Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological Thought

5. Bodies as the Site of Religious Struggle: A Musical Mapping

| 101 5 Bodies as the Site of Religious Struggle A Musical Mapping Movement through the world involves struggle, but how do we articulate theologically this struggle in ways that reflect the embodied experiences of a range of African Americans? It is my belief that popular culture— including musical expression—provides a useful framing of struggle as religious quest. Yet, in light of my concern with embodied theological thought, even this religiously understood notion of struggle must be “earthbound.” That is to say, this struggle is known by and through the body, in the ways in which bodies occupy time and space, and chronicled in a variety of forms including musical production. Here we mark a shift in focus.1 Previous chapters explored the manner in which attention to the discursive body and the material body productively influence thinking on some of the more pressing issues within black theological discourses: race, gender, and sex(uality). This chapter and those following it are concerned with examining how the relationship between religion and the body (discursive body and material body) is lived. I begin this shift by discussing the living of religion as recourse against what is commonly referred to in black Christianity as the grammar of the demonic. By demonic I mean not only negative forces found within Christian cosmology but also a more general reality of non-normative sources of influence and authority. One might also think of the demonic in this context as forces of restriction and domination, or strategies of existence that seek to penetrate bodies according to schemes not always known in clear and fixed ways. The penetration of bodies by these forces is often experienced in black Christianity as oppositional when these forces challenge prevailing normalization patterns. Within this framework of contact, the soul might be drawn as the node of identity housed in (and shaped by) the body. By extension 102 | A Musical Mapping the divine in this case entails normative sources of influence and authority . Both the demonic and the divine are often imagined and discussed as operating through nonhuman bodies and within the cracks of human history . This framing of the demonic, the divine, and the soul (within the fields of embodiment) will inform the following discussion in both implicit and explicit ways. By using the blues and rap music, which privilege the body not just as a source of lived experience but reject disembodied strategies, I reformulate traditional theological vocabulary and grammar through a turn to the chronicling of bodily experience. Sensitivity to the “Unseen”—The Church and the Spirituals Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.2 The imagery and assumed theo-existential truth of the quotation from Ephesians has explicitly and implicitly haunted and guided the ethical sensibilities of the dominant modality of African American religion in the United States (i.e., black Christian churches) for centuries. This should come as no surprise, considering the wealth of writings by scholars such as Allen Callahan , Theophus Smith, Vincent Wimbush, and Cain Hope Felder, all of whom have over the course of two decades presented the intersections between black Christianity and the biblical text.3 As these scholars have noted, black Christianity has drawn its vocabulary and grammar, its imagery, symbolism , and posture toward the world from the rich stories that make up the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Perspectives on the complex nature and framework of human relationships are given their weight and content in large part from the workings of situations outlined in scripture—the “placement ” of black bodies within the frameworks of the biblical world. In this regard, black Christianity, as the passage from Ephesians would suggest, presents life struggles as synergy between physical forces and nonphysical forces, between transcendent realities and mundane presences intertwined within the lived context of human history. Black Christianity in various forms portrays sensitivity to forces shaping material and historical devel- A Musical Mapping | 103 opments. Beyond the Holy Spirit, the third division of the Trinity whose workings are unseen but felt, demonic influences working toward evil developments and positive angelic forces shape progressive and healthy developments . Both demonic...