CUT LOOSE YOUR STAMMERING TONGUE-BOOK REVIEW

Hopkins and Cummings collected research found in forty-one volumes of interviews and slave autobiographies, spirituals, and the narratives of former slaves. This book relies mainly on the forty-one volumes of interviews with former slaves recorded in George P. Rawick’s “The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography.” Known as the Slave Narrative Collection, these volumes resulted from the 1936-38 work of the Folklore Division of the Federal Writers’ Project (pg. xii).

In the section, “Contributions to Religious Scholarship,” Hopkins explores how oppressed African Americans received subdued faith of their masters but somehow transformed it into a credo of liberation. This book falls under a quarter-of –a-century tradition of African American scholarship elaborating black Americans’ experience with God (pg. xii). Its strength lies in literally developing ‘black theology’ from the actual voices of poor and enslaved African Americans. To appreciate this contribution, a brief look at contemporary black theological developments is helpful (pg. xii).

Hopkins describes four stages of contemporary black theology. Contemporary black theology began with the formation of the National Committee of Negro Churchman in the summer of 1966, specifically with the publication of their “Black Power Statement” in the New York Times (pg. xii). (1)The first stage, witnessed primarily radical black clergy, who debated theological issues with their white counterparts and charted aspects of a beginning black theology. Black power and black consciousness revealed the presence of Jesus Christ the Liberator. They asserted that the essence of Christianity was deliverance of and freedom for the oppressed on earth. (2) In 1970, black theology’s transformation took place; this was an academic discipline in which black religious scholars emphasized religious issues among themselves. Black theologians struggled over the relation between liberation and reconciliation, God’s goodness and human suffering, African religion and black theology, and the spontaneous faith expressions of black people versus the theological systems of the white academy. (3) Stage three, in the middle of the 1970’s, consisted of the birth of the Black Theology Project, was made up of church persons, community activist, and scholars, with strong ties between African Americans and the Third World. This broad range of participants reflected black theology’s turn toward liberation theologies in the Third World, the day-to-day survival issues in the black community, black theology’s relation to the black church, and the importance of feminism and Marxist analysis. (4) The fourth and present stage begins around the mid 1980’s. Its characteristics emphasized an exploration of theology from any and all aspects of black life and the challenges of womanists. The womanists pressed for a holistic black theology that entails an integration of race, class, gender and sexual orientation analysis. Womanists have shown the urgency of doing black theology from such innovative sources as black fiction and women’s roles in the Bible (pg. xiv).

The book is deeply indebted to the tradition of black theology. It hopes to develop a method of African American theology and black religion where the main resource for Black action and talk about God arises out of lives and words of poor black people’s faith. The original premises of Black Theology was clearly signified by James H. Cone (emphasizing Christian liberation) and Gayraud S. Wilmore (stressing non-Christian liberation), still remains true. The question now is how to develop further the foundational framework and the unity and distinction between Christian and non-Christian, church and non-church, theological and religious resources in African American faith and life (pg. xv).

Hopkins describes one important task for today’s black theology is learning from the liberating faith that comes out of the actual mouths of the poor. The important role of African American cultural workers or organic intellectuals or grounded theologians must coincide with the struggle for black liberation and full humanity. The issue is whether we will use our highly privilege positions which arose from the sacrifice of poor people – to mediate and privilege poor people’s silenced voices. Basically, we need to be accountable to those less privileged in our communities, who have neither the time nor the resources to say a word about their faith in a God who has made a way out of no way in their trials and tribulations (pg. xv).

In the section, “The Slave Narrative in Dialogue,” the narratives are explained as fundamental elements for the creation of constructive black theology of liberation. They command for black theology to “cut loose its stammering tongue,” to tell the slaves’ faithful story about freedom that helps to unleash the full power of African American speech, which reflects the depths of God’s grace of freedom to the poor. Slaves don’t stammer; they speak God’s truth (pg. xvi).

Hopkins explains that the narratives tell black theology to cut loose its stammering tongue with at least four “words” of ancestral wisdom. (1) We must hear and pay attention to the life language of our chained forefathers. (2) Black slaves should remove obstacles from their “God-talk” by filling us with unique liberation practice, world view, language, thought patterns, and theological common sense. (3) The slaves search for seeds and resources in their story that tell us that God dwells among their most unimportant and displaced. (4) The slave narrative volumes provide a theological abundance of religious experience from non-Christian bearers of God’s freeing spirit. Black theology of liberation has a Christian role; to draw renewed strength from knowing that God’s freeing power blows wherever and however God wishes to blow (pg. xvii).

In chapter one, “Slave Theology in the Invisible Institution,” Hopkins argues African American slaves brought into existence a unique and logical understan

ding of Christianity based on their way of life from previous African beliefs with the Christianity taught to them by White missionaries (pg. 1). From the “Invisible Institution,” arose the awakening of black Christianity and black theology. Even though they were in bondage and were unlearned, black people still testified to what the God of Moses had done for them.

Hopkins describes “slave theology” as experiencing God dwelling with those in bondage, personal and systematic. The religious experience prevented any separation between the sacred and the secular, the church, and the community (pg. 2). Blacks believed that God and Jesus wanted them to use everything within their power to search for a “human status of equality,” in other words, to seek fair and just treatment regardless of your status in society. Religious encounters in ex-slave narratives, autobiographies, and spirituals suggest two alternative aspects to theological interpretation: (1) African American slaves pictured a political dimension in their theology. They saw a direct political power struggle between serving their God and serving the white slave master’s God. (2) Slaves religious thought accented an original cultural expression. Not only did the slaves wage a political battle for the supremacy of their liberator God, but also chose to worship this God in their own language and dialect, and in the extraordinary privacy of their own black religious community (pg. 3).

“The Contours of the Invisible Institution,” section of the book, explains the slaves religious story as the first source for black theology, acknowledge the convergence of a reinterpreted white Christianity with the remains of African religions under slavery (pg. 4). They would use secret forms of communication such as signals, passwords, and messages that could not be comprehended by white masters. The believers would meet and they would mix African rhythms and singing with evangelical Christianity. An evangelical Christian is a believer in Jesus Christ who is faithful in sharing and promoting the good news of God. This African-Christian mixture produced slave Christian theology; in other words, witnesses of the good news.

The African contributions to slave theology were: the distinct perceptions of God, belief in a God who cares, who rescues victims in need, and a belief in theological anthropology- what it means to be God’s created humanity (pg. 6). Theological anthropology also deals with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Along with theological anthropology, Africans contributed a belief of a relationship between an individual and the community. They believed you should have faith and confidence in an individual and their community. The most important contributions of Africans emphasized the role and importance of the ancestors. The ancestors are connections to the past religious traditions and practices. They are the glue of devotion to their culture and way of life.

The Bush (or hush) harbor theology is the root of slave worship tradition. Enslaved Africans took remnants of their traditional religious structures and meshed them together with their interpretation of the Bible (pg. 7). They did this in the invisible institutions. Most slaves found their spiritual needs were best met in secret. They would gather in “hush arbors” and express themselves freely and interpret the Bible, especially the Exodus story, as an example of their own difficult lives and promise of eventual liberation. It is here that the spiritual, with their double meanings of religious salvation and from slavery, developed. They found the opportunity to develop their own styles of preaching and singing. The preacher may not have had a formal education, but their preaching was far from being theologically illiterate. He knew the two most important things: the biblical message of salvation and a broad awareness of the Savior who lived in the believer’s heart.

In this chapter, Hopkins discovered the beginnings of some of the key elements needed in the constructive task for today’s black theology. He discovered the emphasis on the communal nature of the “Invisible Institution” (pg. 43). Drawing on their American traditional religions and the Bible, the Old Testament in particular, slaves could only comprehend total deliverance as including the individual and the community. Today’s black theology has to promote individuality and communalism, not individualism and selfish motivations (pg. 44).

Hopkins describes four reasons why the black theology of the “Invisible Institution” was so important. (1) It spoke of the perseverance through cross-bearing. For centuries, African Americans endured and resisted white Christian assaults on the black community. (2) The slaves’ religious story verifies a contemporary black theological emphasis on doing theology from the perspective of the black poor. To deny this theological privilege would be to betray the African American church’s Christian tradition. (3) Black theology today must discern the signs of the times in the political and cultural life of the black church and community. (4) Slave religious experience based itself on the Bible. African Americans under white slavery glued themselves to a theology filled with the “let my people go,” witness of Yahweh in the Old Testament and with Jesus the Liberator of the poor in the New Testament. It is in this faith, this black theology that powered them through over two centuries of white theological heresy and white supremacy (pg. 44).

Chapter two, “The Slave Narratives as a Source of Black Theological Discourse: The Spirit and Eschatology,” George Cummings examines the Christian Spirit and the coming of the Kingdom in slave interviews. He claims that black theology needs to incorporate the practice of perspectives that communicates the hopes of black oppressed people. The aim of this essay is to contribute to contemporary black theology in the United States by engaging in the process of utilizing the slave narratives as a source for theological ideas and interpreting the significance of the Spirit and the eschatology in them (pg. 46). Eschatology is the belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind; it concerns the Second coming, the Resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgment.

In the section, “The Spirit in the Slaves Narratives,” it discusses that the testimony of thousands of ex-slaves was based on their experiences and the witnesses of others. The entrance of the Spirit meant that there was something in their lives that made a difference (pg. 47). Cummings states that religion manifested in many ways. Some slaves had visions, others shouted and walked, and still bore witness to the creative power of the Spirit. The conversion testimonies manifest a spiritual presence or power that often had as a consequence a message or mission. In a series of conversion testimonies compiled in the book ‘God Struck Me Dead,’ Nancy Williams, who had been 12 years old when the Civil War began, gave testimony of her own experience. She had gone on a spiritual journey; she had been empowered by the Spirit to transcend her experience of being a slave working in the field and had been taken to a place where she “viewed de way in a vision” and discovered that true home was a child of God. Assurance and security concerning her identity as a human being, one of those redeemed by God, was guaranteed in her mind by means of an experience of the Spirit in which she travelled home, had a vision and came to find “de way” (pg. 48).

In these slave narratives, eschatological hopes played a major part in the interviews reflection and connection between the presence of the Spirit of God and hopes and aspirations of the slave community (pg. 54). Eschatological, as stated earlier, is the theological conception of the last things, or the end of the world. The slaves believed that the end times are
thought to have begun with the life and ministry of Jesus, who will return to establish the “Kingdom of God.” Eschatology promises fulfillment; hope presupposes something lacking. Human beings hope for what they lack. The lack maybe described by such metaphors as illness, darkness, slavery, alienation, being lost, exile, even death. It is the mission of hope to respond to a situation of distress by sending out a signal for help (pg. 54).

Cummings explains that spirit and eschatology in the slave narratives as the black theology asserts the priority of the black experience of enslavement and struggle for liberation as the starting point of black theological discourse. They testify to the persistence of hope, human dignity, and self-affirmation that bear witness to the presence of the Spirit of God. This was the pneumatos (God’s Spirit), a liberating presence which created and sustained the will of an enslaved people against those people and institutions that perpetrated the exploitation of African American chattel. He claims there are several dimensions of the Spirit’s presence in the slave community that are evident in the testimonies (pg. 59). This spirit certified the slaves’ self- determination and independence in their own defiance of their oppressors in order to serve God. Religious life became a context for the affirmation of one’s humanity by praying for freedom, shouting and dancing, holding secret meetings, and disobeying their oppressor (pg. 60). The Spirit allowed the slaves to broaden their horizons and to wish for a future in which they would be free. Cummings explains that freedom was not an abstract concept but a concrete hope that led them to hope and work for historical freedom (pg. 60). New instruments of survival and liberation arose from the Spirit; they created the spirituals, one slave commented, because they have been revealed to them. The Spirit of justice emerged in the slave testimonies as they bear witness to their own judgments concerning justice, righteousness, and good (pg. 60). The eschatological hopes and aspirations of slave community became evident in the Spirit who guarantees the future as one of freedom and justice (pg. 61).

Contemporary black theology in the United States was a basic link to pneumatology. Pneumatology is the study of spiritual beings and phenomena, especially the relationship between humans and God; it studies God the Holy Spirit and the Third Person of the Trinity. Pneumatology also answers numerous important questions about the Holy Spirit. The theological appreciation of a doctrine of the Spirit as the creative, empowering, hope-inducing power in the black experience explains that a prophet of ancient Palestine, Jesus of Nazareth, can be viewed as being continuously accessible throughout human history. The importance of this insight lies in the assertion that the Spirit of Christ provides a hermeneutical key by which to establish community between Jesus of Nazareth and the liberating presence of Christ as the Black Messiah (pg. 62).

Cummings further explains that there are five aspects of the biblical tradition and the church’s belief in the Holy Spirit: (1) The Spirit of God as the gracious gift of God; it liberates us from all that restricts and restrains human potentiality. Human potentiality is the concept of humans experiencing an exceptional quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfillment; cultivating their potential that could bring about positive social change. The testimony and experiences of black ex-slaves witnessed the miraculous and gracious gift of God in their midst. (2) The Spirit as means of preventing us for objectifying God. The Spirit of God cannot be limited to the community of faith or its ritual acts and places, since God’s Spirit is accessible. (3) The Christian tradition stresses that the Spirit of Christ empowering the poor to struggle for liberation. (4) The biblical concept of the Spirit stresses the eschatological character of the reality of God as a presence that points to a new and transformed future. (5) The Spirit in the Bible points to a commitment in mission to the poor; The Spirit calls forth and motivates faith and hope in the struggle (pg. 63).

George Cummings ends this chapter discussing the insights for the continued development of black theology of liberation in the United States. (1) The dialect of despair and hope becomes the basis for the identification of oppressed people with God who experienced crucifixion. Slaves did not need to play down the existence of evil in their experience. The genius of the religion of the black slave was that they transformed Christianity and utilized it to raise their experience to a high level of meaning; they turned those experiences of hope (pg. 64). (2) Black slaves insisted that their religious experiences and the struggles of this world were to reaffirm the traditional African concept of the wholeness and integration of life. In short, contemporary black theology should affirm a unitary view of life and history and reject the dualisms that are characteristic of traditional theology. (3) The slave narratives testify to a world-view that affirmed the shared character of communal life where the Spirit is shared as the Spirit of courage, hope, grace, and victory. The tragic suffering they lived through it with the dialectic of hope and resignation set on a powerful journey in the context of worship, where the community’s consciousness takes place and serves to liberate momentarily and keep alive the hope of permanent liberation. (4) The black slaves persistent belief that justice and freedom would be vindicated by God out to be central to a contemporary black theology that seeks to empower African Americans to continue to struggle for liberation. Freedom is God’s freedom, manifested in the persistence of the oppressed to fight and kick against injustice and hopelessness. Jesus us the crucified embodiment of God, who brings about black liberation by joining the black oppressed and sharing with them the resurrecting power of the Spirit (pg. 65 and 66).

In chapter three, “Coming Through ‘Ligion: Metaphor in Non-Christian and Christian Experiences with the Spirit(s) in African American Slave Narratives,” Will Coleman focuses on the primary concern of this chapter: how African American people use metaphors to describe both non-Christian and Christian experiences with spirits, and the Spirit as their own unique form of linguistic-poetic discourse; along with some hermeneutical implications that will be explained (pg. 68).

Coleman explains one of the important aspects of the African American religious experience is testifying or telling the story of one’s encounter with God. He states that it provides an opportunity for members of the community of faith to articulate beliefs regarding their spiritual reality. Conversion experiences were described as “coming through ‘ligion (pg. 68).

According to Colman, African American slaves told their stories through experiences of the spirits and the Spirit; in other words, how they embraced the reality of God, their ancestors, and other spiritual beings. These other spiritual beings were known by many names: ghosts, hants, and spirits. Coleman was concerned with the borderline or traditional African experience of the spirits (through dreams, visions, and other spiritual phenomena within the North American context, and a more Christian encounter with the Spirit. He expounded on the experiences with the spirits and the Spirit utilizing the perceptions in Paul Ricocur’s writings, especially in reference to: (1) the task of hermeneutics, (2) the importance of symbolic and metaphorical language, (3) the function of the narrative genre, and (4) the appreciation of what the text of what the text presents (pg. 68). He also elaborated on some hermeneutical implications and concerns in the relevance of both non-Christian and Christian African American slave narratives.

Coleman states that he’s co
nvinced that African American slave narratives are a viable source of a contemporary black theology of liberation. He believes that non-Christian and Christian testimonies provided radical thoughts into the total religious life of African American slaves (pg. 69). Slaves expressed their experiences with symbols and metaphors. This gives contemporary African American theologians to explore new and various ways for black theology taken from both non-Christian and Christian sources. Coleman feels that black theology will benefit from the African American religious experiences (pg. 69). These spirits remained close in the imagination of Southern slaves through folklore and experiences of ghosts, witches, talking animals, and other supernatural phenomena. This imagination of the slaves is filled with images of the supernatural, both non-Christian and Christian (pg. 93). The slaves were affected physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

Due to the Christian conversion, the slaves interpreted religion differently from their master which sparked the concept of rebellion. There were others that conformed and used religion as a tool to better themselves in their confinement. They discovered ways of describing religious experiences that were liberating within the conditions they lived under. Coleman maintains that much of this occurred through their masterful use of metaphors (pg. 94).

In the last section of this essay, Coleman discusses some hermeneutical implications and how the testimonies from these slave narratives have made great contributions to contemporary black theology of liberation. These narratives provided new insights from using the symbols and metaphors the slaves described in their religious experiences. These metaphors were open to numerous interpretations. In other words, the symbols and metaphors used by African American slaves to decide their reality should further inspire us to borrow more from them in constructing a contemporary black theology of liberation. He states that we should ask ourselves if we are willing to assume the risk of being surprised by what we have yet to discover as we continue to “come through” their testimonies (pg. 102).

According to Coleman, we should learn from the language of these narratives. We should be able to pull from these narratives and interpret their meanings in our own understanding. He also offers three suggestions of how the symbolic language, employment, and narratively of these stories empower us: (1) Symbolic language speaks to our imagination in a creative conversation with the signs and codes of their texts (pg. 101). Mythic poetic means myth-making and a poem that has become literature. (2) We are compelled to explain (by becoming familiar with slaves’ use of language) and then understand (by translating their language into our own) the narratives through their story. The slaves’ stories are the organization of distinct symbols into symbolic systems that express both their resistance to bondage and desire for freedom. (3) The narratives tell a story that presents a world we may choose to enter into and ultimately, appropriate (pg. 101).

In chapter four, “Liberation Ethics in the Ex-Slave Interviews,” Cheryl J. Sanders explains how we have gone from theology to ethics. Ethics evaluates human actions, character, and institutions in terms of good and evil, right and wrong. The experience of conversion can influence an individual’s social perspectives in concert with the changes in personal morality (pg. 104).

Sanders discussed a set group of slave conversion stories that were used to explain their diverse moral and ethical options. The goal is to produce a critical analysis of moral reflections and ethical styles of a select group of this group of ex-slaves who had been converted while in slavery. She uses a paradigm developed by ethicist Ralph Potter, as an interpretive tool applied to ethical statements elements Potter’s paradigm tools for an ethical statement: (1) empirical definition of the situation, (2) affirmation of loyalty, (3) mode of ethical reasoning, and (4) quasi-theological beliefs concerning God, humankind, and human destiny (pg. 104).

The first element, empirical definition of the situation, expands on the various life experiences of these slaves; it defines their situations objectively. But to do so, they must have detailed information that is relevant to their dilemma. Second, the affirmation of loyalty stems from deciding who they will be loyal to, evaluate the presence of others deserving loyalty, selecting a course of action that embraces and evaluates the impact of the decision they have made. The third element, Mode of ethical reasoning, states a principal that each person honors; consider and compare the other individual’s ethical values.

In “Getting Saved from the Sixties: Moral Meaning in Conversation and Cultural Change,” Steven M. Tipton formulated a taxonomy of four styles of ethical evaluation, building upon Potter’s paradigm of the ethical system: (1) the authoritative style, oriented toward an authoritative moral source know by faith; (2) the regular style, oriented toward rules or principles known by reason; (3) the consequential style, oriented toward consequences known by cost-benefit calculation; and (4) the expressive style, oriented toward quality of personal feelings and situations known by intuition (pg. 124). Lastly, the fourth element is the quasi-theological beliefs concerning God, humankind, and human destiny; this element explores the idea of freedom for the Christian slave. Sanders states that Potter’s made a particular point of the importance of anthropological assumptions concerning the range of human freedom and man’s power to predict and control historical events (pg. 108).

Cheryl Sanders concludes this chapter with the concepts that the slave who has changed their beliefs neither condemns slavery on the basis of Christian ethics. Without question, the experience of conversion did generate a liberation ethic among the slaves, but such an ethic was not universally articulated in the ex-slave oral histories. Some of the most powerful ethical claims against slavery have their foundation in a personal affirmation of God’s love as experienced in religious conversion and practice and in the confidence that God has fully authorized them to risk the danger of speaking boldly of liberation in an oppressive milieu (pg. 136).

In the final chapter, “Slave Narratives, Black Theology of Liberation (USA) and the Future,” George C.L. Cummings, describes how in the late 1960’s, contemporary black theology arrived on the screen; it took on the roles racism and white supremacy played in the theological views and practices of the North American Christian community. Black theology maintained theological foundations for the development of a theology grounded in the experiences of the black oppressed community in the United States (pg. 137).

Cummings elaborates on the work he thinks the contemporary black theologians should strive to continually advance the black theological perspective. He gives five elements that would help in this effort: (1) Slave narratives need to be investigated in a more comprehensive manner by black scholars from the diversity of disciplines. Cummings acknowledges that collaborating with religionists, philosophers, anthropologist, sociologists, historians, theologians, and ethicists would better enhance the interpretation of the mythopoeic and linguistic world that emerged from their experiences. (2) The development of hermeneutics, linguistics, and theological methodology has to be updated. (3) A comprehensive and comparative study of the various sources of black religion-culture traditions ought to be pursued, in order to evaluate the notions of God, Jesus, the Spirit, and human purpose in these sources. (4) A detailed
study of worship in the black experience will be valuable to the continuing work of black theology; which conveys the primordial experiences of the slaves’ encounter with the Spirit to the present age. Finally, (5) the theological and ethical interpretations of the slave narratives is a confirmation for the contemporary black Christian community that biographies of black people-black testimonies- are important sources of the biography of God, on theological grounds (pg. 146).

In conclusion, Cummings proclaims that being converted by world-views, language, metaphors, and practices of former slaves should be steadfast in our own African American theological traditions: faith, thought, and witnessing of God’s movement to a free humanity, as an individual and in our society. He states that theologians should acknowledge the development discovered in the biographies and theologies of God in the testimonies of African American slaves, who believed that God was present in their experience. Jesus was crucified in the black slave experience and became an important starting point for contemporary black Christian theology. It aims to challenge the hegemonic God of white privilege and to establish the basis for a counter-hegemonic black God whose nature is justice and righteousness, and whose heart is for the crucified ones (pg. 148).

By Kimberly N. Travers
Student, Memphis Theological Seminary