black theology

African American spirituality and God’s act of solidarity

If Jesus is black, he's calling us to do a lot more than affirm the color of his skin.

The African American Intellectual History Society, founded in 2014, hosted its first annual conference last weekend at UNC Chapel Hill. Scholars from various disciplines delivered engaging papers around the theme “new perspectives on the black intellectual tradition.”

The changing nature of black identity in today’s world is complex. 

In this webinar Greg Boyd will discuss with Drew G.I. Hart how the Neo-Anabaptist movement in North America can engage "Anablactivism" and vice-versa. Drew's research, focused on the intersection of Black theology and Anabaptism, invites us to consider the potential of Anablacktivism for inspiring Christ's followers to faithful action today.

In “God of the Oppressed,” James Cone recounts how Christian responses to the 1967 Detroit riot revealed not only an insensitivity to black suffering but a larger theological bankruptcy on the part of white theologians. As he saw it, they were not genuinely concerned about all cases of violence. Worried about the threat of black revolutionaries, they did not see the structure of violence embedded in U.S. law and carried out by the police. Cone asks: “Why didn’t we hear from the so-called nonviolent Christians when black people were violently enslaved, violently lynched, and violently ghettoized in the name of freedom and democracy?”

I am tired of pretending that we want to hang out at the country club and eat cucumber sandwiches in fancy hats. We are not some sort of upper-crust elite society. Now, it's time to discard that tired label that ties us too closely with a particular race and class. It's time to call forth another name.

When black theologians focused on nontraditional and extra-Christian sources, white theologians had an excuse to ignore them. Not anymore.