In Search of a Black Christianity

Black theology is the only genuine manifestation of Christianity in America today. White theology is basically racist and nonChristian. If there is any contemporary meaning of the Antichrist, the white church seems to be a manifestation of it. It is the enemy of Christ.

Not every Negro Christian would agree with this provocative, militant conclusion of Union Theological Seminary's James H. Cone. Today, however, the black churches of the U.S.— which have frequently been accused of excessive caution on civil rights — are rapidly catching up with the secular advocates of Black Power who have created such turmoil in the universities and urban ghettos.

Last week blacks tried for greater in fluence within the United Church of Christ at its biennial assembly in Boston, promoting a Negro pastor for the presidency of the 2,000,000-member denomination and pressing for fuller representation on all committees. In Detroit, representatives of the National Black Economic Development Council met with the executive council of the Episcopal diocese of Michigan to present their demands for reparations for "centuries of oppression." In the long run, though, one of the most significant attempts to give spiritual sanction to the Black Power movement may have occurred last month in Atlanta, where a group of 16 theologians met under the auspices of the National Committee of Black Churchmen (membership: 600) to hammer out a common position.

Irrelevant Heaven. Not surprisingly, efforts to establish a spiritual underpinning for black-church militancy have strong political overtones. The Atlanta statement, for example, closed with Eldridge Cleaver's belligerent manifesto: "We shall have our manhood. Or the earth will be leveled by our efforts to gain it." It spoke of a "theology of black liberation, the affirmation of black humanity that emancipates black people from white racism, thus providing authentic freedom for both white and black people." The 16 scholars implicitly endorsed James Forman's reparations demand on white churches (TIME, May 16) by recalling St. Luke: 19-8, in which Zachaeus told Jesus: "If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold." They also declared that "the message of liberation is the revelation of God as revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Freedom IS the Gospel. Jesus is the liberator."

The attempt by blacks to construct a distinctively black theology has a strong this-worldly existentialist cast. "The idea of heaven is irrelevant for black theology," says Cone, the author of a recent book called Black Theology & Black Power. "The Christian cannot waste time contemplating the next world, if there is a next." One participant in the session, Preston N. Williams of Boston University, explained: "The black man cannot divorce theology from social action. Whites say, 'That's not theology at all.' The real question is who is going to define the norms of theology." Some Negro churchmen feel that theology created by white men views God's action through honkie eyes, making it meaningless for the Negro situation. Says Methodist Bishop Joseph A. Johnson: "We affirm our blackness, recognize that our experience is authentic and create a theology based on our experience."