Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and Child

Jawanza Eric Clark

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137546883
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137546890
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia cristiana

 In this collection, black religious scholars and pastors whose expertise range from theology, ethics, and the psychology of religion, to preaching, religious aesthetics, and religious education, discuss the legacy of Albert B. Cleage Jr. and the idea of the Black Madonna and child. 

Easter Sunday, 2017 will mark the fifty year anniversary of Albert B. Cleage Jr.'s unveiling of a mural of the Black Madonna and child in his church in Detroit, Michigan. This unveiling symbolized a radical theological departure and disruption. The mural helped symbolically launch Black Christian Nationalism and influenced the Black Power movement in the United States. But fifty years later, what has been the lasting impact of this act of theological innovation?  What is the legacy of Cleage's emphasis on the literal blackness of Jesus?  How has the idea of a Black Madonna and child informed notions of black womanhood, motherhood? LGBTQ communities?  How has Cleage's theology influenced Christian education, Africana pastoral theology, and the Black Arts Movement? The contributors to this work discuss answers to these and many more questions.

© The Author(s) 2016

Jawanza Eric Clark (ed.)Albert Cleage Jr. and the Black Madonna and ChildBlack Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice10.1057/978-1-137-54689-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Why a White Christ Continues to Be Racist: The Legacy of Albert B. Cleage Jr.

Jawanza Eric Clark¹

(1)

Department of Religious Studies, Manhattan College, Bronx, NY, USA

End Abstract

March 26, 2017, will mark the 50-year anniversary of Albert B. Cleage Jr.’s historic unveiling of a mural of the black Madonna and child in Central United Church of Christ (UCC) in Detroit, Michigan 1967. This unveiling was significant in that it occurred during the Civil Rights Movement in America, specifically as the concerns among many black people in America were subtly changing from a call for integration and demand for civil rights to a cry for self-determination, nationalism, and black power. The unveiling of this mural of a black Madonna and child in Central UCC on Easter Sunday morning also preceded the violent eruption of racial anger that would engulf and devastate the city just a few months later during a hot summer in Detroit. Albert B. Cleage Jr. would seize the moment and develop a relevant contextual theology that could reconcile the rage and demand for self-determination among black power advocates with traditional Protestant Christianity, a religion that called for non-violence and emphasized redemptive suffering, especially as articulated by the eloquent Baptist pastor and leader Martin Luther King Jr. The unveiling of a black Madonna and child and the claim that Jesus was a black Messiah launched Cleage’s Black Christian Nationalist (BCN) movement. It was an interpretation of Christianity that claimed Jesus was a revolutionary leader sent by God to liberate a black nation Israel from the colonization and control of a White nation, Rome. The optics of this biblical struggle, for Cleage, mirrored that which was occurring in America at the time: black people seeking liberation from a White power structure. Thus, contrary to Malcolm X’s claim that Christianity is the White man’s religion, in fact Christianity could be interpreted in a way that enabled it to be quite useful in a black liberation struggle in America. The unveiling of the black Madonna and child was the launch of this black liberation movement in America.

Now 50 years later, what is the legacy and lasting impact of this unveiling? Has the idea of a black Madonna and black Messiah changed the perception of, or had any impact whatsoever on, black identity in America? Did images of the black Madonna and child proliferate, and does it reflect contemporary depictions of Jesus and Mary at least in black churches today? What has been the psychological impact of this imagery on black people and black youth? Has it been influential beyond American society? As a theologian, some of these questions are outside my preview; thus, I have collaborated with other scholars to answer these and many other questions. This text is not simply a tribute to this seemingly innocuous moment in time, but it is a thoughtful reflection and critical examination of not just the theological implications of this historic unveiling but also its psychological, sociological, historical, and cultural impact on black people throughout the African diaspora.

However, as a theologian, my specific disciplinary concern calls me to evaluate the legacy of Albert Cleage Jr.’s theology, particularly the claim that Jesus is the black Messiah, and encourage a revival of Cleage’s thought in contemporary black theological discourse. Specifically, I argue that the perpetuation of a White Christ in churches across America and the world continues to be racist and deleterious to the psychological and spiritual health of all Christians, but particularly black Christians, making Cleage’s critique as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. Also his articulation of Jesus as a black Messiah and not a black Christ is theologically significant and actually shields his theology from the criticism voiced by many that black theology glorifies and essentializes blackness and black identity failing to establish the proper distance between divinity/God and blackness. The claim that Jesus was a black Messiah also requires an evaluation and analysis of Cleage’s theological evolution as regards his doctrine of God and his often unacknowledged affirmation that God is cosmic energy and creative intelligence, a conception of God that coheres with many Eastern religious traditions and postmodern and contemporary theologies. Fifty years after his historic unveiling, Cleage’s theology continues to be relevant, yet underappreciated and misunderstood.

“Until black Christians are ready to challenge this lie [a White Christ], they have not freed themselves from their spiritual bondage to the White man nor established in their minds their right to first class citizenship in Christ’s kingdom on earth. Black people cannot build dignity on their knees worshipping a White Christ. We must put down this White Jesus which the White man gave us in slavery and which has been tearing us to pieces.” ¹ Cleage’s fundamental claim is that it is simply historically inaccurate both to believe in, and visually depict, Jesus as a White person (i.e. a person of European descent). Cleage refers to it as a lie that keeps black Christians in America in “spiritual bondage,” presumably accepting of their inferior racial status within the American racial hierarchy. His critique is similar to that of Malcolm X, his contemporary and friend, who argued in the early 1960s that Christianity is a religion of White supremacy, and that White images of divinity, including “a White Jesus, White virgin, and White angels” are “designed to fill [blacks] hearts with the desire to be White.” ² This image has been particularly psychologically detrimental to people of African descent who have had to live in societies dominated by whites, and where African-descended peoples’ race established the basis for their oppression and subjugation. Whether during the antebellum and early postbellum period in America, or late nineteenth-century European colonization of Africa, African-descended people were encouraged to accept an image of the divine/God as a White man. Both Cleage and Malcolm X essentially argue that the symbol of a White Christ is an idol and an imperial weapon used to perpetuate and legitimize White power and White authority wherever and whenever they encountered African-descended people and sought to control them (i.e. slavery and the Jim Crow era in America, apartheid in South Africa, colonialism in Africa). Malcolm X’s (El Hajj Malik al Shabazz) solution was the rejection of Christianity outright, since, for him, it is hopelessly stained by White supremacist ideology. Cleage, however, argued the Christian religion as practiced in black and White churches in America is grounded in a historical lie, and if Christians could discover and restore the historical truth, then the religion itself could be not only salvaged but actually useful in a black liberation struggle, in fact a Pan-African liberation struggle. The historical discovery of the black Messiah is the discovery of an interpretation of Christianity and Judaism as essentially African in origin.

Albert Cleage Jr. performed a theological paradigm shift away from Jesus as the White or ontologically black Christ to Jesus as the black Messiah. This shift is much more than a mere pigmentation change or difference in terminology, but a distinction that actually helps Cleage avoid the reification problem of more orthodox black theologians. In fact, in calling Jesus the black Messiah, Cleage is establishing that his Christology is entirely distinct from his doctrine of God, that Jesus was a human being and God is something else entirely. Later I, and other contributors, will give particular attention to his doctrine of God and demonstrate this distinction.

The black Messiah—Albert Cleage’s Christology

First, in referring to Jesus as a black Messiah, Cleage endeavors to be historically accurate by establishing that Jesus, as a human being, had to be a person of color. When Cleage calls Jesus black, he is operating from a broad definition of blackness based on a twentieth-century American cultural framework. During slavery in America, in order to prevent biracial children, who were often the product of the sexual objectification and coercion of enslaved black women’s bodies by White male slave owners, from claiming White identity and the right to inherit property, wealth, and power, whiteness had to be as narrowly defined as possible. The old “one drop” rule essentially defines black as non-white. Cleage therefore applies this definition to Jesus. Jesus was black, because he was not White. He was a person of color from a place in the world where all the people are people of color. The Hebrews also became a people in Egypt, in Africa. So not only is Jesus not White, but he is in fact of African descent (thus black).

For nearly 500 years the illusion that Jesus was White dominated the world only because White Europeans dominated the world. Now, with the emergence of the nationalist movements of the world’s colored majority, the historic truth is finally beginning to emerge—that Jesus was the non-white leader of a non-white people struggling for national liberation against the rule of a White nation, Rome. The intermingling of the races in Africa and the Mediterranean area is an established fact. The nation, Israel, was a mixture of the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Midionites, the Ethiopians, the Kushites, the Babylonians and other dark peoples, all of whom were already mixed with the black peoples of Central Africa. ³

Cleage takes a construct, race, which had no meaning at the time of Jesus and applies it for the auditory and visual consumption of his contemporary audience. Consequently, while Jesus would not have referred to himself as a black Messiah, he IS a black Messiah for contemporary Christians, because if he were living in America today, he would be forced to frame his identity within an American racial structure. As Marcus Garvey asserted in 1924, “should Christ visit New York, he would not be allowed to live on Riverside Drive but would have to reside in Harlem because of his color.” ⁴

Cleage’s more provocative theological claim, however, is that Jesus was a black Hebrew messiah. As a Hebrew messiah, all notions of Jesus as the unique, exclusive, or singular son of God are eradicated. Messiah simply means “anointed one.” And in Israel’s history, there were many other persons (unfortunately only male) who were anointed ones. In the Hebrew religious imagination, King David was the ultimate anointed figure. He was considered both the Son of God and Son of Man. ⁵ In fact, the messianic expectation during the time of Jesus was that someone of King David’s personality and spirit would one day lead a reformation movement to restore Israel to its former days of independent glory, which was the reign of King David.

My point is that when Albert Cleage Jr. refers to Jesus as the black Messiah, he is naming a human being of a particular hue who would have seen himself as a freedom fighter seeking to rescue Israel from the imperial authority of the Romans. His crucifixion is proof that the Roman authorities saw Jesus as a threat and a dissenter worthy of execution. What Cleage does is actually restore Jesus’ exclusive humanity. He frames Jesus as a situationally bound, historically contingent, flawed human being who was fulfilling a God-inspired mission on earth. He was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving this mission (further proof of his human frailty), yet his teachings, values, ethics, and ministry continue to stand as a testimony in death over 2000 years later. Thus, while Cleage maintains Jesus was black, his blackness is not glorified or divinized. His blackness carries no independent weight, or value, and ultimately no meaning or significance at all. The only reason to mention the blackness of Jesus is to correct the historical inaccuracies in the Eurocentric depictions and expose the White Christ as a White supremacist symbol. It is only necessary to mention Jesus’ blackness as an act of resistance to a society that overvalues White identity, or whiteness, by privileging it and conferring power over all other racial identities.

But this is not how black and womanist theologians have characterized Albert B. Cleage Jr. in their works. I argue that their conception of his theology is static, obsolete, and fails to appreciate his theological evolution and methodological insight. This failure leads to a too easy dismissal of Cleage’s thought. I call for a reexamination and more thorough analysis of Cleage’s theology which would provide academic black theological discourse with some much needed vitality and theological diversity.

Albert Cleage’s marginalization within black theology began early on in the formation of the discourse. First, James Cone distances himself from Cleage’s notion of blackness, because Cleage’s blackness is literal, thus too particular and political. For Cone, blackness is a symbol for oppressed existence. “Blackness is an ontological symbol and a visible reality which best describes what oppression means in America.” ⁶ Cone is clearly more concerned than Cleage that blackness has universal appeal, which for Cone means it more properly functions as a theological category. This concern perhaps reveals more about the perceived task of a professional theologian versus that of a pastor of a specific black church in a particular situation of concern (Detroit 1967). Similarly, J. Deotis Roberts, in engaging Cleage, affirmed a bifurcation between the black Messiah and the Christ symbol. For Roberts, the black Messiah was particular to black people but the universal Christ transcends the black Messiah and “reconciles the black man with the rest of mankind.” ⁷ For Roberts, the black Messiah might be psychologically necessary, in order to overcome generations of internalized oppression among black people, but the universal Christ ultimately trumps Cleage’s black symbol of liberation. Reconciliation is ultimate, while liberation is preliminary. Roberts also wants to preserve the universalism within theology and sees Cleage’s constructions as too particular, political, and culturally specific. For Roberts, Cleage’s theology is insufficient precisely because it lacks the universality intrinsic to the task of theology. James Evans, however, disagrees with this concern of Roberts. For Evans, “It cannot be denied that the concept of the black Messiah answered a need in the beleaguered psyche of an oppressed people, but to place Christ above and beyond the cultural, meaning-making matrix of African Americans risk, at best, an unnecessary dichotomy, and, at worst, the irrelevance of Christ to their struggle.” ⁸

Dwight Hopkins, in his 1989 publication, Black Theology USA and South Africa, also c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: Why a White Christ Continues to Be Racist: The Legacy of Albert B. Cleage Jr.
• 1. Albert B. Cleage Jr.’s Theology and Politics
• 2. Representations of the Black Madonna and Child, Christian Education, and Pastoral Care
• 3. The Legacy of the Black Messiah in the African Diaspora
• Backmatter