Black Theology and Black Power | Chapter 3: The White Church and Black Power

• The church should identify herself with the suffering.
• Black power is the Spirit of Christ in the black-white dialogue with the goal of giving Blacks worth and forcing whites to see that worth.
• The spirit of Black power is so challenging to the American way of life.

What is the Church?

• The church consists of those God has called through power and love to aid in the liberation of his people.
• Since Genesis (Gen. 1:27-28), God has been on a course to liberate and restore his creatures.
• The call of Abraham and the Exodus demonstrates God’s revolutionary activity in liberating mankind from their own sinful pride.
• Israel was chosen by God to be a partner in God’s revolutionary activity.
• God choosing Israel, the oppressed lowly people, demonstrated his concern for the weak as opposed to the strong.
• Israel often spoke of the coming Day of the Lord when God would vindicate his people from oppression and when righteousness would be displayed.
• The arrival of Christ has also marked the arrival of the Day of the Lord.
• With Christ also comes the Church.
• The purpose of the church is to be the visible representation of God’s work in the affairs of the world.
• The will of the church is not it’s own will but God’s will.
• The church consists of those challenged to participate in the sufferings of God.
• It isn’t religion that makes a Christian a Christian, but it is his willingness to suffer for God that does.
• Since the Church is called to suffer for God, and since Christ is with the church, Christ is with those suffering [for God].
• The belief that Christ is in the ghetto fighting against racist white church people and not merely in a comfortable suburban church is what's needed to combat modern racism.
• The Church essentially has three functions: preaching, service, and fellowship.
• The Church's function of preaching must consist of the announcing of Christ's victory over evil and the proclamation of freedom from such evil as white power, white racism, and the ills of the ghetto.
• Modern preaching is telling the world about the victory Christ has already won over racism and how we should act as if it is reality.
• The message of freedom through the preaching of the Word forces the crisis of choosing between two sides: either being for that liberation or being against it—there is no middle ground.
• Service is not only the Church preaching the Word of liberation but aiding Christ in his work of liberation—fighting against the already defeated evil of racism.
• To follow Christ means more than talking or passing resolutions—it means being involved in the world as a witness through action.
• Christ is in the ghetto where other Black people are.
• Whites would rather view Christ as raceless because the Black Christ is too offensive to them.
• If Christ and Church is where the oppressed are, then Christ and the Church must identify with being Black.
• Thinking of Christ as non-Black in the 21st century is as crazy as thinking of Christ as non-Jewish in the 1st century.
• Since all oppressed people are God's people, Christ must be Black in order for God to remain faithful to his Word.
• Christ is Black because he is oppressed and oppressed because he is Black and for the Church to follow Christ they must become Black and go where the suffering is.
• Reconciliation is the racist being freed of racism by seeing Blacks as men.
• Since the Church is called to be a visual representation of what it preaches and what is seeks to do in the world, the Church should contain no trace of racism.
• The church isn’t a Christian community if it isn’t concerned about those within it living according to the spirit of Christ.
• Though the unintended result of questioning the holiness of its members can result in the church focusing on irrelevancies (such as smoking, dancing, drinking, etc.), it is necessary to make sure the church is a holy community that accepts Blacks like Christ accepts us.

The white church and Black power

• The white church has failed in its job to proclaim the gospel, render services of liberation and reconciliation, and be a manifestation of the nature of the new society—instead it is a picture of a sick society that oppresses the poor.
• Such irrelevancy in the Church has led some to claim that God is dead, but such a mistake stems from not realizing that everyone who signed up as a Christian isn’t necessarily the makeup of the Church.
• The white church looks like the old society and nothing like God’s redemptive agent in the world. 
• Such failure is evidenced by their placing more concern in drinking, buildings, and Sunday morning and not in the health of children in the ghettos or the killing of Black men demanding to be treated like men.
• Instead of the white church giving moral leadership and example, it looks to be congratulated for passing innocuous resolutions.
• The white church has not only contributed to white supremacy but even today is unable to recognize the bigotry still being perpetuated by it.
• The church today is guilty of tardiness, apathy, non-commitment, outright opposition, and the gravest sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit—one that is unforgivable because it is never recognized.
• Racism is a denial of Christianity by denying the Incarnation and the white church’s willingness to tolerate and perpetuate it means that the white church is un-Christian.
• Since racism implies the absence of fellowship and service, which are primary marks of the Church, to be racist then is to fall outside the definition of the Church.
• The church is Antichrist-like seeing that it took the lead in establishing slavery as an institution and segregation as a pattern by sanctioning all-white congregations.
• The church preaches racism, not by word but by “moral” example in its all-white congregations and in its silence in the dehumanization of Blacks.
• In the days of slavery, the church preached that slavery was a divine decree and even used the Bible as the the basis of its authority.
• Today, this church perpetuates the inhumanity of Blacks by remaining silent to Black killings at the hands of law enforcement (passive), by emphasizing obedience to the law of the land without questioning if the law is racist in character or questioning the deadly violence law enforcement inflicts on Blacks (active), and by condemning the concept of Black Power (or Black Lives Matter) without saying a word about white power and its history.
• Genocide is the logical conclusion of racism.
• Many writers have shown the church’s vested interest in slavery and racism.
• Slaveholders were against Christianizing slaves in fear that education might cause the slave to fight for his/her freedom. They also forbade baptism thinking that it would result in the freedom of the slave up until the Bishop of London wrote that the freedom that Christianity gives is not that of physical freedom.
• Some churchmen argued that Christianity made Blacks better slaves by moderating their passions towards rebellion about their freedom.
• The fact that many ministers owned slaves show that they didn’t view any contradiction between slavery and Christianity.
• While some northern white Methodists would argue that the church split over the issue of slavery in 1844, they still did not view Blacks as men given their treatment of Blacks in their own churches.
• The north appears to be more concerned about Blacks because of their work towards abolishing slavery, yet one should keep in mind that slavery was not as vital to the north’s economy as it was to the south’s.
• Some southern churchmen might argue that the pre-Civil War church was integrated since, despite special circumstances, whites and Blacks (slaves) worshipped together.
• But this “integration” was a means of supervising Blacks.
• The Quakers were the only denomination that showed Christian opposition to slavery.
• And still there were Quakers who ignored religion and in the name of economics took slaves—yet as least there was a religious concern for freedom of Blacks among the Quakers.
• The white church not only failed to speak up against the injustices towards Blacks but was often the purveyor of such injustices.
• Though some white churchmen would want to mention their involvement in the civil rights struggle of the 50’s and 60’s, most stood by silently and critical of MLK during his initial acts of civil disobedience...only to join very late.
• In fact they went from being “missionaries in a foreign land” to absent when King brought his work up North.
• White clergy viewed King's nonviolence as the lesser of two evils.
• King was killed because of the environment the white church created that made it permissible for a while man to kill a Black man.
• All the white church does is tell Blacks to obey the law and pass resolutions that mean nothing since it isn't backed up with real action.
• You may not be able to stop riots but you can fight the conditions that cause them.
• The white church needs men who are willing to pay the price of speaking up against inhumanity instead of blessing it with their silence.
• The whiteness of the church is what makes it unwilling to die for its neighbors who aren't white.
• If the church is without those who are willing to pay the cost of discipleship, then we must conclude that Christ is working outside of the white church.
• Hope for the white church depends on its willingness to repent—not just own up to its perpetuation of white supremacy but to radically change (conversion).
• Repentance means to give up everything in order to obtain salvation.
• With repentance comes obedience and obedience can't happen without action.
• The white church must break its racist pattern by placing its life at stake standing (and not standing silently) with the oppressed.

Black power and American theology

• It's easier for religious thinkers to defend and make excuses for the evils of American society than to be prophetic.
• Theology, like the church, remains silent or unclear on race relations in America.
• It is time for theology to deal with real issues like the dehumanization of Blacks instead of textual issues in the Bible or objective views on religious phenomena.
• When the church fails to live up to its mission, bankrupt theology is to blame.
• The task of theology is to make sure the church is the Church by examining her actions in light of the gospel.
• In order for theology to effectively serve the church it must make sure the church is in the world and in every generation doing the work of Jesus Christ.
• American theology has failed to take the risk of relating the gospel to the problems of race in this country.
• American theology shares too close of an identity with the structures society which make it impossible for theologians to respond effectively to problems in society since that is only possible by identifying with the disinherited and unwanted. 
• This makes American theology weak when compared to the theology found in Europe.
• Karl Barth’s theology was a response to the political and economic crisis of Communism and Fascism in Germany.
• Because of the anthropological problems that Barth saw in German society, he left his man-centered theology for one that was God-centered.
• Barth’s change in theological perspective came from recognizing the problem of natural theology’s blending of the Word of God with the word of man.
• Americans’ problem with Barth’s rejection of natural theology might stem from the fact that American theologians still see a close relationship between the structures of society and Christianity—a closeness that makes it impossible to criticize and judge America.
• Barth’s theology is an example of how theology should push the Church to address life situations.
• American theology shouldn’t have to depend on European theology to tell the Church what issues to address.
• Since American theology has put so much attention on every issue except powerless Blacks, there is a need for a revolutionary theology that radically encounters the problems of disinherited Blacks in America and oppressed peoples of color worldwide.
• Theology cannot afford to be silent in an era where Blacks are willing to risk everything, including life, for freedom now.
• When theologians are faced with this issue, they can respond in one of three ways: 1) insist on Paul’s dictum to be subject to the powers that be; 2) insist that theology is necessarily unrelated to social issues; 3) join the oppressed in their fight for freedom and declare that Black revolution is the work of Christ.
• If the white church and white theology are too dead to address the issues surrounding Black oppression, then God will choose another redemptive force in implementing his righteousness in the world—and the only one left may be the segregated Black churches.
• The idea of treating Blacks as real persons is so far out the norm for white behavior, that whites can’t even begin to understand the meaning of Black humanity (i.e. Black Power, Black Lives Matter).
• In this time of decision, the Church is faced with either the decision to continue to bless the forces of oppression, or the decision to embrace the cause of liberation.

Notes from James Cone's "Black Theology and Black Power"