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An Homage to Betelgeuse
Get PDFIt is incredibly easy to become engrossed in what I would call the “cult of the immediate”. It is easy to dim one’s vision, one’s cares, loves, even hatreds to what is at hand in place or time. It is easy to deal with a future of a few coming weeks, or years, or even generations. It is easy to limit oneself to concern only for one’s own life, or that of one’s children or grandchildren. It isn’t very difficult to love or hate an object with which one is immediately or proximately involved, something with which one has a close, personal bond. One can love his children and grandchildren easily. But it becomes increasingly difficult to feel a similar love toward one’s children generation upon generation hence. Would Abraham see an Isaac in all his children today
Changing Perspectives in the Study of Afro-American Religion
Get PDFThe church has been the central institution of the Afro-American community. Black people are incorrigibly religious. Religion is the opiateof the black masses. The black church is but a pale reflection of white Christianity. The black preacher is a protean hustler preying on thecredulity of his congregation. The list of cliches is too long to recite in its entirety; so let me just conclude with a couple of quotations from Elmer T. Clark, an authoritative scholar of American religion: "Evangelistic work among the Negroes [in the antebellum years] was beset with many discouragements owing to the illiteracy, the superstition, and the general backwardness of the slaves. Fresh from the most degraded barbarism, these people were with difficulty made to understand the fundamentals of Christianity. Wildly emotional, theirreligious services were prone to become mere orgies of unrestrained frenzy. The Negroes did not always connect religion with morality; but they were—and are today—“incurably religious.”
Black Theology of Liberation
Get PDFWe are all united or ought to be united by the vision and hope as well as the purpose and struggle of liberation.Coming from the context of the black experience in the United States of America, our contingent of Brothers and sisters is profoundly proud to join the ranks and voices of our brothers and sisters from various quarters of the Motherland and the Third World. Let us here, together, proclaim and engage the struggle of liberation as the gospel. In this we are one in the spirit; one in Jesus . . . Christ, the Lord of liberation
Christian Hope And The Black Experience
Get PDFWhen Jurgen Moltmann calls for an eschatological faith that does not flee the world but struggles to bring the world into conformity with the new future of God, black Christians know what he is talking about. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a better example anywhere of that combination of profound trust in the eschatological promises of God with concrete application to the political and economic realities of this world that characterizes the black churches in America. Perhaps it has something to do with roots in African thinking that includes theunwillingness to adopt rigid time distinctions between the past, present and future found in conventional western thinking.1 Both past and future are drawn into the present in a way that makes it quite impossible to keep future reality from having its impact on the present in practical ways. As a result the projection of eschatological hopes into an indefinite future, so common in white piety, could not become predominant in the Black Church. When black people sang, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” they were expressing not only a profound religious experience, they were referring to escape northward. “When the black slave sang, ‘I looked over Jordan and what did I see, Coming for to carry me home,’ they were looking over the Ohio River.”2
The Pastor’s Theological Identity Formation
Get PDFConcern for the identity of the pastoral counselor and of the local pastor has been given much attention recently.1 Part of the problemfacing the religious functionary is that modern society has been looking to the scientist and the therapist for integration and synthesis of meaning2 rather than to the minister who performed this symbolic integrative function throughout history. Today, the sacred has become secular because of pluralism and rapid social changes which found their origin in the Reformation; as a result, the pastor has sought to identify with the secular sources of his/her authority and identity. However, this trend toward the secularization of the pastor’s identity seems to be declining, and there appears on the horizon a movement toward the reclamation of the transcendent, the spiritual, and religious resources of the Christian Heritage in ministry and in pastoral care.
Current Trends In Theology: Bold Realism Or Visionary Hope In The 80’s?
Get PDFIn this paper I wish to focus attention on the following three interrelated issues: (1) the question of current trends in theological education relative to the tasks of ministry in the world, (2) a brief look at two models or scenarios of the Church and the theological problems they raise as Christians struggle with what it means to be faithful in our time, and (3) the crucial relevance of some type of “normative road-map’’ for the survival and transformation of the Church as it engages future society
Christian Faith and Social Policy in the Thought of Richard Allen
Get PDFThe relationship of the church to social and political concerns within communities has been a continuing issue for church leaders since thebeginning of the Christian movement. Jesus’ confrontation with the Pharisees in Matthew 22:15-22 over the problem of Caesar vs. God has often been interpreted to mean that a definite distinction exists between the secular and sacred. The Apostle Paul offered his own solution in Romans 13. In this passaage, Paul begins by maintaining, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” For Paul, the church and its people were not to engage in any form of conflict with the secular government. If he is taken seriously at this point, it is difficult, if not impossible, to use Paul as a frame of reference for initiating a program of social policy reform
Doctrinal Preaching
Get PDFDiscussion of Doctrinal Preaching as one of a variety of types is a hazardous venture. There are many snares in setting forth the distinctive features of preaching that qualifies as “doctrinal.” By simplest definition, doctrine means something that is taught. In a more formal usage, it has more precise and binding implications. It consists of “a principle, or the body of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of belief.” There is an element of acceptance, authority, taking a position, recognition of a constraining or compelling point of reference
Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, Front Matter, 1984
No full textJournal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, Front Matter, 198