God of the Oppressed Informing Pentecostal Faith

As a Pentecostal Christian believer who comes from both Black Church and multi-ethnic congregational experiences, we testify of a spiritual liberty that comes from salvation in Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.  In this freedom in which “Christ has set us free,” we declare that we are no longer bound by the “yoke of slavery” that comes from “desires of the flesh,” and we press to “live by the Spirit” so that we can remain free from desires of entanglement (Galatians 5:1, 16, NRSV).  However, it is seemingly rare (if ever) that I hear anything within my church context on the matter of being liberated from social structures of this world that aim to keep certain folks (arguably even some of us Pentecostal believers) subjected, poor, and enslaved even though narratives in Scripture tell of instances in which people are released from oppressive situations by the hand of God.

James H. Cone contends in God of the Oppressed that God in Jesus Christ is on the side of the poor and heavily afflicted, thus making God a social and political God who not only gives attention to the true, particular experience of African Americans, but seeks to be their Liberator (Cone 15-16, 74-75).  The origin of this ethical principle that Cone proposes is in the truth of Jesus Christ which is found in the dialectical relationship between Scripture and tradition on one hand, and the social context of African Americans on another (100-105).  For Black Theology, Scripture becomes a source out of which this form of theology operates because it tells of Jesus Christ—the person of whom black people have been able to identify with in their struggle for freedom.  In their songs, stories, and sermons, African American people have been able to express the Jesus whom they have found in Scripture but have come to know in reality as the one who has been able to understand their sufferings and be the Redeemer of them as well (28-29, 101-102).  Moreover, they have been able to draw from the Church’s traditional proclamation of faith in Christ, but they have also made an effort to infuse their African culture into their understanding of Western Christianity.  This has been done as a means for blacks to take up an appreciation for Jesus that does not compromise their possibility for liberation.  Within the Christian tradition that has been esteemed as the standard, there is no consideration for the poor, enslaved, and oppressed in relation to the divinity and personhood of Jesus.  Therefore, out of the tradition’s unwillingness to do so comes the problem that hinders liberation (104-105). 

What has presented itself as the metaethical problem has been the universal theological scholarship that has been based around “whiteness” without contemplating the particularities of the black experience, namely the oppression that is present within it (7, 48-49).  Cone recognizes that the Christian tradition adhered to by a white American theologian overlooks matters of color in theological discourse because he or she has not been a victim of oppressive violence and, therefore, has no religious or social context that is relatable to that of black people.  For this reason, a universal theology is valued and the stories and religious experience of black folks are not adhered to within this constructed system of Christian thought (49).  According to Cone, this leaves black Christians questioning how they can “explain [their] faith in God as Liberator of the oppressed,” especially since they have undergone centuries of oppression that cannot be identified by white society (173).

Because the struggle of blacks cannot be identified in the history of white people firsthand, Cone calls for blacks to construct a theology of liberation that cuts loose from white structures and finds its center in Christ’s presence within their struggle (179).  In this effort, the task of theology must be one that recognizes “the significance of the oppressed’s struggle against inhuman powers,” the idea of God taking up the struggle, and the ability to express God in the particular context of the struggle (90-91).  The goal of this imperative is liberation; however, it must be remembered by the black theologians who carry out this task that the salvation that comes from God through Jesus Christ is the primary source for human liberation (127).    

Within the salvific past, present, and future events of Jesus and in the narratives of Scripture, God proves to be the Liberating God of history (51, 120-121).  Knowing that Jesus Christ has and continues to give the oppressed vitality and personhood through his life, death, and resurrection, black people have been able to see Jesus as a real, historical figure who is on their side (108-110).  Moreover, African Americans have been able to appropriate the “historical character of liberation” found in Hebrew Bible and New Testament events to their struggles for freedom and to their understandings of God’s ability to make liberation historically real in their situations (140-141, 120-121).  For example, Black preachers utilizing narratives such as the Israelites being led out of slavery have been used in contexts of black suffering as a way to evoke the hope and the proof that God can deliver blacks out of situations and institutions of oppression (141).  By recognizing the relationship between God in Scripture and God in the realities of history, one can also discover what they should do—just as these preachers begin to do themselves.

The theological question, “Who is God?” should influence the ethical question of, “What must we do?”  When we understand who God is and what God has done for the oppressed in Jesus Christ, we can know what to do to ensure the liberation of people suffering from injustice (180).  In the case of African Americans, knowing what to do can begin by looking to both Scripture and the Black experience relationally (188).  Considering the experience of the oppressed as well as the God who liberates people as evident in Scripture is the adequate way of ensuring that black people in particular do not remain under oppressive ideologies and structures—ideologies and structures that did not take their experience into consideration to begin with, nor the evidence that the God of the Bible is a Liberator (188-189).

Reflecting back on my particular experience in the Pentecostal stream of Christianity, I believe that the knowledge that comes from the African American exploration of these theological and ethical questions is translatable to my tradition.  Just as relating the social experience of black people to Scripture in order to get an understanding on what to do for the purpose of liberation, I would like to see how Pentecostal traditions can adopt this same practice as a means of determining what we must do to see the full liberation of the oppressed come to pass in light of God’s activity in Scripture.  This exploration may not only encourage us to recognize the oppressive social powers that keep people bound along with the spiritual; it may also move believers of Pentecostal faith from places in which they might find themselves socially oppressed.

Cone, James H.  God of the Oppressed.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997.

What can be learned from African spirituality?

In The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse, ethicist Peter J. Paris takes up a task to give a detailed explanation of “the common features implicit in the traditional worldviews of African peoples as foundational for an African and African American moral philosophy”(Paris 19).  In his efforts, he determines that there is an underlying thread of spirituality that forms a social ethic of moral virtue for Africans and African Americans even if both groups may be culturally different (21-22, 129-130, 132, 133, 162).  This spirituality, which is consistent of the interconnected experiential realms of God, community, family, and personhood in African life, provides the foundation of virtue ethics for Africans and African Americans (21-22, 129-130).

The origin of moral virtue within the African and African American experiences can be said to begin with that which is divine and spiritual, for life is given and maintained from this realm (25, 28, 33).  At the root of the relationship between the spiritual being(s) and African peoples, however, is a principle of covenant.  Covenant between the divine and humans considers the idea of sustaining life on the hand of the divine in exchange for devotion from living people (28, 44).  This idea of covenant permeates into the realm of community which primarily seeks harmony within physical and even cosmological relationships with ancestors (51, 56), and into the familial realm which considers all relationships to be reciprocal in respectful accordance to age-based hierarchy (86-87).  Upholding this network of relationship encourages the production of a person who exemplifies character that is reflective of the greater good of their community (88, 109-111).

Posing as some challenges to African spirituality and the moral life that comes from it have been Western notions and practices that have disturbed and questioned structures embedded in African communities and people.  For example, slavery had a dynamic impact on both African territory and the embodied souls of those who were exported out of her bosom (61).  Moreover, the Western focus on individualism has stood as something quite contrary to an African’s ability to find personal identity in community (11, 114-115).  Yet perhaps one of the more significant notions taken up by Westerners revolves around the Christian conversion of slaves without the recognition of Africans as humans or their African religion (28, 36, 62-63).  Although African Americans in particular were able to appropriate Christianity to their own African understanding of spirituality (e.g., developing spirituals and sorrow songs) and their American experience of slavery (e.g., finding theological justification for abolitionist efforts), there was no initial care about their well-being as people or what their own beliefs held (63-67, 29).

Paris’s focus on the components of African spirituality seems to inform me as an African American and as a human being about how important—or rather necessary—it is for these interlocked factors to be in operation in order for a social ethic of moral virtue to be existent.  Without spirituality that is inclusive of the interconnectedness of God, community, family, and personhood, the formation of “morally virtuous” character is impossible for African peoples (129-130, 133, 134).  Formation of virtuous character only becomes possible through the intentional and habitual behaviors within the components of African spirituality (133-134).  By being a part of a community that esteems covenant with the sacred through practices and upholds values for family members, the character of a person has the ability to be developed and understood by those within the community and be deemed as “good” (89-90, 43-44, 134).  Individuals such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. are examples that Paris points to as people who have embodied these behaviors and have thus been viewed as figures of virtues such as beneficence, forgiveness, and justice to name a few (136-156).  For example, Mandela is recognized for his neighborly heart for his people in South Africa and towards his former enemies (139), and King is known for his belief in all people living in “beloved community” (154).  Moreover, Africans and African Americans have been said to promote forgiveness towards oppressors by displaying kindness over hatred (148-149).  Imagine how much our world would be different if we were all transformed by a spirituality that has the ability to yield a virtue such as forgiveness.  Think about what it would mean for everyone to live in a society where they could truly look to their neighbor who is hospitable enough to share her resources regardless of whether or not she has enough for herself.  Moreover in this regard, what might equality and justice for all look like? 

It may not have all the answers to insights such as these that have been mentioned; however, I believe that the spirituality of African peoples has moral virtue within it from which we all can all learn and grow together.  It would be wonderful if we could all challenge ourselves to either be or remain immersed in community that seeks to uphold relationship with God, neighbors, and family as a means to truly know each other and to know our true character.  Emulating the practices from African spirituality may be a critical force in producing moral change in our world.

Paris, Peter J., The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse. 

Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

The Line Runs Deep

The story of John Jones featured in The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois is one that resonates within the core of my young, Black, Southern being.  A “good boy” in the eyes of the white people in his late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century context of Altamaha, Georgia, Black John is not expected to achieve much of anything out of fear that he would become something disgraceful or, one may dare say, “dangerous” (Du Bois 142, 150).  For someone with a courteous personality and skillfulness in labor, having the opportunity to receive an education is a downright waste, and the notion of rising above anything better than servanthood or equal to the norms of whiteness is a falsehood (142, 149-150).  Of Southern charm yet loud, unkempt, joyously green, ill-versed, and inconsistent, he arrives at an institution of learning where he eventually awakens to the “Veil” that he wears as a Black person within a white society and the oppressive ideals that he once received as the norm (144, 142-145).  Returning to his hometown with the intent to educate his people, he is challenged by the operations and principles that continue to keep his people second-class and subservient.  In due course, opposing those principles leads to his demise (146-153).

As a Black male coming up from a twenty-first century rural context, I have found myself to be somewhat like John in my own personal maturity and educational matriculation.  I, too, seem to have possessed the same attributes (well, maybe not the loud one), and I have been partially blind to the veil until becoming (and still becoming) more aware of it through academics.  Looking at my contextual background in comparison to his, I find that not much has changed in the world since his time. 

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Du Bois pronounced that the issue of major concern is “the problem of the color-line” (v, 9).  Of course, this ship did not roll in at the turn of the century.  America was in war over race matters only a few decades before, and the thought of a Black person being some primitive organism that rests somewhere on a spectrum between human and livestock stems from days well before she was washed ashore in a New World (9, 55-56).  Yet for the two centuries which have emerged since the Emancipation Proclamation, the words of Du Bois are still resonant: “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the [freedpeople have] not yet found freedom in [their] promised land” (4).

For one to possess a “double-consciousness” that comes from being Black in America is a realization that he or she has not yet found full liberty within his or her self and within his or her country (2).  To see self through the beliefs and perceptions of another without the ability to truly see self for whoever self is proves to be a struggle and a problem indeed (2-3, 122).  At this present age, no one should have to find him- or herself willingly accepting “the old attitude of adjustment and submission”—going along to hopefully get along and come up economically while, in the meantime, repressing dignity and human identity (30-31).  By doing this, one remains under oppressive ideologies and practices, denying the fullness of her God-given gifts, talents, and abilities.  As Du Bois understands it to be the case for his context, perhaps this mindset can be intercepted through the work of Black institutions that move beyond the focus of achieving economic status and encourage the development of a person who is capable of turning the tides of the conditions of her people for the better through what she knows and her ability to impart what she knows into others (52-54, 64-66).  Much like how John seeks to bring racial uplift by investing his education in his community, perhaps she can be a remedy to current issues such as a 48-percent high school dropout rate among African American males (“Black Male Graduation Rates”).  Whatever the efforts of racial uplift may be, however, there must also be an owning of deeds by white people for the conditions of African Americans even up until now (p. 113).  Regardless of how docile and civil or well-educated and “dangerous” I may be, the stories of John and a twenty-first century, seventeen-year-old young African-American male in a hoody are a few examples that seemingly teach me that a Black man can easily become a threat to the social order of white privilege and, thus, become easily disposable (Alvarez and Buckley).  If the possibility for ownership of misdeeds ever occurs and it interchanges with Black efforts for racial uplift, there is hope for the improvement of society and, perchance, the eradication of the color-line (113).  Maybe then can the words of Du Bois concerning the nation be a hum of the past.

Alvarez, Lizzette and Cara Buckley. “Zimmerman Is Acquitted in Trayvon Martin Killing.”  The

New York Times, 13 July 2013.  Web.  2 Sept. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>.

“Black Male Graduation Rates.” The Urgency of Now: The Schott 50 State Report on Public

Education and Black Males.  http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/black-male-graduation-rates .  2 Sept. 2013.  <http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/black-male-graduation-rates>.

Du Bois, W. E. B.  The Souls of Black Folk.  1903.  New York: Dover Publications, 1994.