Black Church White Theology
In Robert P. Jones’s book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy on American Christianity, he primarily confronts white Christians about the brutal history upon which white Christianity was founded and emerged in America. His aim was to educate them on how their predecessors wove into the fabric of their Christian expression theologies that justified the supremacy of whiteness and the inferiority of blackness and how those ideologies remain in place today. This book, however, is directed toward Black Christians to demonstrate to them the chilling reality that the Black church in America has largely adopted the aforementioned theological constructs to inform their ministries and, by doing so, embrace a racist ideology that has historically energized white domination of Black people. White evangelical theology controls most Black churches by defining for them the nature of God, the identity of Jesus, the content of the gospel message, and the function of the church. It has historically imposed its biblical hermeneutic, scriptural exegesis, and cultural morality upon the Black church and thereby reduced the Black church to a mere echo chamber of the white church, promoting the needs and values of the white community to the negation of its own.
This book engages Walter Wink's conception of the Domination System and directs its focus to the black church and black Christians. Wink describes this system as an evil hierarchical social construct with the powerful occupying the top rung. As the hierarchy descends, the rungs become less powerful until the bottom is reached, where the weak and powerless reside. It is this social matrix that defines American society. In her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson agrees with Wink's notion of the Domination System and argues that in America, a ranking metric for a system of domination is race, with the white race occupying the apex and the Black race constrained to the bottom. From this social matrix emerges theological constructs. In subjugated communities’—Blacks, Latinos, women, LGBTQ—their theological positions inherently recognize the Domination System and the damage it inflicts upon them. Their theologies empower them to struggle against this system while advocating for its deconstruction, where all can share power and access.
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This book argues that white evangelical theology, which emerges from this social matrix, provides biblical justification for domination. Its function is to help sustain domination systems and preserve the supremacy of whiteness at the top of the social hierarchy. Predominantly, they view white domination as fundamentally ordained by the God of the Bible and use a racist biblical hermeneutical interpretation of Scripture to support their position. Blindly, when the Black church embraces white evangelical theology, no matter how polite, friendly, and courteous its purveyors may be, it becomes complicit in its own oppression.
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This book challenges the Black church to divorce itself from the toxic influence of white evangelical theology by rediscovering the Jesus Christ of the Bible against His historical backdrop rather than removing Him from history and placing Him in a timeless vacuum—robbing His ministry and message of context. Such a hermeneutical approach to understanding the historical Jesus would reveal that Jesus’ struggle against Roman colonial oppression mirrors Black people’s struggle against oppression in America. This provides a unique bond between the historical Jesus and the Black community, including other people who have been oppressed. Out of the Black community’s solidarity with the suffering Jesus, a more authentic theology for the Black church must emerge to inform its ministry and message and to celebrate its liberated identity.
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ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE BIBLE IS BLACK HISTORY INSTITUTE
The Bible is Black History Personal Workbook contains probing questions designed to encourage the reader to more thoroughly delve into the themes presented in The Bible is Black History. The Personal Workbook, along with the book are perfect study materials for Vacation Bible Schools, Sunday Schools, Mid-Week Bible Studies, small group, and personal studies.An equally important function of the Personal Workbook is to stimulate the curiosity of the student such that the student would conduct further studies on this topic; since there is no single book in publication that addresses every subject that pertains to Black presence in the Bible. Also, a bibliography of suggested texts is provided in this personal workbook should the student desire further study materials. Dr. Williams has been the Pastor of the Mt. Carmel Church of Indianapolis, Indiana for more than 30 years. He holds a Doctor of Ministry and Master of Divinity degrees from the Chicago Theological Seminary and the School of Theology at Virginia Union University respectively.