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Cutting The Cheese A Different Way: Ethics, Hermeneutics, And The Black Experience
Get PDFFor the past five centuries we have lived in a theological age, described by some as the age of modernity. In this age people of color have been dominated by a pejorative Eurocentrism which tends to take a one-sided approach to theological scholarship, andparticularly to hermeneutics and ethics. From a Black frame of reference one observes that such an age has become increasingly marked by discursive rationality and an unholy arrogance rooted in centuries of White male privilege and power. Ethically, it is not simply the moral problematic of the arrogance of power. It is rather the power of arrogance masquerading as the surnmum bonum, the highest good for all people
Slavery in the Americas: Economic, Cultural, and Religious Consequences
Get PDFSlavery extended widely over the Americas for over four centuries. Its main purpose was to make money. Slavery was not an accident of history. It is at the very foundation of civilization in the West and is to be viewed as its running costs. It is ironic that slavery developed in the West at the very time that reason and the Enlightenment were at their peak. The fact that human exploitation and suffering could lay the foundation for the nations of the Americas should be reason for profound thought and repentance
Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, Front Matter, 1988
No full textJournal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, Front Matter, 198
The African Context for Theology
Get PDFThere is a dichotomy between African traditional culture and Western civilization and Christianity. Westerners generally regard African traditional beliefs as superstition, symptomatic of a people’s backwardness. African people, on the whole, are influenced by their religio-traditional beliefs which include belief in and fear of witches and witchcraft practices. In an attempt to eradicate this so-called superstition, missionariesin the past laid heavy stress on education and Christian evangelism as the answer to the problem of the so-called African superstition and backwardness. Millions of dollars were raised in the United States and European churches to solve what was assumed to be a short-term process of educating and evangelizing Africa. After a century, the enigmatic puzzle still facing the Christian church in its wrapping of Western civilization remains the same: the African elite, in spite of high achievement in the arts, theological education and technology, remains staunchly embedded in his/her religio-cultural tradition which is based on African cosmology
The Impact of the Kimbanguist Church in Central Africa
Get PDFThe thrust of this paper is to demonstrate how an indigenous African Church made a strong impact on the people and survived through almost 40 years of repression by colonial authorities to emerge in the 1960s as a widespread Church. Her organization and socio-economic activities, developed without overseas assistance, her sincere desire to cooperate and to have fellowship with other Christian churches after her legal recognition in 1960, are proofs of the vitality that is characteristic of this Church.This discussion of the Kimbanguist Church requires a brief examination of how Christianity entered Black Africa and specifically Black Central Africa. This must be seen in the context of Africa’s colonial past. The 19th Century brought new efforts to extend mission work into the heart of the “Dark Continent.” This is the century of strong Protestant missionary activity in Africa. But it is also the time when European Powersdivided Africa
The Situation of Christian Pan Africanism in the U.S. Today
Get PDFInstead of reading formal papers we thought that the three of us would share some thoughts having to do with our experience with Pan Africanism here in the United States; and then open up the panel for general discussion. I will begin, therefore, with comments and then Dr. James H. Cone and Dr. Jacquelyn Grant will speak. Probably very few of our overseas visitors are aware of the appropriateness of holding this meeting here in the city of Atlanta. There have been several meetings in the United States dealing with the question of the relationship between African Americans in the United States and people of African descent everywhere in the world. Perhaps the most important of them was held in the late 19th century right here at Gammon Theological Seminary, one of the constituent seminaries of this InterdenominationalTheological Center. It was in December of 1895 that Professor John W. Bowen, who was on the faculty at Gammon, led in the discussion of the relationship between African Christians in the United States and those in the homeland of Africa. It was a very important conference; probably the first one in which a full expression of the missionary concerns of Black Americans was brought forth. The 1895 conference had a great influence on Black churches in the United States. One of its major purposes wasto encourage Black young men and women to become missionaries to Africa. But it also had another interest closely connected to our current interest in this conference and that was the dissemination of accurate information about Black people all over the world in order that Black Americans might be disabused of illusions and distortions about their forebears and brothers and sisters in Africa, in the Caribbean and in otherparts of the Black world
Book Reviews
Get PDFTheo Witvliet, The Way of The Black Messiah (Oak Park, Ill.: Meyer & Stone, 1987). 265 pages.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed., A Burning and A Shining Light: English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 517 pages.
Roger D. Hatch, Beyond Opportunity: Jesse Jackson’s Vision for America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988): 157 pages.
Marilyn Richardson, ed., Maria W. Stewart, American’s First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1987). 133 pages.
Ronald E. Sleeth, God’s Words and Our Words (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1986). 139 pages.
Samuel T. Logan, Jr., The Preacher and Preaching: Reviving the Art in the Twentieth Century (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1986). 463 pages
Deliberations on Sacred Music at the Consultation on Black Worship: A Report
Get PDFThe Consultation on Black Worship, sponsored by the Interdenominational Theological Center, in Hampton, Georgia on November 21-23, 1985, spent a significant segment of the two and one-half days addressing one of the elemental ingredients of Black worship-Black sacred music. Most of that deliberation was prompted by “The Black Gospel Music Tradition: A Complex of Ideology, Aesthetic, and Behavior,” a paper presented by Dr. Mellonee Burnim, and “Biblical Characters, Events, Places, and Images Remembered and Celebrated in Black Worship,” a paper presented by Dr. Charles Copher. These two papers are included in this present volume, and herein is summarized the dialogue they generated. The two fundamental components of gospel, its music and its lyric, both came under scrutiny. Rev. Marvin Chandler, himself a composer and gospel performer, complained that it’s commercialization has caused fallacious musical expectations in youth, such that, when he sings gospel to his own piano accompaniment, they question the absence of drums, synthesizers, and other electronic instruments. The discussants were in consensus that the commercialization of this “church music” has resulted in the debasement of what Dr. Samuel Proctor, in his presentation, termed “sincerity” and “simplicity” in worship. When this occurs, stated Dr. Proctor, the quality of community life that ought to emanate from worship is not realized
Cosmic Companionship in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theology of Social Change
Get PDFI want to begin with a brief tableau, a description of a typical situation in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. We are in a black churchsomewhere in the Old South of the United States. Before adjourning, the people cross their arms in front of them, joining their hands to the hands of their neighbors on either side, while they sing:God is on our side,God is on our side,God is on our side, today,Oh, deep in my heart I do believe,We shall overcome, someday.The hour is late. The sanctuary is packed with people, singing, clapping, and swaying. These people marched today. There were ugly confrontations with angry crowds of whites, brutality from law enforcement officers, and many arrests. They were afraid earlier today, but here, singing together in the church, they are radiant
Efforts at Black Church Merger
Get PDFOf the 21 million Blacks estimated to be formally affiliated with one church or another, over eighty percent are accounted for by the seven largest black denominations. These, in turn, represent only three different orientations: Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal. Even these divisions are substantially structural in nature, and neither the structural nor the doctrinal demarcations have ever succeeded in shattering the transcendent ethnic identity of Blacks that was fired in the crucible of slavery and tempered in the cauldron of Jim Crow segregation. Still, the divisions exist, and united action predicated on the full resources of the Black Church is impeded accordingly. That reality has not been lost on constituent members of the Black Church who have initiated action to overcome division since the early days of denominationalism