Honoring the Ancestors

From Black Power to Afrocentricity

During the 1960s, the prevailing civil rights consensus that defined Christianity through the motifs of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation was interrupted by an insurgent Black power movement. The radical ethos of the period captured in phrases such as, “Burn, Baby Burn” “Ready-for-Revolution,” and “Power to the People” demanded a rethinking of the relationship between God and the world. James Cone (1969) asks, “Is it not time for theologians to get upset?” Could the church break its bondage from racist social structures and become an effective instrument of liberation? It took the creative theological efforts of the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC) to initiate a positive relationship between Black power and Christian faith. For them, Black power took on a religious meaning—a necessary step for interpreting biblical witness and creating a just society.

The earliest attempt to reconcile blackness with the traditional claims of Christian faith came under the leadership of Dr. Benjamin Payton in 1966. The NCNC was organized as an informal ad hoc committee in 1966 through which ministers sought to come to terms with the chaos and turmoil surrounding the emergence of Black power. Its intent was to mobilize radical ministers in the North similar to how Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) mobilized clergy in the South.

The NCNC raised US$10,000 for a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and was supported by some of the most prominent African American ministers in the country. The 1966 “Black power statement” initiated a new theological consciousness that separated radical Black Christianity from White. The NCNC (Cone & Wilmore, 1993) argued that power is not an illegitimate desire for Christian life. In fact, in a world of enormous inequality, power is a fundamental aspect of faith.

The fundamental distortion facing us in the controversy about “black power” is rooted in a gross imbalance of power and conscience between Negroes and white Americans . . . [T]he widespread . . . assumption that white people are justified in getting what they want through the use of power, but that Negro Americans must . . . make their appeal only through conscience. As a result, the power of white men and the conscience of black men have both been corrupted. (Cone & Wilmore, 1993, p. 19)

The NCNC statement goes on to describe how “powerlessness breeds a race of beggars.” “We are faced now with a situation” it continues “where conscienceless power meets powerless conscience” (Cone & Wilmore, 1993, p. 19).

The question of power became a focal issue in Black theology. The priority given to power did not rise out of a desire to rule over others rather power is understood an integral part of participating in “true humanity.” Christian communities dismissed concerns about issues of Blackness and power. The National Committee of Black Churchmen (NCBC) countered by arguing that not only is Black power Christian but also democratic because it restores racial balance. Its objective is to challenge the monopoly of power held by Whites and redistribute it in a spirit of equality and mutuality.

During these early stages, Maulana Karenga, founder of the Black nationalist organization Us and developer of Kawaida (tradition in Swahili) theory made a significant impact on the development of the Black Theology movement (Asante, 2009; Karenga, 2008). His keynote speech at the NCNC conference in 1967 was so powerful that it influenced the body to reconceptualize their identity as Negroes to Blacks. ⁴ In his address, Karenga stressed,

Christianity in its current form and practice was racist and essentially a white cultural expression and that there was a need for reshaping it in black image and interests. Religion has an emancipatory and social role in making a better life on earth and it has to be earth-focused and consciously concerned with the social and material as well as the spiritual. (Karenga, 1980, p. 27)

God, Karenga (1980) declares, “should have three characteristics: God should look like the people, have a history with them and be to their advantage, in a word, their God must be partisan and they must be his chosen people” (p. 27).

Karenga’s conception of a new and uncompromising Blackness influenced the identity of Black theology as an academic discipline. “The fact that I am black is my ultimate reality,” James Cone (1969, p. 32) declares. As Blackness is the primary datum of our humanity, Cone (1969) reasons, the discipline of theology and the practice of faith needed a “remaking in the light of black oppression” (p. 117). Cone (1969) states,

My identity with blackness, and what it means for millions living in a white world, controls the investigation. It is impossible for me to surrender this basic reality for a “higher, more universal” reality. Therefore, if a higher, Ultimate Reality is to have meaning, it must relate to the very essence of blackness. (pp. 32-33)

During this formative period, the opponents of Black progress were clear and massive resistance was summoned to oppose their encroachment. In a post–civil rights, post–Black power world, overthrowing a racist capitalist system and mass protests against oppressive authorities no longer animate Black clergy and religious activists. The radical fervor embedded in the literary, musical and poetic expressions of the 1960s and early 1970s has been taken over by a market saturated Hip Hop culture that casts thugs, pimps, hustlers, and “hoes” as dominant expressions of Black cultural identity and identifies freedom with consumer power rather than cultural and political power.

Yet, for Black clergy, the enormous challenge of redeeming Black existence remains a pressing issue. No longer do they seek to join the ranks of a national political movement that preserves civil rights or remedies economic polarization. The problem of violence, debated as a credible strategy for social change during the late 1960s, has degenerated into a seemingly endless cycle of fratricidal conflicts in Black communities. The accessibility of guns and drugs, misguided sexual experiences, high rates of incarceration, police brutality, family disintegration, dysfunctional public schools, and blighted communities generate a profound sense of hopelessness. Can things really change? Is a new world possible?

The centering of an unapologetic Blackness by Black power and Afrocentric thinkers has been opposed by many Christians, Black and White. “Faith has no color!” they insist. “The gospel is for everyone, not just for Blacks!” Yet, in the effort to respond to the powers and principalities that menace Black life, Black religious thinkers and clergy have used Black power and Afrocentricity in the service of Christian faith (Baker-Fletcher, 1996; Matthews, 1998; Roberts, 2000; Sanders, 1995; Wilmore, 2004). The constructive relationship between Afrocentricity and Christian faith finds its footing within the discipline of theology through James Cone’s insistence that the essence of biblical faith is God’s will to set the captives free. The task of theology, therefore, is to relate “the essence of the Gospel” to “the forces of liberation” in the communities of the oppressed (Cone, 1970, p. 1).

Afrocentricity is one of “the forces of liberation” in the Black community. Liberation, for Afrocentrists, means revolutionizing Black consciousness and reconstructing Black culture. It identifies Black history as a primary realm of meaning and purpose and the site of divine activity. God is active in a liberating and goal-orientated way in Black history in culture. Thus, an Afrocentric orientation in Black theology is crucial to developing a liberating faith in contemporary times.

Afrocentricity was first introduced as a category by Molefi Asante in his 1980 publication Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change (Asante, 1988). Asante (1988) conceives Afrocentricity within a liberationist idiom:

I wrote Afrocentricity because I was convinced, and I remain convinced, that the best road to all health, economic, political, cultural and psychological in the African community is through a centered positioning of ourselves within our own story. We can never again be shoved to the side of our own history or relegated to being back-up players to Europeans in the grand drama of humanity. Ours is a remarkable journey of liberation. (p. vii)

Asante’s Afrocentric project understands itself as a conceptual and practical advance in the journey of liberation. It fosters the development of a liberated consciousness in the work of social change. The first two sentences of the text read, “Afrocentricity is the centerpiece of human regeneration. To the degree that it is incorporated into the lives of millions of Africans . . . it will become revolutionary” (Asante, 1988, p. 1). African culture is theorized as a framework for liberation. ⁵ “The Afrocentric cultural project” claims Asante (1988) “is a wholistic plan to reconstruct and develop every dimension of the African world from the standpoint of Africa as subject rather than object” (p. 105). He develops notions of agency, location, stance, place, and centeredness as conceptual categories to ground inquiry. These categories serve as points of departure for analyzing phenomena related to African people.

For Maulana Karenga (2010), “Afrocentricity is a methodology, orientation or a quality of thought and practice” (p. 42) as distinct from to a full-blown theory or philosophy. Karenga’s Kawaida precedes the academic articulation of Afrocentricity, and his formulations, such as a “black frame of reference” and “putting black things first,” were primary sources for Asante’s (2008) initial statement on Afrocentricity. Karenga’s (2008) intellectual and practical work is done within the framework of Kawaida. While many identify Afrocentricity exclusively with the works of Molefi Asante, I understand Kawaida as a school of thought within the broader framework of Afrocentric thought. The stress on recovering and reconstructing African culture, the emphasis on reappropriating it and reaffirming it as a living tradition, is essential to understanding Afrocentricity as an emancipatory discourse. While Asante prioritizes language and consciousness as key categories in his Afrocentric approach, Karenga stresses political theory and ethical reflection in Kawaida.

Maulana Karenga expands and develops the concept of Afrocentricity by theorizing that cultural struggle must precede and make possible social and political change.

[T]he key crisis and challenge in Black life is the cultural crisis and challenge . . . Africans must recover the best of their culture and use it to envision a new world and to support the struggle to bring that world into being. (Karenga, 2010, p. 311)

The stress on culture, by Afrocentrists, could only justify itself if it were inclusive enough to deal with the demands of daily life and struggle. Therefore, Karenga (2010) defines culture as “the totality of thought and practice by which a people creates, celebrates, sustains and develops itself and introduces itself to history and humanity” (p. 261). Here, culture is not equated with fine art or elevated taste, but occurs in “seven fundamental areas: history, religion (spirituality and ethics), social organization, economic organization; political organization, creative production (art, music, literature, dance) and ethos (i.e. the collective psychology which results from practice in the other six areas)” (Karenga, 2010, p. 261). His greatest achievement for Afrocentric discourse and practice has been his capacity to offer new conceptual grounding in African culture and promote a new intellectual culture in Black life.

Molefi Asante and Maulana Karenga are critics of Christian faith. Similar to Black theologians, both are influenced by Elijah Muhammad’s identification of Christianity as a White man’s religion. Molefi Asante (2007, in the Book Discussion and Party, February 18, 2007) contends, “The Christian Church cannot deliver salvation for blacks! The Church has imprisoned us . . . it has placed a white Jesus in our imaginations . . . and bound us to an ideological structure.” Karenga (2008) argues that Black faith should “insist on a God in our own image and interest—not a white God” and should encompass, “the sacredness of our history, the chosenness of our people, the presence and priority of our own prophets and the anteriority, originality, richness and ongoing relevance of our own sacred texts” (p. 16).

For many Afrocentrists, Christianity is a Eurocentric imposition and a danger to the self-determination of Black people. Blacks were converted to Christianity through violence and coercion. Asante (1998) laments, “We have often lost our memories and accepted the gods of those who enslaved and colonized us.” The abandonment of African history, African gods, ancestors and culture has “brought us deep into the quagmire of misdirection, mis- orientation and self-pity” (Asante, 1998).

A number of progressive Black clergy have been influenced by Afrocentric critiques in their attempt to remake their faith. They understand Christian faith as a living tradition. A living tradition is not exclusively defined by its past but by reforms, revisions, and changes that occur throughout time. Humans are constantly (re)making traditions and Afrocentric ministers have used Afrocentric concepts to participate in that remaking. Churches such as Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, where Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright is the former pastor (retired in 2008) and Rev. Otis Moss III currently serves is a paradigmatic example. Trinity’s motto, “Unashamedly Black, Unapologetically Christian,” is the most influential framework for Afrocentric Christian churches. Their motto was defined through a Black Values and 10-point vision program that included a commitment to Africa and a commitment to liberation (Thomas, 2004). Union Temple Baptist Church in Anacostia, Southeast Washington, D.C., where Willie Wilson is pastor is also exemplary. In addition to being ordained to Christian ministry, Willie Wilson is an ordained Wolof priest from Gambia, West Africa, whose initiated name is Nana Kwanwo Boafo. He claims a Christocentric, Afrocentric liberation ministry. ⁶ Other Afrocentric churches include The Liberation Community Church in Memphis, Tennessee (Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, pastor) whose motto is “Developing African-centered Ministry that witnesses with the poor and oppressed,” and which includes a Gayraud Wilmore Learning Center; First African Presbyterian Church in Lithonia, Georgia (Rev. Mark A. Lomax, pastor); The Village Church in Nashville, Tennessee (Rev. Andrew Stephens, pastor); House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn, New York (Rev. Herbert Daughtry, pastor); Scott United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana (Rev. James C. Anyike); Imani Temple Christian Fellowship (Rev. Jelani Kafela, pastor); and Imani Temple African American Catholic Congregations headquartered in Washington, D.C., with 13 temples across the United States (George A. Stallings Jr., archbishop and founder). These Black clergy enlist Afrocentricity to craft a faith that is culturally grounded and politically relevant. They seek to fulfill the Romans 12:2 mandate “be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind.” The renewed mind and the transformed heart become vessels for participating in Spirit of liberation made known through Black history and culture.

The appropriation of Afrocentricity by Black clergy is not without pitfalls. Many Afrocentric advocates present African-centered religious practices as an alternative to Christian faith. Some argue that Christianity is a religion of European Empire that stunted the development of African people by uprooting them from their history and culture. The conversion to Christianity seduced Blacks into a process of disorientation that involved rejecting African values as deviant and instilling a belief that they had to be replaced by European ones. A religious schizophrenia ensued, where the more passionately Christian one was, the more distant one became from one’s own history and culture.

Black Churches have questioned the relevance of Afrocentricity to the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Many conservative Black clergy consider Blackness as divisive and nonbiblical. Instead of joining Christ in his work of reconciliation, Afrocentricity (or Blackness) alienates. The God of Christian faith is no respecter of persons, they argue, God recognizes one’s spirit—not one’s color or culture. Afrocentricity, they claim, undermines the integrity of the gospel by introducing “pagan” rituals such as Kwanzaa into the life of worship. “I personally do not celebrate Kwanzaa,” said Ken Fentress, dean of intercultural programs and assistant professor of Old Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, “I prefer to celebrate the principles of biblical Christianity rather than the principles of Kwanzaa because I embrace the biblical foundation of the Christian faith.” ⁷

For Afrocentric Christians, being African-centered and Christ-centered is not inherently antagonistic. These traditions need not cancel each other out. Afrocentric Christians embody what some religious scholars refer to as “double belonging” ⁸ (Knitter, 2009; that is, the capacity to be nurtured by and aligned with more than one tradition). Black Christians who are enchanted with Afrocentric thought draw deeply from the wells of African insight and life practices in ways that enrich Christian life. Therefore, African-centered culture informs and does not compromise Christian faith. In addition, Christian faith does not necessarily compromise African cultural identity. Yoruba cosmology employs a mystical numerology to represent a continuously expanding universe. When one asks Yoruba practitioners, how many supernatural entities are in the cosmos? They claim 400 + 1 supernatural entities on the right (good forces) and 200 + 1 supernatural forces to the left (malevolent forces). The +1 is not literal but symbolic. It represents the principle of elasticity in the context of a continuously expanding universe, where it is possible to encounter new supernatural entities in any moment (Abimbọla & Miller, 1997). Yoruba understand that their culture is strong enough to creatively adapt to the novelty of the universe without being compromised. Therefore, being Christ-centered in the context of Yoruba cosmology is not automatically an affront to one’s cultural identity, Christ can be conceived as an Orisha (divinity) alongside Olodumare, Obatala, Orunmila, Ogun, Osun, Yemonja, and other divinities. This epistemic openness (Rabaka, 2010) is commonplace among African religious practitioners and embodied in the African-centered cultural identities of Christian liberationists.

Afrocentricity As Liberationist Thought

The conception of Afrocentricity useful for liberation theology projects differs dramatically from newspaper accounts and scholarly detractors. I encountered Afrocentricity as an intellectual and cultural movement at the height of my campus activism at Colgate University during the late 1980s. My introduction to Afrocentricity came after my exposure to the theological perspectives of James Cone and Gustavo Gutierrez. Molefi Asante’s (1988) Afrocentricity: A Theory of Social Change and Maulana Karenga’s (1980) Kawaida Theory: An Introductory Outline were for me what Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (Carmichael & Hamilton, 1967) was for James Cone and what Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed was for Latin American theologians. It was a form of conscientization that introduced a politics of liberation to a new generation. Afrocentric consciousness empowered the poor and oppressed to critically interpret their history and reshape their reality.

I was not unmindful of the popular and scholarly critiques leveled at Afrocentrists. However, the form of Afrocentricity I encountered was not the dogmatic Afrocentricity caricatured and characterized by its critics. For me, Afrocentricity entered into a hermeneutical circle, open to interpretation, revision, and expansion in light of new experiences. Moreover, as a new interpretative process, it was dialogical, open textured, and subject to challenge by rival perspectives on issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Afrocentric discourse inspired a renewed dialogue on human liberation and its relationship to Christian faith. Not only does it foster a hermeneutic that centers marginalized perspectives from below but it also exposes the deliberate and profound ways Blacks have unlearned seeing themselves as reflections of the image of God. The attraction to Afrocentric ideas by Afrocentric Christians has to do with the way an Afrocentric hermeneutic locates God’s liberating activity in Black history and culture.

Afrocentricity is a cultural project and an intellectual orientation. As a cultural project, Afrocentricity aims to revolutionize Black minds and reconstruct Black culture. As an intellectual orientation, it is an approach to phenomena derived from African norms and values. While many associate Afrocentricity exclusively with the works of Molefi Asante, I understand Afrocentricity as a heterogeneous phenomenon. The term, for me, represents a variety of schools of thought I heuristically group as follows: The Temple Circle at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Molefi Asante, Ama Mazama); Kawaida School (Maulana Karenga, Tiamoyo, Chimbuko Tembo, the early works of Amiri Baraka, Kalamu Salaam); the New York School (John Henrik Clarke, Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochannan, Leonard Jeffries, James Small, Edward Scobie); the Chicago School (Bobby Wright, Jacob Carruthers, Anderson Thompson, Haki Madhubuti, Jawanza Kunjufu); the Psychological School (N’aim Akbar, Amos Wilson, Kofi Kambon, Daudi Azibo); the Nile Valley School (Ivan Van Sertima, Runoko Rashidi, Asa Hilliard); Theological School (Cain Hope Felder, Gayraud Wilmore, Josiah Young, Donald Matthews, Garth Kasimu Baker-Fletcher and Karen Baker-Fletcher, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, Monica Coleman); the Economic School (Claude Anderson, Matah Network); Womanist School (Clenora Hudson Weems, Nah Dove); and the Wellness School (Queen Afua, Lalkia Africa, the early work of Iyanla Vanzant).

Afrocentricity, as I use it, refers to these interpretive communities in their sectarian and reactionary forms as well as their critical and progressive forms. I advocate the use of progressive Afrocentricity for theological projects. While most Afrocentric activists and scholars reject Christian faith, they participate and at times embody the Spirit of liberation derived from Black history and culture. This embodiment is seen most visibly through the celebration of Kwanzaa, where African people gather around the world to reflect the ethical meaning of their cultural identities and are inspired to bring good and beauty into the world (Karenga, 1998).

The use of Afrocentricity as a dialogue partner for Christian theology is reminiscent of first-generation Black theologians’ use of Black power to develop their theologies of liberation. Many believed that the conversation between Black clergy and radicalized Black youth was one way: Black clergy teaching the revolutionary relevance of Christian faith to angry Black youth. Gayraud Wilmore, religious historian and former NCBC chair, argues that the relationship between Black clergy and Black militants was, in fact, a two-way street. He illustrates this by retelling the story of his attendance at the United Presbyterian General Assembly meeting in San Antonio in May 1969. On the night before James Foreman was scheduled to present the “Black Manifesto” on reparations, Wilmore found himself engaged in a heated discussion with a group of young urban guerrillas. They debated into the early hours of the next morning. Unbeknown to him, they were secretly armed with automatic weapons. Wilmore (1986) recalls,

The discussion centered on the idea of the Black Manifesto, reparations and the Bible, the relevance of belief in Jesus and the Church . . . what it means to be Black and Christian . . . God’s judgment in political and cultural struggle . . . the failure of religion and what kind of theology would do justice to the legitimate grievances of young Black people and, at the same time, remain faithful to the demands of the gospel. We discussed Black Muslims, holy war and Jesus Christ as the liberator of the outcast and the downtrodden. (p. 119)

The next morning, Wilmore emerged from that “smoke filled polluted hotel suite, unshaven and bone-weary.” He did not know what the young radicals would do, but in retrospect, says, “I knew I had been their pastor that night—perhaps the only pastor some of them ever had” (Wilmore, 1986, p. 119). He also knew that during that night, he along with his “young, critical congregation” had been “creating a black theology of liberation together” (Wilmore, 1986).

Wilmore underscores his point by referring to Black power revolutionaries as “lay theologians” who were crucial to the formation of Black theology. In eulogizing one, he wrote, “Some of us used to say that we evangelized this hard-nosed black revolutionary who came to throw a monkey wrench into the ecclesial machinery . . . We now know that he evangelized us” (Wilmore, 1986, p. 120, italics added).

Afrocentricity and the Black Church

As Wilmore and other first-generation Black theologians conceived of Black power advocates as “lay theologians” and interpreters of religious meaning, some contemporary Black pastors are discovering the religious meaning in the Afrocentric movement and using its sources to articulate a theology that is accountable to the Black poor. Amid a wave of theological conservatism, Afrocentricity reintroduces the idiom of Blackness and liberation into the context of faith. I refer to congregations that use Afrocentric frameworks as Nia-Driven churches (Purpose-Driven). The ultimate concern of these Nia-Driven congregations is to transform the self-understanding of Black people in light of God’s purposes. Clergy from Nia-Driven congregations perform the priestly task of being custodians a people’s intellectual and cultural traditions and the prophetic task of being caretakers of a community’s well-being. They reject Eurocentric norms in worship and theology and carve out an African-centered path of Christian discipleship.

The institutionalization of Maafa (Middle Passage) ceremonies, the practice of the Nguzo Saba and Kwanzaa, the incorporation of African attire and languages, the inculturation of African symbols such as the Ankh (The Egyptian Cross of Life) and the Gye nyame (Adinkra symbol meaning, “nothing greater than God”), the reemergence of the Black Christ and the inclusion of Africa as a part of biblical memory are all part of an effort by African American congregations to use Afrocentric culture to foster a spirit of fellowship with God and one another. These congregations refuse to reduce the message of salvation to a spiritual transaction between the individual and God; salvation is a comprehensive act that includes establishing right relations in the spiritual and material realms of life.

Afrocentric Hermeneutic

Afrocentric Christians are critical of the church’s failure to present an interpretation of faith that is culturally and politically relevant. Too often, the faith of the Black church has been a source of psychological and cultural slavery rather than liberation. An Afrocentric theological hermeneutics has two aspects: an ethics of historical responsibility and a liberationist hermeneutics. An ethics of historical responsibility makes Christian doctrine and meaning accountable to African-centered conceptions of Black history and culture. It insists that Africa is an essential part of biblical memory and identifies Christian revelation with the heritage of the oppressed. A liberationist hermeneutic renders Christian narratives serviceable to the struggles for a just world.

An Ethics of Historical Responsibility

An ethics of historical responsibility challenges the depiction of Christian faith as the saga of European peoples and Jesus as the American Christ. It initiates a retraditioning of faith that locates salvific activity (i.e., the preexistent logos) in African history and culture. Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan states,

For the last two to three thousand years Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been presented to the African Americans and other people of African origins in a manner suggesting exclusively European beginnings. Yet the beginnings of any of these religions did not involve one European. All three of them are of the creative genius of Africans, Asians and African-Asians. European personalities entered them many generations following their establishment within Africa and Asia. ⁹ (Cleage, 1972, p. 283)

The origins of Black Christianity do not begin in slavery! Africa’s relationship to Christian faith is much older than Europe’s. An ethics of historical responsibility reclaims ancient Africa as part of the historical and cultural biography of peoples of African descent. Ancient Egypt, a venerated civilization by Afrocentrists, did not stop making history in 332 b.c.e. (i.e., the date of conquest by Greco-Roman civilization). Its history extends into the Common Era and the emergence of Christianity. Using classical Africa as a starting point reframes the conventional view that Africans learned Christianity from their slave or colonial masters. Slavery and colonialism are only part of the story. The long story recovers a robust Christian presence in Africa between the periods of 50 and 500 c.e (Faraji, 2012; Oden, 2007; Sindima, 1994). Africa, during this period, provided the richest thought environment for the development of Christian faith. Christianity found its first public voice in Alexandria, Egypt. The Christian leadership of Alexandria had the same prestige as the leadership of Rome and Antioch and was influential in prefiguring academic communities and pedagogies that led to the development of the Western university. A second African city, Carthage (Tunisia), was more influential in the formation of 3rd-century Christian faith than Rome.

Most of Black theological scholarship necessarily focuses on Africans as receivers of Christianity; however, an ethics of historical responsibility recovers and reclaims Africans as historical agents, teachers, and shapers of the foundations of Christian thought. African American identification with Africa transcends regional and ethnic identification. Therefore, the intellectual and cultural heritage of North and East Africa (e.g., Egypt and Ethiopia) are claimed with the same passion and intensity as the reclamations of West and Central Africa. For Afrocentric churches, the writings of North African theologians such as Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, Egypt; Augustine of Hippo (present day Algeria); and Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage (present day Tunisia) should be used as resources for reconstituting a Black theological canon.

Liberationist Hermeneutic

Christian faith has been a double-edged sword within Black experience. It has been a weapon against Black people and a resource for resistance. The task of liberationist hermeneutic is not to explain away Christian complicity with racist practices but to understand Christian faith in a way that recognizes its oppressive and liberating power.

An Afrocentric liberationist hermeneutic reads Christian faith from the underside. It acknowledges the complicity of Christianity with violence and oppression and affirms ways African peoples have used Christian languages and idioms to imagine and perform new ways of being human—ways that undermined and disrupt racial containments. The work of Black theology has marshaled energies from Black religious traditions to fight against racism and injustice. An Afrocentric orientation within Black theology seeks to enlarge the scope of justice and freedom by employing a hermeneutic that reappropriates Christian traditions and biblical texts and rereadings them from a liberating perspective.

For example, the narratives of transforming suffering and death into new life are part of the Christic imagination of Christians of African descent. Afrocentric Christians developed rituals for rereading of the passion narrative of Jesus in light of Black historical experience. The memory of slavery has been ritualized in Afrocentric congregations through Maafa ceremonies. ¹⁰ Maafa is a Swahili concept that means “disaster” or “great misfortune.” The congregation is invited to reexperience the agony and anguish of the Middle Passage through a detailed retelling of the beatings, whippings, rapes, and other unspeakable horrors that Africans experienced as they landed on American shores. To experience the Maafa is to delve deep into the heart of suffering—the primal scene of Black hopelessness and despair. It opens up new horizons of space and time where the Black community reconnects with the hopes and agonies of their ancestors.

The agony of suffering that resides at the heart of slavery provides a doorway for relating to the event of the Cross. To be crucified, in the context of 1st-century Roman Empire, is to die a disgraceful and humiliating death. For Christians, God’s action in Jesus transformed the ugliness of crucifixion into the beauty of new life. This victory of new life is not a onetime 1st-century occurrence but a continuous process of recreation that affirms the possibility of overcoming the violence and oppression. The Maafa ceremony allows people to imaginatively enter into this story, reshaping subjectivities in ways that overcome the trauma of slavery and participate in God’s call for a restored humanity.

Participating in the vocation of a restored humanity shifts the meaning of Christian redemption beyond individual salvation and toward a more comprehensive view of the whole of Creation. Christian thinkers have used biblical images such as a New Creation, the Kingdom of God, The Day of the Lord, a New heaven and New earth to capture God’s vision of a healthy and sane world. Afrocentric Christians have used these images as base points to critique America’s relationship to Black oppression and call her to repentance.

The clash between Barack Obama and his Afrocentric pastor Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 presidential campaign dramatizes the difficulty of calling a nation into right relations over issues of race and violence. Public language and personal temperament notwithstanding, expressing a message of liberation from below and employing alternative readings of faith and history are dangerous. It upsets the settled wisdoms of the day and challenges America’s self-image. Twenty-first century liberationist must not only muster the strength to indict America for her appetite for racism and violence but also must have the courage to express God’s love for justice in a world that shows cultural and systematic disregard for the poor. An Afrocentric orientation in Black theology participates with other perspectives in amplifying marginalized voices to interpret the meaning and commitments of biblical faith in a new era.