Black Theology—Essays on Gender Perspectives

Hopkins

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532608193
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi afroamericani

What do African American men have to do with gender? In this collection of riveting and wide-ranging essays, Dwight N. Hopkins draws on over thirty-five years of wrestling with these questions. Too often gender is seen as a "woman's only" discussion. But in reality, men have a gender too. Some say it is biological; others claim it has to do with socialization. Hopkins's career has focused on defining what a black American man is, and how he builds bridges of support and engagement with women.Hopkins's research as a theologian, and his experiences, substantiate that the importance of religious viewpoints, principled values, and future hope remain key to any successful creation of a new African American male and new healthy male-female interactions.

Part 1: The Black Man and Gender Studies

1

Two Black Male Leaders: Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright

One of the fascinating developments in the 2008 presidential election has been the discussions of black religion and black theology in the debate. For instance, on February 10, 2007, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the White House. Shortly after, the New York Times published a March 2007 article that suggested that Obama was beginning to distance himself from his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., and that Obama might be linked to a radical form of black Christianity. Occasionally throughout 2007, some corporate media attempted to link Rev. Wright with Minister Louis Farrakhan. Because Rev. Wright was Obama’s pastor, then, in the logic of some corporate media, Obama was connected to Farrakhan. Wright and Obama seemed to represent two models of black male leadership.

Yet the controversy did not gain traction until the beginning of 2008. On Thursday, March 13, 2008, America and the world woke up to an amazing media production. On that day, ABC television released a thirty-second sound bite from three of Rev. Wright’s sermons. The public saw ten seconds each of three sermon excerpts. By the next day, Friday the fourteenth, the number-one American presidential news in the U.S., and increasingly globally, were the following questions: How could Senator Obama have such an angry, racist-in-reverse, nonpatriotic black pastor; and was this the form of black religion that Obama believed in?

Not only did some corporate media, Republican candidates, and Senator Hillary Clinton begin to raise questions about Obama. But the very base of his campaign supporters became shocked. On that Friday on the blog of BarackObama.com, one could find some of Obama’s staunchest supporters trembling in confusion, fear, and suspicion. It seemed as if Obama’s ground troops were disintegrating. In fact, the arguing and the anger on that website was so deep that some Obama supporters were accusing other bloggers of being Hillary Clinton trolls. A troll is a supporter of one presidential candidate who posts on an opposing candidate’s blog or website in order to cause disruption and sow false information among that candidate’s core supporters.

On that Friday afternoon, I was in the Fox News studio about to go on live television when one of the reporters called me over and said that he was printing a major news development. We waited for the printer to stop. Then he handed me a statement by Senator Obama. Obama announced in this brief press release that he denounced the thirty-second sound bites and that he was not present when they were preached. I went on television; and of course the first question I was asked was, Did I agree with “God damn America” and that “9/11 meant chickens coming home to roost”?

Over that weekend, a political storm unfolded, and the domestic and global media looped the thirty-second sound bites over and over. The following Tuesday, I was in the NPR (National Public Radio) studio doing a live interview when our program was cut short because Obama was about to begin a live broadcast. Everyone hurried to the back of the studio where six TV monitors hung on the walls. I grabbed a seat on the floor and watched Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech. Standing in Philadelphia, draped in American flags, Obama gave his first major speech on race, religion, and the black church.

Still the uproar persisted. Every day for about three weeks I did television, radio, magazine, newspaper, and web interviews on the topic of black religion, the black church, and black theology of liberation. During one of those weeks, I had to cancel and reschedule classes for a later date due to media interview requests. My e-mail box and the voicemail boxes for my home phone and cell phone were filling up. I did media from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. for those seven days. The questions of reporters began to repeat themselves: What is black religion, what is the black church, and what is black liberation theology?

These requests continued for several weeks. However, as the country and the world moved away from the initial thirty-second sound bites, the media questions started to ask for a more sophisticated explanation.

Then Rev. Wright announced a major press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. On Monday, April 28, I sat at a VIP table in front of the podium as Rev. Wright gave his statement and then participated in the now famous question-and-answer session. Immediately, Senator Obama held his own press conference where he condemned Wright’s remarks and stated that for him, Obama, Wright did not represent the black church known by Obama. Here the leading Democratic presidential candidate and probably the first black American president in United States history placed black religion, the black church, and black theology of liberation at the center of American and global political discussions. Clearly the black church as an invisible institution had become visible for all to see.

From Friday March 14, 2008, until March 2009, I had been on different media outlets—the major U.S. corporate media, independent media, local media, and on media interviews from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Canada, South America, and Europe. What is clear to me is a need for a nationwide conversation on black religion, the black church, and black liberation theology.

What Is Black Liberation Theology?

To understand the phrase “black theology of liberation” or “black liberation theology,” it is helpful to define each of the three words in the phrase. The term theology means that black theology of liberation is rooted in the Christian tradition. That is to say, Christianity begins with the historical Jesus, through the disciples of the early church, and its eventual spread throughout church tradition of the last two thousand years. The word liberation in “black theology of liberation” represents a belief that the framework, ministry, and orientation of Jesus is liberation. And the word black answers the question of how do theology and liberation look in African American culture. Thus black liberation theology is focused on three themes. It is rooted in the Christian tradition, wedded to the gospel of liberation, and revealed in black culture.

Though these three themes can be found in the origin and historical development of black religion and the black church since slavery in the United States, the specific phrase “black theology of liberation,” is a recent creation. It arose in the 1960s.

Specifically, on July 31, 1966, a group of African American pastors and church administrators published a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. This ad was called the “Black Power” statement. And, it actually supported the new agenda of black power. The ad was a direct response to the cry of Black Power that Stokely Carmichael made on June 16, 1966. Black Power was a bold move on the part of the youth wing of the civil rights movement. It spread throughout society and forced various groups to respond.

The black clergy who published the ad were caught in a dilemma. As Christian pastors who were staunch participants in Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent civil rights movement, they were now confronted with a fundamental question in America: What does blackness have to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ? In a word, was it possible to be both black and Christian? This was the defining question which black theology answered.

As these young African American pastors and church administrators thought about this question, others were already giving their answers.

At that time, many in America gave a negative response to the question. They believed that a person could not be both black and Christian. Many in the white community associated the Black Power movement with terrorism, racism in reverse, Malcolm X, and law-breaking radicals—unpatriotic militants waiving guns against the status quo. How could this type of “blackness” be linked to the religion of Jesus? In addition, the black community had its doubters as well.

For instance, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam said people could not be both Christian and black because Christianity was the white man’s religion. It was the religion used by white citizens to enslave Africans. It justified and supported slavery for almost three centuries in North America. It was a religion that gave blacks a pacifist Jesus and a hope in heaven by and by while white Christians had their heaven on earth. Christianity, for Malcolm X, was white supremacy tricknology.

Black militants and revolutionaries such as the Black Panther Party said that Christianity was a deadly addiction for black people, suited for Negro uncle toms. Negro preachers were sellouts, who fed on the financial insecurity of poor people. Power might have to grow out of the barrel of a gun and not from a hocus-pocus Christian Bible.

Black artists used poetry and fiction to show how Christianity blocked the flourishing of the new African and African American culture with its emphasis on Egypt and African traditional spirituality.

Coming from the perspective of supporting Christianity, Martin Luther King Jr. and his preacher colleagues also stated that one could not be black and Christian. They believed that Christianity was a nonviolent, love-your-enemy, and turn-the-other-cheek religion. In radical contrast, they felt that black power was violence and hatred. So one could not be black and Christian. King believed that one could be Negro and Christian, but not black and Christian.

We know that the civil rights movement begins December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, with the boycott and Dr. King leading that boycott. And the black church, particularly in the South, is the leadership of the civil rights movement, is the leadership of the voting rights and human rights movement there. In the North, there was a different reality, and a lot of the issues that blacks in the South and their allies were fighting for did not match experiences of blacks in ghettos and the nitty-gritty intensity of being black in the North.

But even when the African American church was leading struggles in the South, it came to a point where a younger generation of Negro youth, which eventually changed to black youth, became very dissatisfied with the pace of the black church and with some of the theology and interpretation of Christianity of Dr. King and his lieutenants in his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. So the pace of the struggle, the message of the struggle, and even how Dr. King and some of the black clergy in the South were relating to the federal government—all these factors forced the youth wing of the civil rights movement, particularly led by Stokely Carmichael, to become very frustrated with what they were experiencing. They wanted their justice. They wanted their civil rights. They want...