source for a Common Moral Discourse (Fortress Press, 1995), 35.

3.)    The Black Church, http://blackdemographics.com/culture/religion/ (The Leonard T. Greenburg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life).

Wearing the Veil. Without Being the Bride (Pt. 2)

    After taking some time to assess and reflect, I realize that my previous blog on The Souls of Black Folk was missing something. It was missing my own soul. While I still stand behind what I wrote, I think in the midst of my commentary I left out my personality, experience, and frame of reference as a Black woman in America. As soon as I began to truly think upon the insertion of my life into the context of double consciousness today, it didn't take me long to realize that I still tend to wax and wane between my Blackness and my American-ness. I think my struggle is because sometimes I do not want to reconcile these things as mutually exclusive. Why is not my Blackness and my American citizenship a fusion of ONE unique identity? And, there it is. In the moment that I had to ask myself that question - knowing that the answer was the sad truth that America has worked painstakingly to make this an unattainable goal for Blacks- I am forced to reconcile the twoness of my being.

    Below you will see two pictures, both of which are Facebook posts I made in mid-July (actually within one day of each other). Though I didn't realize that the content of my status posts brought to light the double consciousness Du Bois highlights in his writings, this is personal proof that it indeed still exists and pervades the lives of any person of color. Shortly after the Trayvon Martin verdict, I deliberately staged dialogue with my older brother about how strategic he must be as a Black man. Because my parents have worked so hard to keep us away from the 'Jim Crow' Mississippi southern mentality they grew up in, I believe I never really thought about easily my brother could've been Trayvon. I attributed his well-spoken nature, his education, his clean-cut (Kappa-esque) way of carrying himself as things that would invariably keep him away from that 'type of discrimination.' What kind of mess is that?! When did it become okay for me to begin categorizing racism, making some less okay or less harsh than others? It's all the same, yet I believe in the midst of my double consciousness I have come to class racism much the same way America has tried to class our race.

   Even still, as I continue to wrestle I am able to find solace in my faith. After posting the status about my concern as a Black woman for my father and brother (see below), I then thought of the beautiful, unconditional love I had experienced with a group of White women in Bible study. Though it took me a solid 27 years to find this type of unquestioning acceptance, it did give me divine hope that there are times when I can ignore the Veil and double consciousness that plagues me; not because racism has ceased to exist, but simply because for one short moment love didn't fail (1 Corinthians 13:8a). It is because of this circle of women, who successfully allowed every good and just and pure love to ooze out of them, that I considered my identity (Black and American) as one unique identity in Christ. It is too bad that heaven on earth is not yet in effect because that is a feeling of joy that I took much pleasure in experiencing.

   I believe that knowing these two extremes - first, the incredulity that my brother could have been senselessly murdered and next, the audacity of love without walls - is where I find myself desperately searching out my call as a Black, as an American, as a woman, and as a Christian. I know double consciousness is real because racism is real. But how can we as Black people explore our faith past these boundaries? Is it possible? Apart of me would like to conjecture that in brief one and half year span of getting to know and love these ladies in Bible study, I was able to see how a fervent and unifying faith of people of all ethnicities conquered a myriad of stereotypes. And if that be so, can the Church affect change in societal stereotypes by uniting across faiths, genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientation? I am reminded of the recent news of Christians forming a circle around bowed down Muslims in prayer in the hostile streets of Egypt. This display for genuine concern for the welfare of human life regardless of background or belief is precisely what the Church could be doing to protect marginalized groups in the U.S. from the big bad wolf of racist/sexist/homophobic America. And for this reason, I pray that within my sphere of influence I will be able to work toward this common goal. A goal of love conquering all.

 

 

Christians protecting Muslims in Egypt. Original story found http://www.myweku.com/2011/11/as-usual-in-egypt-christians-form-a-ring-to-protect-praying-muslim-protesters/

 

Wearing the Veil. Without being the Bride.

*In case you are wondering, the name of this blog is called Engineered Ethics because I am an Electrical Engineer. Though ethics really does not have much to do with engineering, I am happy to infuse my love of words with my love of logic. Also, I plan to always incorporate an original media production into every blog entry as an ode to my technological roots. Enjoy*

            
           The world exists in a three-dimensional realm (excluding the notion of time). As one understands a relative location, there are directional coordinates that correspond to that exact position in space. For example, the x-coordinate signifies an axis moving from left to right, the y-coordinate signifies front to back, and the z-coordinate signifies up and down, respectively. Therefore, any possible location in space can appropriately be pinpointed using these three coordinates. Now, let us approach this coordinate system with knowledge instead of numbers, abstractions rather than absolutions. Let the x-coordinate be the various lengths taken in order to perpetuate the Lie that America has taught its Black children since birth about who they are. And let the y-coordinate be the forward thinking, yet backward reflecting Truth of personal purpose that the Black son or daughter fights so desperately to uncover. Next, let the z-coordinate be the magnitude of the highs and lows of Struggle that the Black soul must endure to wrestle betwixt the Lie and the Truth. Amidst these dogged realities and ravaged dreams, at the point of intersection of these three abstract axes, is the precise location those born Black in America call home.

            When someone blatantly lies to you, regardless of intention, what is the proper course of restitution? One can argue, ultimately, that the first step to right this wrong is to find out the truth. So, what if the lie is not blatant – rather, it exists in what is NOT being said? Does this change the course of action in rectifying the lie? It should not. Yet, this is the plight of the Black in America. As Du Bois beautifully articulates this “double consciousness” in The Souls of Black Folk, the audience is forced to reconcile the reality that to be Black is to be a problem. The blatant lie is that “despite compromise, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free (Du Bois, pg. 24).” Notwithstanding all of the luster and appeal given to this historical event, the Emancipation Proclamation did not simply spell out freedom. In response to this lie, it is not extremely difficult to discover the truth. The truth is that America deliberately replaced the ugly auspices of a physical slavery with systematic emotional and mental bondage such as sharecropping and anti-suffrage. The concealed lie is less easily identifiable if one has not first come to the cathartic realization that his/her whole life has been swaddled in a blanket of fiction. However, once the truth of this lie has been uncovered, a bare bed of covert facades subtly wait for deeper investigation.  This unspoken lie is the reality that America had no plan for the day when the Black human would no longer be enslaved. As much as America tries to make you fit into the tapestry of being an equal part in the Land of the Free, your very being, as a Black person, exposes the denial this country is comfortable in. Blacks were supposed to be the animal that never left the zoo and the experiment that was never supposed to graduate past beta-testing. It is within the implications of these truths encapsulated by non-truths, that Du Bois is able to illuminate the Veil inherent in every Black American.

            Though written in excess of a century ago, Du Bois’ assertion of the Veil is especially poignant and pragmatic; not because it steers a person to ask if the Veil exists, but because it points one to the question of why the Veil exists.  Why does the Veil exist? It exists because Blacks were not ever to be citizens of the United States, only property.  Property only needs record of when it was fabricated and how many owned it in its duration. As the property is passed on from generation to generation, sold, auctioned, or given away, the very life it lives changes shapes and all its significance is lost in translation. The same is true for any Black man or woman. Once our beings were hijacked from the rich soil of our Motherland and our souls were raped of our history in exchange for slavery in America, our significance was lost in translation. As a result, in our hungry searching for our stolen identities, we traded our royalty for what America thought we ought to be. Therefore, the Veil, in a contemporary sense, indicates the inner battle within a Black person’s soul involving the contention between Blackness and American-ness. These silent but deafening arguments contain feelings of being unworthy, unwanted and unloved by the land which kidnapped and adopted you, yet forced to reconcile your existence despite the hostility intrinsic to this environment.

            The Veil, then, represents a plethora of things to its Black participants. It can be representative of the mask we must wear daily as we traverse the world of people who are not also Black. It can signify an unwritten understanding between Black strangers that bonds them to a “common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief (Du Bois, pg. 41).” Though not stated in Du Bois’ work, one can contend that the Veil can even surmise itself as a sort of boundary line that keeps us protected from the evils of a white-washed world. The Veil, while objective in ideology, takes on a personality that is subjective to its host. The personality it imbibes is a direct correlation to how you choose to handle your double consciousness. For example, if you want to accept a more Americanized way of life that is less visibly congruent with an African identity, then your Veil will encompass the questions that will help you to navigate an assimilated lifestyle. Conversely, if you wish to remain as Black as your Blackness will allow, then your Veil will permit you to address the pride in your heritage. The Veil is not a dead fabric. It is a living, breathing function of your identity. All things considered, one must ask oneself how the Veil will impact daily interactions with those who will never know the feeling of double consciousness. Will the Veil interrupt your thoughts and actions towards others? How will you use the Veil to interpret your dealings with others?

            The existence of the proverbial Veil is not to serve as ornamentation. However, to a certain extent, there is a hermeneutical responsibility that comes along with it. In whatever community you approach, you must know how you intend to operate within the Veil and how, if possible, you can venture past the Veil. Namely, consider the Black church. In the article, “Subversive Joy and Revolutionary Patience in Black Christianity,” Cornel West affirms that “Black people do not attend churches…to find God, but rather to share and expand together the rich heritage that have inherited (West, pg. 437).” In this instance, an inference can be suggested that the Veil plays a vital role in what drives people within the Black church to stay in the Black church. Not because the experience has culminated in a closer relationship with God (though this could be a part of the reason), but only because of the fellowship gained with those who share common experiences as Blacks. If this is true, the Veil could be seen as a hindering crutch rather than a means of communing support. While the Veil still exists, will there ever be a time when our lens will not have to be appropriated by its context? In other words, will a Black person ever be able to choose whether or not to wield the Veil as a means to either protect or preserve him/herself from society? Arguably, a community of faith should be the obvious choice of a place in which God’s love supersedes the color-line. So, then the answer should be yes. Black persons should be able to enjoy worship anywhere and not be confined behind the Veil. Yet, we know that this is not a fair statement. Just because the color-line prescribed by Du Bois is Black and White, issues of acceptance in the faith community are just as gray as they have ever been.

            In conclusion, as we internalize and reflect upon the nature of the Veil, we must ultimately understand its conception and birth. The Veil was conceived when Black truth had non-consensual intercourse with an American lie; and, it was born when America tried to give Blacks a life that was not theirs to give. In the after-birth, or maybe the aftermath, what was left was a gaping hole – a hole that was missing the true history of our people.