By Adam Clark
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” (1935)
Black Theology is a prophetic theology addressing sin and suffering, emphasizing truth-telling and justice-seeking in light of Black experience. From the perspective of Black Theology, the central question today is this: Does America want to become a multiracial democracy? Or will the politics of white grievance and Black and brown scapegoating remain a dominant (and perhaps determining) force in electoral politics?
This prophetic theology is the product of a history. From the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619 to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial oppression and exclusion were legal, and people of African descent lived under what Alexis de Tocqueville identified as the greatest threat to American democracy: the tyranny of its white majority over its Black minority.
Currently, America is undergoing a precarious moment of racial reckoning. As mass protests from the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others continue, the specter of authoritarianism is jeopardizing America’s self conception as an inclusive, deliberative, and representative democracy. The challenges are many, but the most pressing issues concerning race are the possibility of bolstering a president, attorney general, Supreme Court, and Senate majority eager to roll back the most substantive gains of the Civil Rights movement. Furthermore, we face not only an urgent need to stop police violence and initiate criminal justice reform, but also an impeached president promoting voter suppression, casting suspicion on mail-in ballots, and refusing to accept election results.
Within this context, Black Theology and the Black American experience offer three critical lessons:
God’s Politics: The central social vision of the Christian Testament--the vision embraced by Martin Luther King, Jr.--emerges out of Matthew 25: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” But will the majority of white Catholics and Evangelicals continue to vote against this vision of God’s politics? From the perspective of Black theology, it’s puzzling to see so-called “values voters” and “pro-life voters” support candidates diametrically opposed to this vision. Can you vote pro-life and anti-Black at the same time? Isn’t ending structural racism a Christian value? Along with Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, I think it’s time for white Christians to start acting “more Christian than white.”
Undergirding the core social vision of the Christian Scriptures - a vision embraced by Martin Luther King, Jr. (above) - is Matthew 25: 35-36: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” Two days prior to winning the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and two months after his stirring, “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King spoke to a crowd of nearly 3,900 students, faculty, staff and community members at Saint Louis University. Photo courtesy of Saint Louis University.
Democracy as a Living Practice: Democracy is not a fixed state, it’s a malleable practice, capable of growth or decay. Democracies can go backward. After the Civil War, democratic space opened up briefly thanks to the Freedman’s Bureau, the temporary offer of 40 acres and a mule, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and the election of approximately 2,000 Black officer holders. Nevertheless, gains were undone by our first impeached president, Andrew Johnson, and a host of white reactionary forces like the Ku Klux Klan. Once Jim Crow apartheid settled in, it took another 80 years to overturn. A democratic America is not a given, it’s a possibility that must be recreated and actualized in each generation.
A New Story: We need a new national framing story to capture the rich plurality and expanding diversity of American life. A story that incorporates America the beautiful and America the ugly—inspiring new vision and action. Beyond the election, we need to craft a new story to reshape our common life, transforming limiting Eurocentric conceptions for the sake of a broader democratic story. The multiracial movement around Black lives mattering is one possible source for this story. Currently, it’s focused on the necessary goals of ending police violence, establishing accountability and criminal justice reform. But new energy has also been generated around the way the country understands, remembers, and sees itself by targeting Confederate monuments and other racist images the same way Germany eliminated Nazi paraphernalia. This suggests that we actually can imagine the story differently--making true Langston Hughes’ conviction that “America will be!”
Adam Clark is an associate professor of Theology at Xavier University.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Saint Peter’s University.