Theology: In Search of a Black Christianity

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Freeing Power. Black theology views the possibility of violence calmly. "As I look at the American scene," says Bishop Johnson, "I see no possible way to change the structures of injustice except through violence. I hope my vision is wrong." The only Roman Catholic present at the meeting, Father Lawrence Lucas of Saint Joseph's Church in Harlem, draws on the "just war" tradition. "Deliberate, planned violence can be morally justified, and violence can play a role in effecting social change," he says.

Nonetheless, some scholars concede that a Christian baptism of violence could have tragic implications for American Negroes. The Rev. C. Shelby Rooks, executive director of the Fund for Theological Education at Princeton, unhappily notes: "A drift toward community separation, toward violence, toward the denial of our common brotherhood with white men that the Gospel proclaims." Black militants may attempt to impose the doctrine of violence on their own community, in which case Rooks predicts that "it is highly likely that there may soon be black martyrs at the hands of black people."

Not all Negro scholars agree with the legitimacy of a separate black-theology movement. Dr. Joseph R. Washington Jr., author of Black Religion, argues that "if you mean by theology a cognitive body of knowledge and a means to intellectually and structurally understand it, then I question if there is a black theology. I tend not to think of theology as experience." But Cone, perhaps the most ardent exponent of an uniquely Negro Christianity, does not agree. "I don't intend to let black theology be a passing fad," he says. "Students for generations to come will be talking about it. If any white theologian wants to talk to us, it's on black-theology terms." He contends that black theology should be a theology of revolution "whose sole purpose is to apply the freeing power of the Gospel to black people under white oppression."

Some theologians feel that such vehement denunciation of white Christians can only lead to a narrowly parochial vision at a time when the need is for wider understanding. As Dr. Rosemary Ruether of Howard University's School of Religion recently wrote in America, an authentic black theology "would understand the genus 'man' as the universal within which it places its own celebration of black humanity. In that form it would be a catholic theology, a theology with universal validity, and not a form of racism."