Pneuma 30 (2008) 291-298
Book Roundtable
Can a Dead Black T eology Be Resurrected as a
Pentecostal T eology? A Review Essay of
The Rise and Demise of Black T eology
Marlon Millner
International Ministries, American Baptist Churches USA, Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania 19482, USA
Alistair Kee has given much attention in his academic career to the intersec- tion of ideology, religion and culture, particularly as it relates to liberation theology. This now retired professor of the philosophy of religion at the University of Edinburgh most recently turned his deconstructionist gaze upon black theology — a political theology in its American, British and South African contexts. One wonders though if his book — The Rise and Demise of Black Theology1 — was a lost letter to a dying friend who had long since been dead and buried? Kee writes about a book of essays done in honor of James Cone’s landmark work Black Theology and Black Power.2 Those essays, Kee notes, never engaged the subject: “(1) Many of the essays simply ignore Black Theology and Black Power . . . (2) Many of the essays have been previously published ‘in another form’. They ignore the work of James Cone in favour of the author’s favorite research topic” (RDBT 191). But this is exactly what Kee did when he wrote the essay, “‘The Criticism of [Black] Theology is Transformed into the Criticism of Politics’ — Karl Marx,” for The Quest for Liberation and Reconciliation: Essays in Honor of
1
Alistair Kee, The Rise and Demise of Black T eology (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate. 2006). All references to this book will be made parenthetically in the text as RDBT fol- lowed by page number.
2
James Cone, Black T eology and Black Power (reprint ed., Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/157007408X346438
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J. Deotis Roberts.3 After writing that as “Philosopher, theologian, scholar of religions, Deotis Roberts is a citizen of one country and a welcome visitor to many others,”4 Kee proceeded to offer in summary form the critique he launches with a tour de force in the book under review here, begging the question: did it ever have to be written?
Kee’s primary point in that essay, and stated in protracted fashion again in this book is that black theology must change or die, if it is not dead already. The problem with black theology, according to Kee, is that, “Far from exhibit- ing a new fl ourishing of creativity, commitment and imagination, it has been content to repeat the mantras of a previous period” (RDBT vii). However, even those mantras, in the socio-historical context in which they emerged, are brought under attack by Kee. Interestingly for Kee — a white man — the big- gest drawback of black theology is its preference, even dependency, on race as a category over against his preferred class/Marxist analysis.
For Kee, there is a need to reject romanticized notions of black life, or its past (wherever). Kee also sees a need to critique even nationalistic movements for black people that are deemed incompatible with Christianity. At the same time, there must be a critical engagement prior to rejection or radical reformu- lation of Christian materials, biblical, theological or liturgical. Finally, one needs to engage in thoroughgoing socio-economic analysis in order to not remain trapped in erroneously essentialized notions of race or gender or merely pay lip service to class analysis. Hence Marxism is a necessary component of any relevant political theology. This all sounds great. The problem is that Kee’s entire book reads like a satire against straw man examples of black theology’s failure to do just that, rather than a constructive proposal of and engagement with black theology to speak on behalf of the black poor.
The book opens with Kee’s analysis of the emergence of racial consciousness among persons of African descent in their diasporic contexts, arguing that particularly those of the Francophone Caribbean and parts of Francophone Africa are much more radical in their racial consciousness than African Amer- icans. The crucial components that appear for Kee among these Francophone black intellectuals is that they: 1) do not romanticize blackness or a supposed African past; 2) they reject forced segregation or integration with whites, but
3
Alister Kee, “‘The Criticism of [Black] T eology is Transformed into the Criticism of Politics’ — Karl Marx,” in Michael Battle, ed., The Quest for Liberation and Reconciliation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2005), 46-52; the bracketed word in the title of Kee’s essay belongs to him.
4
Kee, “‘Criticism of [Black] T eology’,” 46.
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see the need for a period of mutual separation as particularly benefi cial for black progress; and 3) they entertain or advocate violent revolution as a means of black freedom. Here the work of Franz Fanon is particularly instructive for Kee (RDBT 10-16).
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From this foundation of a radical understanding of being black, Kee moves to consider in order: African American, South African, Womanist, and Afro- British theologies. In the African American context he sees Albert Cleage as a neglected articulator of black theology, and one to be commended because, again, Cleage does not romanticize the black condition, critiques (secular) black nationalism, and creatively uses biblical and historical theological mate- rials. In Kee’s words, Cleage should be “appointed to the chair of boldness at Harvard University” (RDBT 48). On the other hand, he chastises James Cone for an uncritical acceptance of secular black nationalism, an acceptance that makes “Christian faith totally subservient to Black Power” (RDBT 60). And overall, “T ere is little theology in this black theology: it is a triumph of style over substance” (RDBT 60). In contrast to Cone, J. Deotis Roberts, the other major black theologian treated in this section, “has not been suficiently infl u- enced by the ideology of Black Power” (RDBT 66).
In his chapter on South Africa, Kee returns to his opening theme of assimi- lation or alienation by contrasting Stephen Biko with Nelson Mandela. As radical as persons think Mandela was, Biko was more radical because he was not necessarily interested in integration, and really articulated the black con- sciousness necessary to lead to the dismantling of Apartheid (RDBT 72, 78). But what is more striking for Kee is that the dismantling of Apartheid is not the solution, if it means that a black elite is in power, rather than a white elite — exactly what has happened since Nelson Mandela was elected president in 1994. So Kee highlights the inability of a racialized theology to work in South Africa, and that economic or class analysis is much more important.
Some of Kee’s harshest criticism, though, is reserved for womanist theology. “Books purporting to be on womanist theology are largely taken up with repeating the themes from secular womanism. When they fi nally reach the theology section they have an ambivalent relationship with the two historic sources of Christian theology, the tradition and the Bible. Womanist theology, fi nding that both of these two universally respected sources of Christianity have lost their authority, must now fi nd its own distinctive source. T at source
5
Kee seems enthralled with the life of this Francophone from Martinique, who later works in Algeria. See Franz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, 3rd ed. (New York: Grove Press, 2007), or The Wretched of the Earth (reprint, New York: Grove Press, 2005).
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is the experience of black women” (RDBT 111). But for Kee, the experiences of black women have already been addressed by other secular womanist schol- ars. Kee shows his alarm when he writes, “T ere is the danger that womanist theologians might withdraw from interaction with the wider traditions of intellectual life. The most obvious defi ciency in womanist theology is its lack of theory” (RDBT 115). For Kee, womanist theology is neither suficiently theological, nor rigorously intellectual.
Kee reserves his kindest remarks in his overview of black theologies for his colleague Robert Beckford of the United Kingdom. “[A] further feature of Robert Beckford’s work is not his scathing criticism of those with whom he disagrees, but his nuanced criticism of those whom he first praises” (RDBT 154). Kee follows this pattern, generally applauding Beckford for his cultural theology of “Dread.”
If a good theology is based on criticism, then Kee is to be commended for this work. But if good theology is constructive, then Kee fails miserably. He highlights those black intellectuals and theologians who refuse a simple inte- gration into white society, without fundamental social change. But Kee equiv- ocates on whether violence is necessary — called for in Fanon and others as a precursor to a more just society — when he in turn criticizes James Cone for baptizing such violence, in word and deed, in black theology. Kee has no con- sistent stance on this crucial issue.
Moreover, while Kee has harsh words for womanist theologians who dis- miss the work of white feminists on grounds of their personal experience, he too injects his own experiences in Zimbabwe and New York City to seem- ingly demonstrate he is on the side of liberation of blacks in America and Africa, while dismissing the claims of black theologians (RDBT 114, 118, 149). But when did a personal testimony rise to the level of a discourse which could be understood and critiqued within the broader intellectual community?
Further, Kee harshly attacks black theology for its lack of using the twin components of theology— the Bible and tradition— as thoroughly as they should. It reminds me of the Africentric psychologist Na’im Akbar, who I heard speak my freshman year in college. In reference to the Western intel- lectual tradition, he said, “you have to know everything they know, and then you have to know everything you need to know.” For where black theologians do use Bible and tradition, as they do, for example, in arguing that God is on the side of the poor, this is just a simpleminded approach to Scripture, which should be rejected, according to Kee. T ere is no lack of criticism, but if Kee, as a white European scholar, trained in economics and theology believes he
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can attack black theology “on behalf of the black poor,” why is he then bereft of any theological proposals on their behalf?
Kee might have done better to be more charitable in his critique of what I would call the “cultural turn” in black theology, particularly in second-genera- tion black and womanist theologies. Even Cornel West, in his essay “Religion and the Left,” says, “The major contribution religious revivals can make to left strategy is to demand that Marxist thinkers and activists take seriously the culture of the oppressed.”6 West goes on to say, “Such a shift is necessary because after over a century of heralding the cause of the liberation of oppressed peoples, Marxists have little understanding and appreciation of the culture of these peoples. . . . And it is the arrogance of this legacy, the snobbery of this tradition that precludes Marxists from taking seriously religion, a crucial ele- ment of the culture of the oppressed.”7 West, perhaps in a prophetic fragment of insight, concludes:
If Marxists are to go beyond European bourgeois attitudes toward the culture of the oppressed without idealizing or romanticizing these cultures, it is necessary to tran- scend a hermeneutics of suspicion and engage in hermeneutical combat. In other words, Marxists must not simply enact negative forms of subversive demystifi cation (and God forbid, more bourgeois forms of deconstruction!) . . .8
What we have in Kee is simply more European bourgeois deconstruction.
In many camps within the academy today, the word religion is synonymous with culture, and Kee seems to hold in disdain that black theology as it has evolved has gone the way of cultural studies. But that would seem to suggest his experiences in Rhodesia and a Harlem ghetto in no way prepared him to criticize western canons of knowledge through the testimonies of black Chris- tians. For, it would seem he is unaware of T eophus Smith’s Conjuring Cul- ture: Biblical Formations of Black America or the massive compendium African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures.9 Either text would demonstrate that black theology is not abandoning the Bible, or the tradition, but rather understands and critiques both in the oral, performative, contex- tual, and self-refl ected apprehension of both within communities of color.
6
Cornel West, “Religion and the Left,” in The Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Civitas, 1999), 378.
7
West, “Religion and the Left,” 378.
8
West, “Religion and the Left,” 379.
9
T eophus Smith, Conjuring Culture; Biblical Formations of Black America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Vincent Wimbush, ed. African Americans and the Bible: Sacred Texts and Social Textures (New York: Continuum, 2001).
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This leads to a fi nal criticism, where in I sense, I agree with Kee. T ere is a need for a radical race critique and even gender critique. But perhaps the radical critique in black and womanist theology is a name change. Kee is infatuated with Cheryl Sanders’s deconstruction of the use of the term and the secular ideology “womanist” in relationship to theology, but he seems altogether unfamiliar with her as a holiness Christian ethicist (RDBT 130- 32). Likewise, Kee mentions “Black Pentecostalism,” in relationship to Rob- ert Beckford, but fails to nuance his own appreciation or critique of Beckford in terms of Beckford’s development, or lack of development, of organically Pentecostal themes, with his preference to import a diff erent set of cultural/ religious terms into an already situated and contextually constituted theology of Pentecostalism among Caribbean immigrants and their descendents in Britain.
Perhaps Cheryl Sanders was right in her book Saints in Exile: The Holiness Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture, when she writes, “saints” are aware of “alienation or separation from the dominant cul- ture, based on racial diff erences and religious practices.”
10
Studies of Pentecos- talism — whether social sciences, political or theological — have consistently shown this type of agency, which in Kee’s book is ignored, or considered the wrong starting point for theology. Perhaps the right pitch is always and forever some Marxist deconstruction of often theologically (read: politically) repres- sive and oppressive orthodoxy.
Pentecostal theology, which is still emerging, is needed perhaps because the radical race and gender critique Kee is looking for is lacking due to pneuma- tological impoverishment. In Saints in Exile Sanders manages to muster a critique of race (overturning of DuBoisian “double consciousness,” or the blackness that whiteness creates), class (critiques of James Cone and James Baldwin’s reductionist or marginalist interpretations of black religion), gen- der (examination of women in ministry), and sexuality (focusing on the work of homosexual and Pentecostal scholar James Tinney). In fact Sanders gives the least amount of attention to theological dogma or abstract refl ection. However, with a focus on contextual cultural practices, which would be approved in West’s Marxist analysis, one can also notice a theological render- ing of such practices, which only problematizes theological categories — both in the Western Christian theological canon, and black theology. J. Deotis Roberts — a preeminent black theologian — admits as much in his work
10
Cheryl Sanders, Saints in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal experience in African American Reli- gion and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 6.
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Africentric Christianity: A T eological Appraisal for Ministry ,11 and Gayraud Wilmore admits he got Pentecostalism wrong in his revised introduction to his classic text Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of Afro-American People.12
Pentecostals of African descent, in particular, have been forced to learn the canons of their masters, whether they are canons of race, gender or theology. But Azusa was the birth of a radical critique of canon, creed, class, race, and gender. Not to ossify or universalize Azusa, but we are right with West when he afirms his allegiance to the prophetic Christian tradition by saying he needs “neither metaphysical criteria nor transcendental standards to be per- suaded, only historically constituted and situated reasons.”13 Azusa stands as our historically constituted and situated reason for changing the name of black theology. Marxist-type analysis has already been applied to much of Pentecos- talism, and has proved in many ways inadequate, because of its marginaliza- tion or reductionist interpretation of the cultural agency that West has described, defended, and which European bourgeois Marxist analysis has deconstructed.
It is ironic that while Kee was publishing Marxist critiques of liberation theology, another political theologian, Harvey Cox, was writing a landmark book on Pentecostalism, prompting many liberationists to change the subject, particularly in Latin America.14 But we should also note that Cox is not alone among those concerned with political theology, a critique of modern capital- ism, and the reconstruction of categories in theology, race, class and gender.15 The momentary pneumatological rupture in history at Azusa (and many other
11
J. Deotis Roberts, Africentric Christianity: A T eological Appraisal for Ministry (Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson Press, 2000).
12
See Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Reli- gious History of Afro-American People, 3rd ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1998).
13
Cornel West, “The Historicist Turn in the Philosophy of Religion,” The Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Civitas, 1999), 370.
14
Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1994).
15
Here, I think specifi cally of two liberation theologians in the Latin American context, Richard Shaull, who with Waldo Cesar, co-authored Pentecostalism and the Future of the Christian Churches: Promises, Limitations, Challenges (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), and Jose Comblin, The Holy Spirit and Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989). Moreover, consider the work of Frank Chikane, a South African and a leader in both the African National Congress and Apostolic Faith Mission, with his autobiography No Life of My Own (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990), and more recently his essay, “The Blessings of Azusa Street and Doornfontein, and Pentecost’s Blind Spot,” in Harold Hunter and Cecil Robeck, eds., The Azusa Street Revival and Its Legacy (Cleveland, Tenn.: Pathway, 2006), 259-76.
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parts of the globe) on the levels of class, race, and gender provide a heuristic for further critical refl ection, both among the progenitors of Pentecostalism globally, and global society more broadly.16 Beyond Azusa, there are early twentieth century voices like Robert Lawson, whose Anthropology of Jesus Christ Our Kinsman off ers a radical race critique, along with a radical re-read- ing of the Bible and dismantling of traditional (white) Christian theology in the name of Pentecostalism.17 Perhaps the death of black theology could mean its resurrection as Pentecostal theology, a discourse that would inevitably speak of race, gender, class, the Bible and tradition with new tongues.
16
Consider here the selection of Pentecostal representatives in Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global T eology (Grand Rapids: Baker Aca- demic, 2005), especially the introduction and chapter one.
17
Robert Lawson, The Anthropology of Jesus Christ Our Kinsman (New York: Church of Christ Publishing, 1925). This work is virtually inaccessible. For a review, see Douglas Jacobsen, T ink- ing in the Spirit; T eologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington, In.: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 2003) 260-285, and Jacobsen, ed., A Reader in Pentecostal T eology: Voices from the First Generation (Bloomington, In.: Indiana University Press, 2006), 199-210.
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