In between 1517- 1840 around twenty millions blacks were cruelly captured in Africa. By ship transported to America and sold to be slaved. It was profitable income for the trader. While crossing Atlantic Ocean many captive died in dysentery, smallpox, and other diseases of those days. To avert painful moment some starved themselves to death. To prevent this form of suicide the traders applied hot coals in their lips to open their mouths to eat. With arrival on American shores, they were sold eventually separated from families. The new owner forced them includes old & ailing to work from sunrise to till sunset. For rebel person was chained and send in work field. At the will master raped black women/girl while their husbands/father helplessly look on. They were counted as property and developed ‘inferior race theory’ which leads them to place between barnyard animals and human beings. This brutality was the saddest chapters in the history of American. Horrible experience of the black and their descendents serves as the background for the understanding of contemporary black theology or liberation theology.Wrong Justification of Slavery
Initially evangelization to the slaves were restricted while knows hearing of gospel gives economically productive. In religious assembly they will conscious of their strength and plotted insurrection. As a result white will be no longer held them as slave. Some claim black was less than human so they will not go to heaven. They are like any beasts in the Noah’s ark and black has no soul to save so no needs to evangelize. Those days many Christian tolerate slavery from Paul’s master-slave relation and based cursed of slavery on ‘sons of Ham’ (Gen. 9: 20-27) who were interpreted to be blacks. Yet missionaries evangelize and many saved. Few consider slavery for religious good as it bring unsaved soul to a Christian land for evangelism. Actually it was Paul’s underlying instruction that slave should be free (1 Cor. 7: 21, 23); Ham’s son Canaan’s descendent later occupied Phoenicia and Palestine- they were Caucasians. Claim of religious good seems to be absurd as it was cruel inhuman treatment to the slaves.
Germination of Liberationist Thought
As numbers of black conversion grew they began to attain in white Christian church, but black were imposes restriction on seat, Holy Communion and property ownership. It compiles them by mid 1700s to develop autonomy congregation of their race eventually form separate denomination. In those churches interpreted God as loving Father of slaves who delivered Israelites from Egyptian bondage who considered Jesus as the Savior and fellow sufferer. They gave dual implication of heaven on black slaves’ community and sang liberation song in presence of their master. Since inception of those churches the seed of liberation theology germinated in nascent form. These slave theologies raise many black activists at America. Among them are: notorious slave preacher Nat Turner (1800-1831) who seek freedom by violence which derive him to killed sixty white people for that he was hanged. Apostle of black theology Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) speaks seeing God through black spectacle which gave sense of dignity and destiny to Negros. In 1949 Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited identified Jesus’ poverty life with poor masses and drowns implication of minority Jews in the midst of large controlled Roman to the black experience. Though Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) noted civil right leader had never formal participant of black/liberation theology movement. Yet he advocated nonviolence for social change. He voice black should liberate themselves from bitterness and feeling of inferiority towards white. Black militant writer of 1960s was Albert Cleage who popular in the black messiah theory and his sermon set forth his brand for Black Nationalism.
After hundred and thirty year execution of Turner the black theology emerged as a formal discipline. It began with ‘black power’ movement in 1966; black clergy reconsider the relation of the church to the black community. This latest group redefines the role of the church and religion in the lives of black people. Out of re-examination ‘Black Theology’ was birth and began to read the Scripture through the eyes of their slave grandparents and started to speak God’s solidarity to liberate oppressed of the earth. This new theological movement of liberation theology writer James Cone’s fundamental starting points for ascertains theological truth was his black experience. From common experience of black people in America, the black theology emerges as supreme test of truth. It is the experience of truth which should be ultimate authority in religious matters. For him Christ is the only revelation of God and He liberated His followers from bondage of sin in which blacks experience the God’s liberation work among blacks from white in America. Cone maintains black theology is the religious counterpart of black power. Black Theology is the theological arm of Black Power, and Black Power is the political arm of Black Theology. Black Power focused on the political, social and economic condition of black people. Black Theology puts black identity in a theological context. His liberationist theology based on God’s in action in which He delivered Israelites who was poor and no privilege in the Egyptian society. For him this same immanent God is spoken as black since He is found in concrete historical situations who work for the deliverance of black in America. Cone’s affirmed Chalcedonian creeds, Christ is ‘truly God and truly man’ with this he adds the role of Jesus as God-Incarnate was to liberate the oppressed. Jesus Christ is God Himself coming into the very depths of human existence for the sole purpose to remove slavery, thereby freeing human from ungodly principalities and powers that hinder human relationship with God. Cone’s controversial Christology was Jesus was/is black which are detestable to white society. He says for white it is offensive to find big lips and kinky hair which is equal to Pharisees to partying with tax-collector. Cone urges it is very important for black to view Jesus as black. For him, the Resurrection of the black Jesus is a real event which symbolizes universal freedom from every present form of earthly woes. Cone’s views sin as a condition of human existence where human denies the essence of God’s liberating activity as revealed in Jesus. It is contrary to the oppressed community or its liberation. For him salvation is primarily to do with earthly reality not only heavenly hope. Salvation of God means is to see subjugated people rise against their oppressors; demand that justice should become a reality now not waiting for tomorrow. He often spoke of Jesus as the Liberator yet emphasizes the human work of self-liberation among blacks in that hope for downplays divine of help. Cone maintains black church played major role in religious and social life of black America. For him black church was the creation of a black people out of their daily overwhelming survival in brutality of white power. For the slaves it was the sole source of identity and the sense of community. The black church became the only sphere of black experience that was free of white power. Cone reject, Christianity is primarily concerned for the next world or life after death but it is also hope on this life. The blessed heavenly hope can became present thereby forcing us to make changes in this world.
Certainly one cannot minimize the magnitude of the black experience. Nor it is good to unsympathetic to the difficulty faced by Afro in a white-dominated society. Yet it is doubted black liberation theologian have a full legitimate grip on maltreatment of their people throughout American history. Imposes entire black experience unto Scripture may robs Scripture’ intrinsic authority and distorts its intended meaning. In reverse way- theologians who make black experience all determinative might made the same mistake some white racists did during the era of slavery. Just as several whites imposed their experience on slave-masters relation unto Scripture to justify slavery. In the same manner some blacks has imposed the black experience unto Scripture to justify their radical views on liberation. Both positions are erred. For blacks to use experience-oriented methodology is to excuse the kind of method employed by those who enslaved them. It is self-defeating at best. Black theologian Anthony Evans argues that black experience must be seen as ‘real but not revelatory, important but not inspired.’ Like any theology, black theology must have a frame of reference that based on Scripture not develop out of purely black experience. To produce a biblical liberation theology- the Scripture must be the supreme authority in matters of theories and practice. With this methodology a strong biblical case can be constructed against any racism.
