The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness

Conclusion

173 CONCLUSION The relationship between black theology and the black church —and concomitantly the state of their dialogue regarding the latter’s mission—has not improved since the issue was first raised in the mid 1970s.1 Indeed, with the rising media presence and political influence of an uncritical white evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and prosperity gospel preaching in black churches,2 one might well argue that the situation has gotten worse. That is why while many white Americans were getting their first glimpse into the Sunday worship and preaching of a black church during the Jeremiah Wright debacle of 2008, most laypersons and far too many clergy in the black church were for the very first time hearing the term “black theology.” This was true despite the fact that black theology was created in the black church and is an extension of its radical and prophetic side. Notwithstanding the distinctive roles of black theology and the black church, I would still argue that the divide is unfortunate and unnecessary. This becomes clear once one understands the nature and nuances of the important historical relationship between the black church and black theology and the ways in which the latter must be regarded as the last of four critical moments in the centuries-long project of African American Christians’ critical apprehension and development of an antiracist and holistically salvific faith. Providing, for the first time in the intellectual history of black church interpretation, a critical and self-conscious theological principle 174 T H E D I V I D E D M I N D O F T H E B L AC K C H U RC H for assessing the black church’s faithfulness to its own best selfunderstanding , the etiology of black theology’s meaning is inextricably connected to the black church’s distinctive ecclesiological identity and liberationist mission. Moreover, the life of each occurs along an identifiable and distinctive liberationist trajectory of African American faith formed in the crucible of American chattel slavery. The first moment was Christianization, but in it, African Americans were not simply redeemed by the faith; they redeemed the faith itself, transforming it into an instrument of liberation. If the independent black church movement represented the institutionalization of that basic liberationist tenet of black faith, and if Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ministry of proclamation and activism, sourced by the dialectical tensions between black evangelical piety and black resistance, represented the developmental stage of conscientization, then the black theology movement provided, for the first time, its careful and self-critical systematization . Yet all four are liberationist moments tied together in the reality of an oppressed people’s testimony to their spiritual encounter with the mystery of a sovereign and almighty God. In this way, it is not possible to identify an authentic black piety that is not connected to liberation, nor is it possible to fully account for the strengths and limitations of one of these four moments without reference to the others. Moreover, subsequent developments within the fourth moment, culminating with the work of second-generation black theologians, newer voices within the movement, and the birth of womanist theology further clarify the difficult, complex, and multifaceted character of the liberationist project. Specifically, white supremacy has to be fought in varying ways, and the liberationist agenda of the church, as it aims toward the fulfillment of God’s salvific purposes for humanity, must extend outward and inward in a truly multidimensional and radically improvisational approach that addresses the basic human need for personal fulfillment and existential meaning, even while challenging systemic structures of oppression in political economy, religious discourse (confessional and academic), and church polity. Therefore, I argue that the continuation of this important but difficult work requires much greater intentionality and initiative toward Conclusion 175 the development of an organic institutional infrastructure, reminiscent of the NCBC or the black theology project but for a new era, that mediates honest, risk-taking dialogue between black and womanist theologians and black pastors. Such an infrastructure would provide the much-needed institutional foundation for the commencement of a fifth and necessary moment—an integrative moment, in the development of black people’s apprehension of an antiracist and holistically salvific faith, that is, the flowering of a self-critical liberationist community. Leadership for such a moment would come from black and womanist theologians and black pastors who conceive of their project as an organic movement...