A Closer Look at Black Liberation Theology

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, All Things Considered, March 18, 2008.

[The link to this story (printed in full below) and the audio clip can be found here.]

Presidential contender Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) defended his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on Tuesday, even as he repudiated some of the pastor's inflammatory sermons. But Wright's comments likely come as no surprise to those familiar with black liberation theology, a religious philosophy that emerged during the 1960s.

Black liberation theology originated on July 31, 1966, when 51 black pastors bought a full page ad in the New York Times and demanded a more aggressive approach to eradicating racism. They echoed the demands of the black power movement, but the new crusade found its source of inspiration in the Bible.

"God's presence in the world is best depicted through God's involvement in the struggle for justice," says Anthony Pinn, who teaches philosophy and religion at Rice University in Houston. "God is so intimately connected to the community that suffers, that God becomes a part of that community."

Freedom and Liberation

Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, says black liberation theology often portrays Jesus as a brown-skinned revolutionary. He cites the words of Mary in the Magnificat — also known as the "Song of Mary" — in which she says God intends to bring down the mighty and raise the lowly. Hopkins also notes that in the book of Matthew, Jesus says the path to heaven is to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. And the central text for black liberation theology can be found in Chapter 4 of Luke's gospel, where Jesus outlines the purpose of his ministry.

"Jesus says my mission is to eradicate poverty and to bring about freedom and liberation for the oppressed," Hopkins says. "And most Christian pastors in America skip over that part of the book."

Hopkins attends Trinity United Church of Christ, where Rev. Wright just retired as pastor. In the now-famous sermon from 2003, Wright said black people's troubles are a result of racism that still exists in America, crying out, "No, no, no, not God bless America! God damn America — that's in the Bible — for killing innocent people."

According to Hopkins, that was theological wordplay — because the word "damn" is straight out of the Bible and has a specific meaning in the original Hebrew.

"It means a sacred condemnation by God to a wayward nation who has strayed from issues of justice, strayed from issues of peace, strayed from issues of reconciliation," Hopkins says.

A Loud, Passionate, Physical Affair

Anthony Pinn of Rice University acknowledges that black liberation preaching often sounds angry. But he says the anger does not advocate violence but is instead channeled into constructive routes. Trinity UCC, he notes, has 70 ministries that help the poor, the unemployed, those with AIDS or those in prison. Pinn says the words can be jarring to the untrained ear, but they're still valid.

"Folks, including myself, may be taken aback by the inflammatory nature of the rhetoric, but I don't think very many of us would deny that there is a fundamental truth: Racism is a problem in the United States," Pinn says.

Black liberation preaching can be a loud, passionate, physical affair. Linda Thomas, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, says the whole point of it is to challenge the powerful and to raise questions for society to think about. Thomas says if white people are surprised by the rhetoric, it's because most have never visited a black church.

"I think that many black people would know what white worship is like," Thomas says. "Why is it that white people don't know what black worship is about? And I think that is because there is this centrality with white culture that says we don't have to know about that."

Obama presents himself as uniquely situated to bridge those two cultures because of his biracial heritage. In his speech on race Tuesday, the presidential hopeful said he could no more disown his controversial pastor than he could disown his white grandmother.

"These people are a part of me. And they are part of America, this country that I love," Obama said.

He denounced the harshness of Wright's words — not because they were false, he said, but because they did not acknowledge the strides that the U.S. has made in the fight against racism. Obama said his own candidacy shows how far the country has come.

William H. Lazareth, 1929-2008

The Rev. Dr. William H. Lazareth, Lutheran theologian and ethicist, former ELCA Bishop, and ecumenist, died on February 23, 2008. He was 79 years old. ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson said of him: "Dr. Lazareth was a teacher of the Church. The ecclesial, theological and ecumenical legacy that he leaves will bless the people of the Church for generations to come," he said.

As the director the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Secretariat, he oversaw the drafting of one of the most important ecumenical documents of the 20th century: "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry" (1982), also known as the Lima Text. He was well-known for his work in Lutheran theology and social ethics [for an excerpt from his last major work, Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible, and Social Ethics, click here and here]. In his final years, he served as the Jerald C. Brauer Distinguished Professor of Lutheran Studies at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin and co-founded the on-line Augustine Institute while there.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him.

The New Pew Study and Ecclesiology

The religious landscape in the U.S. is not only increasingly diverse; it is also more fluid, which means that "loyalities to churches prove [to be] more fleeting" according to a new study released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. According to the study, 44 per cent of Americans have left the religious tradition in which they were raised for a different tradition--or no tradition at all. Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, concluded, "it's a very competitive marketplace, and if you rest on your laurels, you're going to be history." As troubling as the study was to read, Lugo's comment is even more troubling. The language of "marketing" may have entered church discourse more than a generation ago, "but there's a reason Jesus said 'You shall be my witnesses,' and not 'You shall be my marketers'" says Mark Galli in a piece in Christianity Today. He's right!

In my new course, "Pastor as Theologian," we have been talking about the identity and mission of the church. The church is a community (koinonia) of disciples and witnesses, not a product to be marketed. As Reggie McNeal would say, the goal is not "church growth" but "kingdom growth." The church is called to be a sign and instrument of the kingdom of God. At the heart of this witness is the power of God's reconciling love that St. Paul speaks of so elequently in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (among other places):

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Back in 2003, I heard Lutheran missiologist Philip Baker call for a moratorium on the "Great Commission" of Matthew 28 as the foundational text for Christian mission (his article starts on page 39). He suggests instead that we consider this passage from St. Paul. The idea of "reconciliation as a paradigm for mission" has been echoed and developed by others such as Robert Schreiter, the Forum for World Evangelization, and the World Council of Churches. I plan to explore this idea in ecclesiological terms (i.e., how do we understand the nature of the church in light of this paradigm?) in a paper proposal for the Ecclesiological Investigations Group of the AAR.

Detroit Urban Seminar--Initial Thoughts

I returned home a week and a half ago from my J-term course, an 11-day immersion experience in Detroit with 10 students, and I am still trying to figure out how I want to relay this experience on my blog (In fact, it took me a week to finish this post). The focus of the course was "Racism, Classism, Sexism, and Heterosexism." The city of Detroit was the "lab" for growing in our knowledge of how these "isms" operate in society--and in ourselves. While overt racism is alive and well, we were reminded of the many subtle but insidious ways that racism has been structured into the very fabric of our society, and how the system perpetuates white privilege. Detroit is a city that was shaped by racism: we recall that Detroit was the place of "race riots" (or rebellions depending on your perspective) in the 40s and 60s, but as Kevin Boyle of the Washington Post puts it, "40 years later, the urban crisis still smolders." Detroit continues to be the one of the most segregated cities in the United States (right after Milwaukee, according to the last census). There is no mass transit system linking the city and the suburbs and there is not one major grocery store chain in the entire city of Detroit.

The pastors of Acts in Common were our teachers along with the many leaders they scheduled for us to meet. Jim Perkinson, professor of theology at Ecumenical Theological Seminary, framed our time in Detroit with lectures on the "isms," drawing from his own work and that of Ched Myers and other biblical scholars who apply a socio-political hermeneutic to the reading of scripture. We learned of the devasting effects of environmental racism from the Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion and our tour guide Lila Cabbil who directs Wayne State University's Multicultural Experience in Leadership Development program. We learned about the crimminal (in)justice system from Regina Jemison, a lawyer who also shared her gift of music with us at the Tuesday Night AIC Prayer Meeting (and who also happens to serve on Trinity Lutheran Seminary's Board of Trustees!). We learned about ministry to the homeless during our visit to the Coalition on Temporary Shelter (COTS). We learned about community organizing from leaders in Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES), the local Gamaliel chapter, and joined them for their annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. banquet. We heard from school principals and superintendents about the challenges of educating children in an urban context. We did ride-alongs one evening with the Detroit Police and even got to meet Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and some members of his staff (one week before this story hit the papers). We were moved by what we saw at the "And Still We Rise" exhibit at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. We were introduced to the ministry of the Ruth Ellis Center, one of only four youth social service agencies in the U.S. dedicated to helping LGBTQ teenager and young adults who are homeless. And there was much, much more.

As one who had served as a pastor in an urban setting myself, much of what I saw and heard was not "news" to me. Nonetheless, the experience deeply impacted me and challenged me to do more. In the classroom, I enjoin my students to "open their eyes" to the reality of racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism through readings and discussion, and I will continue to make this a mark of my teaching. But I need to move beyond the classroom and find ways other ways to actively participate in the struggle for a more just and anti-racist church and society.

An LWF Contribution to the Understanding and Practice of Mission

While I am at it, here is an another helpful LWF (Lutheran World Federation) resource: Mission in Context: Transformation, Reconciliation, Empowerment: An LWF Contribution to the Understanding and Practice of Mission. This document, published in 2004, can be downloaded as a PDF file.

The Role of the Bishop in the ELCA

I was invited to speak to the ELCA Conference of Bishops on this topic at their annual academy a couple of weeks ago (to which they invite the ELCIC Bishops as well) along with Dr. Guy Erwin who teaches Reformation history at California Lutheran University. I gave two presentations: "The Evolving Office of Bishop in the ELCA" which gave some historical perspective on how oversight was exercised in predecessor church bodies in the U.S., and "The Role of the Bishop in the Lutheran Church Today in Light of the Marks of the Church." I treated the marks of the church in reverse order following the lead of missiologists such as Darrell Guder.

In my research for these presentations, I came across an LWF Document that was adopted in 2007: Episcopal Ministry Within the Apostolicity of the Church. This document is a revision of a 2002 draft that was widely distributed. Responses were invited from various theologians and groups including the WordAlone theological advisory board. In my view, the 2007 Lund Document is a very helpful and clarifying treatment of what has become a contentious issue in the ELCA. My only critique is that the section on Mission (III) should have preceded and thus framed the Biblical and Historical Foundations in II.

"Being the Church in the Midst of Empire" Now Available for Purchase!

"Being the Church in the Midst of Empire: Trinitarian Reflections," ed. by Karen L. Bloomquist, is now available for purchase from Lutheran University Press! [Note: This book came out of the Lutheran World Federation seminar, "Confessing and Living Faith in the Triune God: Being the Church in the Midst of Empire," in which I was invited to participate this past June and which I further blogged about here and here.]

A book launching event was held on Friday evening, November 18, at First Lutheran Church in San Diego, where several of the authors were in town to attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Bishop Murray Finck, bishop of the Pacifica Synod, and several area Lutheran clergy joined us for the book launching event, which began with a dinner that was identical to one served earlier in the day to the homeless by First Lutheran (click here to learn about their ministry to the homeless and underserved). After dinner, each author was asked to share a word about what we had written and then we joined in conversation with the pastors about the realities of "being the church in the midst of empire" with regard to their ministry settings. It was a wonderful evening. Many thanks to Karen Bloomquist and Pastor Wilk Miller for organizing a fine event to launch this book!