The relationship and experience of African American Christians with Christianity is complex, and when examined closely, often includes several great paradoxes and challenges which make it that much more difficult to navigate and understand. Perhaps one of the greatest of those challenges was the fact that many white masters forbade their slaves to become Christian, making it appear that Christianity was a white religion (the fall-out of this sentiment continues to this day, with many African Americans rejecting Christianity for that very reason). And yet, many African American slaves, upon hearing of Christ and the Christian faith, wanted to follow Christ, to be Christians. They believed Christ was with them and not the whites, that what he suffered put him in solidarity with them and not the masters who tried to forbid them from being Christian.
Those who became Christian found their faith gave them the strength and hope they needed, not only to endure the unimaginable suffering they experienced, but to transcend it. The message of the Gospel was a message of liberation. The Old Testament, likewise, reinforced that message. They believed Christ would help them overcome their oppressors, so then they can seek out the “promised land” where justice will prevail. However, they also struggled to understand the situation they found themselves in. They struggled to understand why God allowed them to suffer such grave injustices, making it, sometimes, out of faith, they would even challenge or wrestle with God with the intention of making God act. James Cone expressed all of this quite well in the way he said their faith often centered on one great paradox, the kind which affected their relationship with God and the rest of the world:
Black faith emerged out of black people’s wrestling with suffering, the struggle to make sense out of their senseless situation, as they related their own predicaments to similar stories in the Bible. On the one hand, faith spoke to their suffering, making it bearable, while, on the other hand, suffering contradicted their faith, making it unbearable.[1]
Their faith, therefore, was not one extremely concerned about dogmatic theology (though, of course, this is not to say it was denied); what they were more concerned about was the practical application of the faith and what it meant about their place in the world, their place with God, and what they should expect God would do to deal with the injustices of the world. Those who fought systemic evil in the world represented far more what Christ meant to them than those who answered questions concerning the Trinity and the incarnation. Theirs was (and continues to be) a faith which is lived amid struggle, struggle against systemic evil, and they realize that what we do for the sake of the oppressed, what we do confronting systemic structures of sin and the rulers which benefit from them, demonstrates better our relationship with Christ than those who merely discuss and promote the theology surrounding the term homoousios. Indeed, while in other ages, when “Christians” held power, they could and would use that power to persecute people who professed beliefs contrary to their own, and it is possible, this will happen again, in general, what Laura Swan said in general concerning persecution is what they experienced with their faith:
The People of God are not persecuted or martyred for defending dogma or institutional privileges, but for incarnating Christian virtues, particularly for standing with the poor and persecuted.[2]
In this way, one can say the African American Christianity experience brought back the early Christian understanding of persecution and injustice. African Americans pointed out a truth which was found in various patristic writings but which was otherwise lost to many, that those who join in with the oppressors, those who support the systems of oppression, will be judged accordingly:
There are two kinds of injustice: one, whereby we inflict injuries; the other, whereby we neglect to avert those inflicted on others when we can. For in a certain sense we ourselves are oppressors when we scorn the downtrodden though we are able to defend them from oppression. Nor does it avail me anything that I do not circumvent or deceive a man if I permit him to be deceived or circumvented. [3]
Historically, those in positions of power create propaganda to justify their oppression; a common way they do this is to suggest that those they persecute are criminals who deserve the punishment being given to them. They make all kinds of laws which are unjust, laws which then are violated by those seek true justice, making those who do what is right, criminals. Also, if people question them, they will engage guilt by association, looking for the worst representatives within a particular group of people and use them to represent the whole, thus, justifying the unjustifiable with a fallacious argument. This is what was done Nazi Germany to the Jews, to the Romani, and others, or in the United States, to African Americans. In Nazi Germany, this led to the call for a “final solution,” while in the United States, it led to lynching:
Whites frequently blamed any or all blacks for what one did, accusing them of harboring “n [… word edited out by editor, HK] criminals,” and they would take out their frustration on the whole black community, as they did in Atlanta in 1906 – burning their homes and beating and lynching whoever was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing was more detested by whites than the idea that blacks were equal to them.[4]
Christianity always grows when its leaders fight injustice, and diminishes when it is seen as one of the forces behind oppression. Thus, Christians who embrace or defend such evil not only work against Christ, they end up spreading an anti-Gospel message which must be completely repudiated. In the end, as Laura Swan explained, such evil cannot last, and if it is not overcome from within, the violence which it engages will end up destroying all that is around it:
The powerful tend to be blind to the advantages of disengaging from unjust social structures. They benefit financially from increased profit margins by paying unjust wages, tolerating unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, and in plundering the environment with an unlimited demand for natural resources. Violence results: toward human life, the environment, and in the social and political realm.[5]
Christians should be working for peace, even as they should be messengers of Christ’s peace. To fulfill that role, they must fight against the injustice in the world. If they do not do so, they end up supporting the system and the violence inherent with it, the violence which is at war against Christ, for Christ suffers in and with all those who suffer from such violence. The way of the faith, the way of showing love to Christ, must include looking at Christ as he is found in those who are being violently attacked by the injustices around us:
In all roles the theologian is committed to the form of existence arising from Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. He knows that the death of the man on the tree has radical implications for those who are enslaved, lynched, and ghettoized in the name of God and country. In order to do theology from that standpoint, he must ask the right questions and then go to the right sources for answers. The right questions are always related to the basic question: What has the gospel to do with the oppressed of the land and their struggle for liberation? And theologian who fails to place that question at the center of his work has ignored the essence of the gospel.[6]
We must, like J.R.R. Tolkien, look at the misery found in the world and be appalled by it. We must realize, no matter how tough the situation, no matter how great the pain and sorrow injustices bring, the forces behind such injustice are not all-powerful. They can be overcome. In the end, Christians must hope God will help those struggling against systemic evil, and will help them become victorious:
I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. But the historical version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their ’causes’ and ‘effects’. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitaris. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives. …. But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope.[7]
We must not ignore the injustices of the world. We must take on the systemic structures of sin. We must do so, not just by ourselves, but with God. We must “wrestle” with God, having God at our side as we wrestle against the powers of darkness all around us. We must not ignore our responsibility, putting it off: we must take it head on, weeping for the cruelty in the world. In doing so, we can find ourselves embracing hope, finding that in doing so, we can understand and join in with the paradox of faith which Cone described, the paradox which lies behind the African American Christian experience.
[1] James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 124.
[2] Laura Swan, Engaging Benedict: What the Rule Can Teach Us Today (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 2005), 148.
[3] Julianus Pomerius, The Contemplative Life. Trans. Mary Josephine Suelzer, PhD (Westminster, MD: The Newman Bookshop, 1947), 149-50.
[4] James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, 127-128.
[5] Laura Swan, Engaging Benedict: What the Rule Can Teach Us Today, 149.
[6] James H. Cone, God Of The Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press 1975), 9.
[7] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Revised and Expanded Edition. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Broadway, NY: William Morrow, 2023), 110 [Letter 64 to Christopher Tolkien].
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