Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Series Editors
Dwight N. Hopkins
University of Chicago Divinity School
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Linda E. Thomas
Lutheran School of Theology Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Aim of the Series
The Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice Series produces
works engaging any dimension of black religion or womanist thought
as they pertain to social justice. Womanist thought is a new approach in
the study of African American women’s perspectives. The series includes
a variety of African American religious expressions; traditions such as
Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Humanism, African
diasporic practices, religion and gender, religion and black gays/lesbians,
ecological justice issues, African American religiosity and its relation to
African religions, new black religious movements or religious dimensions
in African American “secular” experiences.
Cover illustration © The Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian
Church
I am truly indebted to the many people who have provided inspiration and
encouragement toward the completion of this book. They are too many to
name. I am thankful to all the contributors who took great time, effort, and
care to complete their excellent book chapters. In your own way, each one
of you is living out the great inheritance left by the Rev. Albert B. Cleage
Jr. Each contributor offered a unique perspective and evaluation of this
complex legacy. I am also indebted to the members of the Shrines of the
Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, the living
testimony to the work of Rev. Cleage. So many of you, in every region
(Detroit, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Houston, Texas; and Calhoun
Falls, SC) have encouraged me to continue to develop my scholarship and
pay homage to our founder. You are greatly appreciated for your work
in helping this project come into fruition: Rev. D. Kimathi Nelson, Rev.
Aswad Walker, Rev. Velma Maia Thomas, Rev. Olubayo A. Mandela, Rev.
Kehinde Biggs, Rev. Mwenda Brown, Rev. Mbiyu Moore, Jilo Williams,
Ayanna Abi-Kyles, Michael Amir Bannerman, Sondai Lester, James
Tacuma Ribbron, Bakeeba Hampton, Ewa Ife Oma Oba, all the black
women interviewed for the chapter on the black Madonna and woman-
hood, and many, many others. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Jennifer
“Miniya” Clark, who has provided unwavering support to me throughout
this process and even assisted in the coordination of the contributors to
ensure timely submissions. Thank you! This book is my honest effort to
assess the legacy of Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr. and the enduring value of the
black Madonna and child as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of
that great unveiling. To God Be the Glory!
v
CONTENTS
vii
viii CONTENTS
Index 301
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
xi
xii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Center for Folklife and Cultural
Heritage. Her research interests center on expressions of spirituality found
throughout the African Diaspora, ranging from the visual culture of Haitian
Vodou communities in the USA to the unrecognized architectural history of
African Methodist Episcopal’s building boom of the late nineteenth century.
Kamasi C. Hill is a historian, theologian, cultural critic, an award-winning film-
maker, and an avid art collector. He has been a public school educator for 20 years
and is also an adjunct lecturer. He specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first-cen-
tury American Religious History and Culture and his research also explores the
relationship between religion and popular culture. Dr. Hill has contributed to
several publications and has published several articles and blogs. Born and raised in
Detroit, Michigan, he attended Detroit Public Schools, Howard University, and
Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary at Northwestern.
BaSean “B.A.” Jackson is the Lead Pastor and Organizer of Fellowship of Love
Church. He is an author, songwriter, preacher, and lifelong learner whose scholarly
interests include soteriology, pragmatism, theology, and leadership. B.A. teaches,
preaches, and lectures all around the nation and resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
Pamela R. Lightsey is an associate dean and clinical assistant professor at Boston
University School of Theology. She is also an ordained elder in the United Methodist
Church. Dr. Lightsey’s commitment to scholarship is infused in her work as a social
justice activist in LGBTQ and black communities. She has been recognized for her
work for marriage equality, in Black Lives Matter, and in investigating the impact of
moral injury on military veterans. Her research and teaching interests are in the
areas of just war theory, womanist and queer theology, and African American reli-
gious history. Her most recent works are Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer
Theology, and “Is Necessary Violence a Just Violence: Commentary on Meagher’s
Killing From the Inside Out” in Syndicate, September/October 2015.
D. Kimathi Nelson is the Presiding Bishop and Chief Executive Officer of the
Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan-African Orthodox Christian Church.
He holds the honorific title reserved for the presiding bishop, “Jaramogi.” The
Detroit native received his BA in theology/philosophy from the University of
St. Thomas. He matriculated to Yale Divinity School where he earned a Master
of Divinity Degree while serving as the President of the Yale Black Seminarians
and the pastor of the Black Church at Yale. However, he regards his most pro-
found educational experiences to have come from the 30 years spent under the
direct tutelage of his mentor and the church’s founder, the renowned theolo-
gian, Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, aka Reverend Albert B. Cleage Jr. Bishop
Nelson has been pastor to churches in Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, and New
Haven. As the national director of the Black Slate, Inc., he has significant impact
on the political life of the African American community. He is also an authority
on African and African American History.
xiv LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Jawanza Eric Clark
March 26, 2017, will mark the 50-year anniversary of Albert B. Cleage Jr.’s
historic unveiling of a mural of the black Madonna and child in Central
United Church of Christ (UCC) in Detroit, Michigan 1967. This unveil-
ing was significant in that it occurred during the Civil Rights Movement in
America, specifically as the concerns among many black people in America
were subtly changing from a call for integration and demand for civil
rights to a cry for self-determination, nationalism, and black power. The
unveiling of this mural of a black Madonna and child in Central UCC on
Easter Sunday morning also preceded the violent eruption of racial anger
that would engulf and devastate the city just a few months later during a
hot summer in Detroit. Albert B. Cleage Jr. would seize the moment and
develop a relevant contextual theology that could reconcile the rage and
demand for self-determination among black power advocates with tradi-
tional Protestant Christianity, a religion that called for non-violence and
emphasized redemptive suffering, especially as articulated by the eloquent
Baptist pastor and leader Martin Luther King Jr. The unveiling of a black
Madonna and child and the claim that Jesus was a black Messiah launched
For nearly 500 years the illusion that Jesus was White dominated the world
only because White Europeans dominated the world. Now, with the emer-
gence of the nationalist movements of the world’s colored majority, the
historic truth is finally beginning to emerge—that Jesus was the non-white
leader of a non-white people struggling for national liberation against the
rule of a White nation, Rome. The intermingling of the races in Africa and
the Mediterranean area is an established fact. The nation, Israel, was a mix-
ture of the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Midionites, the Ethiopians, the
Kushites, the Babylonians and other dark peoples, all of whom were already
mixed with the black peoples of Central Africa.3
INTRODUCTION: WHY A WHITE CHRIST CONTINUES TO BE RACIST... 5
Cleage takes a construct, race, which had no meaning at the time of Jesus
and applies it for the auditory and visual consumption of his contemporary
audience. Consequently, while Jesus would not have referred to himself
as a black Messiah, he IS a black Messiah for contemporary Christians,
because if he were living in America today, he would be forced to frame his
identity within an American racial structure. As Marcus Garvey asserted in
1924, “should Christ visit New York, he would not be allowed to live on
Riverside Drive but would have to reside in Harlem because of his color.”4
Cleage’s more provocative theological claim, however, is that Jesus
was a black Hebrew messiah. As a Hebrew messiah, all notions of Jesus
as the unique, exclusive, or singular son of God are eradicated. Messiah
simply means “anointed one.” And in Israel’s history, there were many
other persons (unfortunately only male) who were anointed ones. In the
Hebrew religious imagination, King David was the ultimate anointed fig-
ure. He was considered both the Son of God and Son of Man.5 In fact, the
messianic expectation during the time of Jesus was that someone of King
David’s personality and spirit would one day lead a reformation movement
to restore Israel to its former days of independent glory, which was the
reign of King David.
My point is that when Albert Cleage Jr. refers to Jesus as the black
Messiah, he is naming a human being of a particular hue who would have
seen himself as a freedom fighter seeking to rescue Israel from the imperial
authority of the Romans. His crucifixion is proof that the Roman authori-
ties saw Jesus as a threat and a dissenter worthy of execution. What Cleage
does is actually restore Jesus’ exclusive humanity. He frames Jesus as a
situationally bound, historically contingent, flawed human being who was
fulfilling a God-inspired mission on earth. He was ultimately unsuccess-
ful in achieving this mission (further proof of his human frailty), yet his
teachings, values, ethics, and ministry continue to stand as a testimony
in death over 2000 years later. Thus, while Cleage maintains Jesus was
black, his blackness is not glorified or divinized. His blackness carries no
independent weight, or value, and ultimately no meaning or significance
at all. The only reason to mention the blackness of Jesus is to correct the
historical inaccuracies in the Eurocentric depictions and expose the White
Christ as a White supremacist symbol. It is only necessary to mention
Jesus’ blackness as an act of resistance to a society that overvalues White
identity, or whiteness, by privileging it and conferring power over all other
racial identities.
6 J.E. CLARK
But this is not how black and womanist theologians have characterized
Albert B. Cleage Jr. in their works. I argue that their conception of his
theology is static, obsolete, and fails to appreciate his theological evolu-
tion and methodological insight. This failure leads to a too easy dismissal
of Cleage’s thought. I call for a reexamination and more thorough analysis
of Cleage’s theology which would provide academic black theological dis-
course with some much needed vitality and theological diversity.
Albert Cleage’s marginalization within black theology began early on in
the formation of the discourse. First, James Cone distances himself from
Cleage’s notion of blackness, because Cleage’s blackness is literal, thus
too particular and political. For Cone, blackness is a symbol for oppressed
existence. “Blackness is an ontological symbol and a visible reality which
best describes what oppression means in America.”6 Cone is clearly more
concerned than Cleage that blackness has universal appeal, which for Cone
means it more properly functions as a theological category. This concern
perhaps reveals more about the perceived task of a professional theologian
versus that of a pastor of a specific black church in a particular situation of
concern (Detroit 1967). Similarly, J. Deotis Roberts, in engaging Cleage,
affirmed a bifurcation between the black Messiah and the Christ symbol.
For Roberts, the black Messiah was particular to black people but the
universal Christ transcends the black Messiah and “reconciles the black
man with the rest of mankind.”7 For Roberts, the black Messiah might be
psychologically necessary, in order to overcome generations of internal-
ized oppression among black people, but the universal Christ ultimately
trumps Cleage’s black symbol of liberation. Reconciliation is ultimate,
while liberation is preliminary. Roberts also wants to preserve the univer-
salism within theology and sees Cleage’s constructions as too particular,
political, and culturally specific. For Roberts, Cleage’s theology is insuf-
ficient precisely because it lacks the universality intrinsic to the task of
theology. James Evans, however, disagrees with this concern of Roberts.
For Evans, “It cannot be denied that the concept of the black Messiah
answered a need in the beleaguered psyche of an oppressed people, but
to place Christ above and beyond the cultural, meaning-making matrix of
African Americans risk, at best, an unnecessary dichotomy, and, at worst,
the irrelevance of Christ to their struggle.”8
Dwight Hopkins, in his 1989 publication, Black Theology USA and South
Africa, also criticizes Cleage for his presumed narrow theological focus on
the black community. According to Hopkins, “The substance of Cleage’s
theology indicates a black God aggressively involved in the business of
INTRODUCTION: WHY A WHITE CHRIST CONTINUES TO BE RACIST... 7
Chapman clearly provides evidence that would dispute the claims made by
Hopkins that Cleage essentializes whiteness as evil and blackness as divine.
In fact, I argue that Cleage’s conception of Jesus as the black Messiah
coupled with his later construction of God as cosmic energy and creative
intelligence jettisons the critique that black theology, and specifically
Cleage, glorifies blackness or black identity.
The affirmation of Jesus as the black Messiah is an effort to uproot and
disrupt the “power/knowledge” generated by the White Christ symbol.
It is in fact a “subjugated knowledge.”10 Michel Foucault often affirmed
the interrelationship between the exercise of power and the production
of knowledge. He claims “the exercise of power itself creates and causes
to emerge new objects of knowledge and accumulates new bodies of
information … the exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and,
conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power … knowledge
and power are integrated with one another.”11 The construction of race is
itself an example of knowledge production created to advance the inter-
ests of those in power. The White Christ serves as a paradigmatic religious
8 J.E. CLARK
Slave Christianity is the Christianity that old master gave black people back
on the plantation. He defined Jesus with pictures of a White man with flow-
ing golden locks and blue eyes. The obvious absurdity was not immediately
apparent to black people. Jesus could not have looked like the pictures in the
bible, having been born in a part of the world reserved for black people by
God. But the whiteness of Jesus and Israel was basic to slave Christianity…
Slave Christianity has to do with individualistic salvation. Two thousand
years ago on Calvary a mystic event took place. Jesus was crucified and
somehow he rose from the dead. In this redemptive act, God made salvation
possible for individuals in all generations who believe. This meant then that
each individual must fight for his own little individual salvation.15
10 J.E. CLARK
inferior, whether via slavery, Jim Crow segregation, Supreme Court deci-
sions, inferior and substandard schools, redlining, and disproportionate
and extremely high rates of incarceration, this religion does not possess
the theology necessary to encourage revolt, resistance to, or transforma-
tion of, racist institutional structures. Orthodox Protestant Christianity,
in this way, functions as an effective slave-making device, for it ensures
quietism among its most faithful despite the injustices forced upon them.
Cleage’s criticism here suggests that what he actually favors is an
African-centered interpretation of Jesus, the nation Israel, and Christianity
generally; however, he never fully teased out the theological implications
of constructing a Christology within an African framework. While he did
incorporate what he called African communalism and spirituality into the
structure of the BCN movement (his attempt to restructure the black
church), he never articulated a full theological turn or engagement with
indigenous Africa. This is part of the work he left to his students and
those committed to honoring his legacy and ushering in his presence as
an ancestor.22
Albert Cleage Jr and the black Madonna and Child commemorates
the 50-year anniversary of Albert Cleage’s historic unveiling of a black
Madonna and child in Detroit, Michigan. While my individual scholarly
concerns involve an examination of the theological implications of this
unveiling, I have compiled this edited book of many accomplished con-
tributors whose excellent works examine the meaning of this historic event
from various disciplinary perspectives: biblical studies and psychology of
religion to Christian education and art history. Because Albert Cleage
was a pastor and a preacher of his theological, philosophical, and political
insight, I sought to bring together both academics and those in pastoral
ministry. This work includes the contributions of scholars and ordained
ministers.
Albert Cleage and the black Madonna and Child also includes contribu-
tions from insiders and outsiders. The insiders are those who have been
disciples of Cleage, one of whom was his protégé and learned under his
tutelage for 30 years. These insiders were included particularly to convey
the ways in which Cleage’s thought evolved in the latter portion of his life
after the publication of his only two books, The black Messiah and Black
Christian Nationalism, when Cleage receded from public life and explain
how the members of Cleage’s church, The Shrines of the Black Madonna,
specifically manifest the legacy of the black Madonna and child today. The
outsiders are those whose expertise leads them to want to critically engage
12 J.E. CLARK
Cleage’s ideas, the very notion of a black Madonna and black Messiah,
and wrestle with the implications of Cleage’s thought, specifically how it
might inform notions of blackness today prescribing avenues for meeting
the challenges of race in the twenty-first century. This book is in part an
effort to not only bridge the gap between these perspectives but also dem-
onstrate how each perspective is strengthened by the other.
SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS
In Chap. 2, D. Kimathi Nelson shares his personal insights and reflections
as one who studied and trained under Albert Cleage for 30 years. His reflec-
tions provide the unique insider perspective that uncovers Albert Cleage’s
theological evolution beyond the claims expressed in his two published
works, The black Messiah and Black Christian Nationalism. Nelson con-
veys the later Cleage’s conception of God as cosmic energy and creative
intelligence and his development of the Science of KUA, or the Science
of Becoming. The later Cleage wrote and spoke of a theosophic inter-
pretation of reality that moved beyond the political dimensions of Black
Nationalism in America. According to Nelson, Cleage “grew beyond sim-
ply being a pragmatic realist and became a revolutionary mystic concerned
with leading people to a personal theosophic experience as a necessary step
to giving total commitment to a revolutionary struggle for social change.”
Nelson allows this Cleage to speak for himself quoting at length from ser-
mons and unpublished essays written after 1978.
In Chap. 3, I argue that Albert Cleage offers an alternative theological
methodology that is worthy of reexamination and engagement within aca-
demic black theological discourse. His central tenet and claim that “noth-
ing is more sacred than the liberation of black people,” reflects a pragmatic
theological method that is guided by the lived experiences of everyday
black people in America. In this way, it differs from academic black theol-
ogy, because it does not seek validation within the academy or conform
to theology’s presumed universal imperative. Cleage’s approach is prag-
matic, malleable, and adaptable to the current situation of black people
in America. I argue that black theology today would benefit from a reap-
praisal of Cleage, since his theology offers a viable alternative and addresses
many critiques leveled at black theology and the problem of “ontological
blackness.” I contend Cleage provides a perspective and approach that
helps us counter black theology’s problem with history and its “opaque-
ness.” His methodology affirms theological experimentation and a radical
black ecclesiology whose sole concern is the liberation of black people.
INTRODUCTION: WHY A WHITE CHRIST CONTINUES TO BE RACIST... 13
does it mean that the church is named after the mother of Jesus, and in
what ways, if any, does the church manifest a culture that is sexist? Thomas
allows these women to speak for themselves to courageously and critically
assess the legacy of the black Madonna and the role of women as members
and former members of the Shrines of the Black Madonna.
In Chap. 8, Melanee Harvey charts the aesthetic influence of the black
Madonna and child by examining how this depiction of Jesus and Mary
influenced and shaped the visual culture of the Black Arts Movement in
America. According to Harvey, Cleage’s depiction of a black Madonna
and child marked “his success in establishing a Christian icon as visual
symbol for Black Power.” She argues that Cleage’s aesthetic views influ-
enced artists nationally and “served as a catalyst for Black Nationalist art
production.” A series of images detailing the formation of depictions of
the black Madonna and child accompany her written work.
In Chap. 9, Lee Butler discusses the psychological impact of a black
Christology. He explains why the image of a black Christ was so important
to the Black Consciousness Movement and is still important to the African
American psyche today. Butler contends that many black people continue
to suffer from a pervasive racial self-hatred informed by their inability to
see the Imago Dei, the image of the divine, in themselves. He foregrounds
two articles from the March 1969 edition of Ebony magazine, which fea-
tures an image of a black Jesus on the cover. Butler makes clear the impact
that Cleage’s radical black Messiah has not only in improving the black
self-image but also in informing the development of an Africana pastoral
theology, a theology informed by resistance and liberation.
In Chap. 10, “Image is Everything,” Almeda Wright also delves into
the concept of the Imago Dei, the image of God, and its impact on the
Christian education of black youth. She wants to know: “what can we
give our youth?” and “where does God show up for them and where is
God absent?” Wright is concerned that because the black church is often
burdened by the politics of respectability it has not provided our youth
with the resources and strategies necessary for them to overcome a culture
that declares them disposable. She shares experiences of youth reflecting
on their own understanding of the Imago Dei. She then queries about
Cleage’s notion of a nation, specifically the concept of nation as counter-
culture, as safe, protected space that enables black youth to flourish and
realize their God-given potential. Wright challenges the church today to
embrace aspects of Cleage’s radical ecclesiology.
INTRODUCTION: WHY A WHITE CHRIST CONTINUES TO BE RACIST... 15
NOTES
1. Alex Poinsett, “The Quest for a Black Christ,” Ebony Magazine, March,
1969, p. 176.
2. James Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare
(New York: Orbis, 1991), p. 170.
3. Albert B. Cleage Jr., “An Introduction to Black Christian Nationalism,”
unpublished essay.
4. New York Times, August 1924 in Tony Martin, Race First (Dover: The
Majority Press, 1976), p. 70.
5. Robert E. Hood, Must God Remain Greek? Afro-Cultures and God-Talk
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), p. 153.
6. James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis, 1970), p. 7.
7. J. Deotis Roberts, Reconciliation and Liberation: A Black Theology
(Louisville: John Knox Press, 1971), p. 140.
8. James Evans, We Have Been Believers: An African American Systematic
Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), pp. 102–103.
9. Dwight Hopkins, Black Theology USA and South Africa (New York: Orbis,
1989), p. 58.
10. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon (Great Britain: The
Harvester Press, 1980), p. 82.
11. Ibid., p. 52.
12. Ibid., p. 85.
13. Albert B. Cleage Jr., Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the
Black Church (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1972), p. 16.
14. Ibid., p. 45.
15. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
16. Ibid., p. 31.
17. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation
of the Religious History of Afro-American People (New York: Orbis Books,
1973), pp. 161–162.
18. Albert B. Cleage, Black Christian Nationalism, p. 32.
19. Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1922), p. 199.
20. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father, p. 31.
21. Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, p. 199.
22. See Jawanza Eric Clark, Indigenous Black Theology (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012).
PART I
D. Kimathi Nelson
advancing his unique ministry were being fleshed out. He once wrote that
black Christian Nationalists are “pragmatic realists.”1 This describes the
Albert Cleage of the period in which the two books were written. But they
do not encompass the fullness of his evolutionary journey, a journey that
continued for another three decades, until his death in 2000.
In the years after the books, Albert Cleage’s theology continued to
evolve. However, he was no longer concerned with edifying the public
or debating the conventional wisdom of the religious establishment. He
was focused on the development of an organization that could actualize
black self-determination. He felt that such a prophetic ministry would
speak louder and more persuasively than anything he could say or write.
His time was spent on the development of leadership, institutions, and
programs that could realize this goal.
For those of us fortunate enough to have been under his tutelage, we
saw a man whose commitment to God allowed him to continue to grow
for the rest of his life. He grew beyond a need to argue the historic black-
ness of Jesus and the biblical nation, Israel (he came to regard this as the
least significant aspect of his theology. It was a verifiable fact of history). He
grew beyond the simple white–black racial dichotomy that defined black
existence in America. He grew beyond the anthropomorphic conception
of God. Contrary to what some scholars assert, Cleage never believed that
God was a physical being that had a color. His point was that Jesus was
historically a black human being belonging to black nation, Israel. He
grew beyond the provincial, garden-variety “black nationalism,” to view
black people’s struggle in cosmic terms. He said, “Good theology has the
potential to evolve from the specific to the universal.”2 He grew beyond
simply being a pragmatic realist and became a revolutionary mystic con-
cerned with leading people to a personal theosophic experience as a neces-
sary step to giving total commitment to a revolutionary struggle for social
change. His commitment to God led him to become whatever he needed
to be to serve as an effective agent of divine will. His example taught his
followers to do the same.
Cleage’s Shrine of the black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox
Christian Church (PAOCC) is today one of the very few surviving orga-
nizations that arose out of the black consciousness era. It exists today,
and has a future tomorrow because of the evolving theological tradition
established by its founder. His uncompromising commitment to the ser-
vice of God through a Christian ministry dedicated to the unique and
THE THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY OF ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR.: REFLECTIONS... 23
history. At that time, a seat in the Shrine of the black Madonna was hard
to come by. Cone was still regularly attending in 1968, when Cleage’s
book—a compilation of his black theology sermons—The black Messiah
was published and became a national bestseller. Over the years, Cone has
been repeatedly taken to task by scholars and preachers who are aware of
his debt to Cleage. Some of these people have expressed to me that they
regard this oversight as a blemish on Cone’s considerable legacy. At the
inaugural Albert B. Cleage Jr. Leadership Symposium in Detroit in 2003,
Dr. Charles Adams, the Harvard-educated pastor of Hartford Memorial
Baptist Church in Detroit, conveyed to me his efforts to get Cone to
acknowledge Cleage’s contribution to his work. Dr. M. Shawn Copeland,
one of my professors at Yale Divinity School, was also a professor at Adrian
College at the same time as Cone. She helped him drive to Detroit on
occasion to hear Cleage preach two years before his book, Black Theology
and Black Power, was published in 1969.7
For Cleage’s part, he did not really care about academic acclaim. He
was not a trained systematic theologian. He was concerned with practicing
theology in the real-world efforts to change social conditions. Although
he was in regular contact with the leading black theologians and was
viewed by them as a trailblazing pioneer in the field, he was not seeking to
build a professional, academic career. His were theological ideas based on
his experiences in providing a relevant progressive ministry to black people
in a number of cities. He was in great demand as a speaker and spoke on
hundreds of college campuses, but he never accepted any offers to teach.
Even though he was a charter member of the National Committee of
Black Churchmen, an interdenominational committee including many of
the new black theologians, he resigned because he was critical of “school-
men’s theology,” which he regarded as a springboard into acceptance by
the white religious establishment rather than black empowerment.8 As a
matter of fact, Cleage quipped that black theologians in the academy were
indebted to those doing the work of black theology in the church. He
said, “Black theology was only of interest to academic institutions today,
because it has become an undeniable political force. They [the white acad-
emy] want to control and contain it. If black people do not do anything
with it, it will become irrelevant and black theologians will too.”9 Cleage
was not concerned with arguing with the religious establishment about
the validity or merits of black theology. He was concerned with building
an organization that could build the institutional power upon which black
self-determination could be actualized.
26 D.K. NELSON
During the time his books were written, this desire for black self-
determination was understood as “building a black nation.” Cleage did not
view the black nation in geographic terms. He believed that all American
ethnic groups had social, economic, and political power bases existing
within the fabric of the country. He said that black people are uniquely
naked without any institutional power base. This was the reason for black
people’s total powerlessness and exploitation. He taught that black people
are dependent upon the white system of power for everything. Thus, black
people need their own independent system of institutions to meet their
own needs and serve their own interests. He called it “A Nation-Within-a-
Nation.” This programmatic approach distinguished Cleage from most of
the other black nationalists who had no specific program for accomplish-
ing any concrete and attainable goals. For most people, black nationalism
was more of a sentiment than a process, a concept rather than a program.
“Black nationalism” was always an imprecise term that had almost as
many meanings as adherents. This impreciseness was in full evidence at
every gathering of black nationalists. The most notable of these gather-
ings was in Gary, Indiana in 1972 where thousands gathered under the
theme, “It’s Nation Time.” It proposed an ambitious and comprehensive
national black agenda, but conflicting and entrenched notions of “black
nationalism” held by the various groups in attendance made any serious
organization impossible. The convention concluded with the resolve to
work toward the black nation from the vantage points and perspectives of
each group represented. It called for “unity without uniformity.” Cleage
felt that the conference highlighted the basic problem of trying to orga-
nize black people with mixed agendas.10
Cleage had become convinced of the futility of trying to persuade other
leaders and organizations to adopt his point of view or methodology. He
had already concluded that his ministry needed a theology that allowed the
church to unify black people under a singular concrete program. Having
already built his own church, he now set out to build his own organiza-
tion. He erased all imprecision by building his organization on the foun-
dation of a clear creed, position, program, and leadership structure. These
things are spelled out in the second book, Black Christian Nationalism:
New Directions for the Black Church. From that moment forward, Cleage’s
black theology was no longer an intellectual debate with outsiders, but an
organizing tool for insiders.
Cleage’s book served as a training manual that rooted his members
in the black experience, with a black theology, a Pan-African worldview
THE THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY OF ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR.: REFLECTIONS... 27
BCN seeks to change slaves who suffer not only from a slave condition but
also from a slave mentality. Everywhere in the world black people are power-
less, enslaved by a hostile society that has declared them inferior, and incapa-
ble of full participation as equals. Four hundred years of powerlessness and
enslavement in a hostile exploitive society has had profound psychological
effects upon black people. We have been incapacitated for effective struggle
against our condition by a basic acceptance of the myth of black inferior-
ity imposed upon us by our oppressors. The powerless condition that has
been forced upon us by our oppressor has created the appearance of a real
inferiority … To liberate black people BCN must first be a psychological
CHANGE AGENT!12
The strength, value and potential of a church lies in its theology. The
theology of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church represents a radical
departure from the theology now accepted in the traditional Black church.
God is the cosmic energy and creative intelligence out of which all things
are created and upon which we are all dependent for life and meaning. God
is the center and source of an infinite interconnected web of cosmic energy
within which we live, move and have our being. God is not a super-being
existing separate and apart from humanity somewhere off beyond the clouds.
God is the limitless energy, the boundless life force and power that permeate
every aspect of this vast universe. This conception of God conforms to the
recent discoveries made by physicists concerning the nature of the universe
and the concept of God, man, and the universe come upon by the ancient
African priests and mystics who created religion… We are created out of the
same substance as God, possessing a spark of the transcendent divinity that
is the ground of all reality. It is this spark of divinity within that gives us the
potential to experience God, to communicate with God and to act for God
in the world.15
theological discourse beyond the one they inherited. And if they try, they
will end up aborting their careers or preaching to empty seats. Cleage
always dared to risk this possibility.
Cleage shared Eddie Glaude Jr.’s critique of the black church in his
article, “The Black Church is Dead.” As a matter of fact, Cleage made
the same pronouncement in his poem, “Eulogy for the Black Church.”22
Cleage’s position was that the black church had been important in sus-
taining the black community through a time when it had nothing else to
depend upon. The black church was a total institution trying to provide, in
one way or another, everything the black community needed. It provided
critical services that would have been left unmet. But in today’s world,
this was no longer true, and we were left with the worst part of the black
church, which is its otherworldly theology and nonsensical religious tradi-
tions. He saw the rise of prosperity ministries as the logical next step for a
traditional black church that was already steeped in magical thinking. He
believed that prosperity ministries would eventually discredit the church in
the eyes of a significant portion of the population and drive many people
into private spiritualism and atheism. He makes clear, “I wouldn’t blame
them because there is just so much foolishness a person can take. But the
problem is that you need a group of people, an organized corporate body
to carry out any kind of program for social change. The black church’s
journey toward the ridiculous is making it difficult to engage intelligent
black people in any kind of Christian social action designed to change our
condition.”23
As the black consciousness movement, which had provided the impe-
tus for the growth and development of Cleage’s church into a national
movement, began to wane, Cleage recognized the need to structure
his church/nation to sustain itself through a wilderness period where
THE THEOLOGICAL JOURNEY OF ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR.: REFLECTIONS... 33
The Black revolution has just about run out of gas. We have to start plan-
ning for survival. The factories are being automated with robots and com-
puters. The machines are running themselves. Unskilled black people in
America are going to be economically obsolete. That means the cities will
become cesspools of crime, drugs, poverty and violence. We could offer an
alternative to that life by building communal Christian communities that
would provide a safe haven. BCN must be a refuge and a hope for black
people intelligent enough to seek it. We have to preserve what we have built
by institutionalizing it in the clothing of the church. BCN can continue to
grow and evolve if we can emphasize the “Christian” aspect of who we are.
We have to focus on transformation rather than revolution. The develop-
ment of the Science of KUA and the change process has to be our emphasis.
We are still revolutionary. We are not changing our program or what we are
about but we can’t have a revolution by ourselves. black people have to be
willing and they are not willing at this point. We are not changing our pro-
gram or our goals. We are changing our strategy and tactics.24
The Pan African Orthodox Christian Church prepares sincere seekers for the
experience of God by enabling them to achieve: 1) Self-realization through
the integration of spirit, mind and body, 2) the opening of self to posi-
tive group interaction through the holy sacraments and the processes that
make up the Science of KUA to help the individual realize the will of God
in his/her daily life through total submission, and by actually casting off
the destructive behavior patterns that conceal his/her inner divinity, thus
enabling him/her to enter fully into the communal life a transforming reli-
gious community.25
self accepts and then represses the white myth of black inferiority which
renders us psychologically sick. We cannot escape the pain of breaking the
chains of operant conditioning. The conditioned self must be healed by wip-
ing out the conditioning of an enemy system. We can then regain the ability
to think and act independently and begin to function in a Transforming
Community (communal society) which offers unity, structure, order and
discipline undergirded by a sense of divine meaning and purpose.
THE DIVINE SYSTEM requires a struggle for enlightenment through
KUA, The Science of Becoming What We Already Are. There is a Divine
System within which we live, move and have our being, but of which we are
seldom aware. It emanates from God who is the cosmic energy and creative
intelligence that created and controls the universe. God can be experienced
only by breaking through the limits of the rational mind and reaching a
higher level of consciousness where the power of God becomes available to
us. This state of enlightenment must be attained before we can reject indi-
vidualism and integrate spirit, mind, and body.
TRIUMPH OF THE DIVINE SYSTEM on earth is the objective of
all our struggles! We seek to bring the world into submission to the will of
God.27
CONCLUSION
In his theological journey, Albert B. Cleage Jr. did not fully reject any of
his past views because they served as steppingstones to his next insight.
On Bob Law’s nationally syndicated program “Night Talk” (one of the
last radio programs that dealt seriously with black life in America), Cleage
was asked, “If you were to write the books today would you change any-
thing?” Cleage responded, “I don’t believe I would change anything. The
books captured what I was trying to do and say at that time. They lay the
foundation for what I am trying to say and do at this time.28
Cleage was a minister in the truest sense of the word. Ministry, for him,
was doing the will of God as it applied to specific human problems. His
ministry was to the unique problems confronting black people. His theo-
logical journey is made up of insights stemming from that ministry. They
were never designed to fit neatly and comfortably inside the traditional
categories of systematic theology. Cleage’s insights emerge from concrete
action to ameliorate the effects of centuries of oppression, inequality, and
exploitation for people who have been declared inferior and intention-
ally underdeveloped through institutional racism. Cleage believed that
36 D.K. NELSON
EXPERIENCE OF GOD:
Our Groups exist to
mediate spiritual power.
Therefore, we are able
to bring all things
into conformity
with DIVINE WILL.
JARAMOGI
August, 1995
NOTES
1. Albert Cleage, Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black
Church (Detroit, MI: Luxor Publishers of the Pan-African Orthodox
Christian Church, 1987), p. xvii.
2. Conversation with Albert Cleage, Sept. 1998.
3. Conversation with Albert Cleage, 1980.
4. St. Mark’s Congregational Church Manifesto, 1953.
5. Albert Cleage, Sermon: A Parish Ministry Program, 1957.
6. Private conversation with General Masai Bolugun, head security staff,
Shrines of the Black Madonna, 1967.
7. Conversation with M. Shawn Copeland.
8. Albert Cleage, BCN Ministerial Training Group Lecture, 1972.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Albert Cleage, BCN: New Directions for the Black Church Class, 1972.
12. Albert Cleage, “The Black Church as a Change Agent,” 1975, unpub-
lished essay.
13. Albert Cleage, “Genesis II: The Re-Creation of Man,” 1984, unpublished
essay.
14. Albert Cleage, “KUA Program: The Science of Christian Rebirth,” 1991,
unpublished essay.
15. Albert Cleage, PAOCC Theological Statement, 1992.
16. Albert Cleage, “Kutafuta: To Seek the Experience of God,” 1982, unpub-
lished essay.
17. Cleage, “Genesis II: The Recreation of Man,” 1984.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Albert Cleage, Sermon Discussion, Shrine #10 Houston, TX, 1997.
38 D.K. NELSON
22. Eulogy to the Black Church poem: “Old mother Tatum wiped a tear from
her tired old eyes,
Just like Jesus said on the cross,
She mumbled to no one in particular,
It is finished;
She was right,
The Black Church was dead!”
23. Albert Cleage, Sermon Discussion, Shrine #10 Houston, TX, 1998.
24. Albert Cleage, Presentation to National Leadership at the 1st Pan African
Synod, Houston, TX, 1978.
25. Albert Cleage, “The Transforming Community (sermon),” 1983.
26. Cleage, “Genesis II.”
27. Cleage, PAOCC Theological Statement, 1992.
28. Albert Cleage, PAOCC Kutafuta Responsive Meditation, 1984.
CHAPTER 3
Jawanza Eric Clark
symbolically, not literally, and stands for “all victims of oppression who
suffer from whiteness,” or the ideology of white supremacy.
Cone’s view of ontological blackness is fueled by two concerns: the
black experience in America and the revelation of Jesus Christ. Cone
establishes the black experience as one of the primary sources for black
theology. And he defines the black experience as “a life of humiliation and
suffering.”8 This definition ultimately becomes the locus of the criticism
of ontological blackness, because it describes black existence in a way that
makes it dependent on the reality of white racism or white oppression. But
what has received less attention by other black theologians and scholars
of religion is the other concern that lies at the heart of ontological black-
ness: the revelation of Jesus Christ. In his discussion of the norm of black
theology, Cone first states that black theology “must take seriously two
realities,” then he clarifies that he means, “two aspects of a single reality:
the liberation of blacks and the revelation of Jesus Christ.”9 For Cone,
“the norm of all God-talk which seeks to be black-talk is the manifesta-
tion of Jesus as the black Christ who provides the necessary soul for black
liberation.”10 The error and correction is noteworthy, because I argue
Cone’s theology is plagued by the methodological incompatibility that
exists within these two realities merged into one. The liberation of blacks
requires a protean, pragmatic approach that is ultimately precluded by
the static absolutism of the doctrine of revelation. James Cone’s brother,
Cecil, pointed out this problem when he argued that James’ Christology
is inconsistent with the full range of the black religious experience. While
James Cone obviously had a number of critics, from Cecil Cone, Gayraud
Wilmore, Charles Long, and William Jones to the various womanist theo-
logians, Delores Williams, Jacquelyn Grant, Kelly Brown Douglas, and
others, who point out the sexist inadequacies of black theology, I want to
focus on the critique of Victor Anderson, whose argument against onto-
logical blackness has had a particular resonance among current assess-
ments of Black theology.
Victor Anderson argued black theologies are crisis theologies and
remain “theologies in a crisis of legitimation”11 precisely because of their
dependency on the concept ontological blackness. Anderson suggests the
problem lies in the fact that ontological blackness is steeped in Cone’s defi-
nition of the black experience, an experience of humiliation and suffering
in a world of white racism. Suffering becomes constitutive of black exis-
tence and black identity. Ontological blackness then provides a divine
canopy over this existential situation of suffering foreclosing the possibility
NOTHING IS MORE SACRED THAN THE LIBERATION OF BLACK... 43
Cleage subverts the problem with history that Glaude contends plagues
black theology. Dwight Hopkins, for example, makes the case that there is
a theological bridge or link between Africa, slave theology or bush arbor
theology, and black theology. The argument that black theology and slave
theology contain African remains suggests a theological and cultural line
of continuity between black theology and the ways in which black people
in America have always practiced Christianity in America. Victor Anderson
calls this a “hermeneutics of return” that he implies is really just an effort
to legitimize black theology as not just academic theology but consistent
with black religious experiences in America. “In other words, the return
to black sources is attributive to an ideological function that is culturally
apologetic.”32 Thus, Hopkins’ work essentially is an exercise in seeking
legitimation, not with the white academy but with the guardians of black
religious history.
Recall that Gayraud Wilmore earlier raised questions about James
Cone’s own efforts at seeking validation from white systematic theology.
The universal imperative implicit in ontological blackness was necessary,
Wilmore claims, in order “for any systematic theology to be taken seri-
ously.”33 We could ask: taken seriously by whom? Who is the intended
audience? Wilmore goes on, “The question subsequently raised in this
discussion, however, was whether the black religious experience requires
such a validation by white systematic theology before it can be com-
mended to African Americans who are being socialized away from their
traditions, and whether the strain toward universality does not ipso facto
rob black religion of the freedom to be one approach to God’s revela-
tion in Scripture.”34 Perhaps responsive to this criticism, Hopkins’ project
attempts to justify black theology within African American religious history
by drawing from sources that are consistent with the religious experiences
of black people in America. However, whether the audience is academic
white systematic theologians or the black church tradition and/or African
American public life, both Cone and Hopkins pursue projects whose
goal is to validate, defend, and render legitimate the project itself, black
theology as valid theological engagement. What undergirds the efforts
of both is to authenticate black theology as valid discourse within the
scope of what counts as acceptable. This is to be lauded, not condemned,
yet the black theology project ultimately can only maintain its vitality by
encouraging a diversity of theological and methodological approaches and
theological alternatives. Cleage’s thought is of urgent necessity, primarily
because the experiences of everyday black people are the sole criterion and
50 J.E. CLARK
The traditional black church has failed black people by being more a
mechanism of their oppression than an instrument of liberation. Cleage’s
desire then is to transform it into an instrument of liberation; thus even the
Christian faith itself is potentially subject to radical revision and reconstruc-
tion, because what matters most is not some idyllic theological past or invio-
late view of God but black people’s present pursuit of freedom. His method
is symbolized in the renaming of the church from Central United Church of
Christ to The Shrines of the Black Madonna and recasting the church as the
BCN Movement (later renamed Pan African Orthodox Christian Church).
My contention is that Cleage’s efforts to situate his theological and
ecclesiological project based solely on the guiding principle that nothing
is more sacred than the liberation of black people remains an unfulfilled
theological paradigm shift that deserves renewed engagement. He is the
one black theologian that sought to truly prioritize the objective of lib-
eration for black people in a way that incorporates a pragmatic approach
attentive to present human experiences instead of a reified theological and
mythological past. The fact that he was a pastor and community organizer
attentive to a specific sociohistoric context (1960s and 1970s Detroit)
and not a professional academic theologian is emblematic of his emphasis
on a radically different methodology because of his audience and prac-
tical objectives. Cleage’s approach remains unfulfilled, however, for two
reasons. First, as has already been stated, black theology as academic dis-
course tacitly determined Cleage’s theology unfit, since it fails to conform
to the mandates outlined by the discourse itself. Second, Cleage and his
community, his church, failed to continuously subject this protean theo-
logical posture to examination and scrutiny.
As stated previously, Eddie Glaude argues that black theology has a
problem with history. He uses John Dewey and Friedrich Nietzsche to help
him argue that “with such a pragmatic conception of experience, the black
theological project can escape the problem of history.”35 This problem is
derived from a conception of history as monumental, which provides us
with “models of excellence” that inhibits our acting in the present. When
one adds the tendency to view African American history through the lens
of biblical history the problem becomes even more entrenched. The prag-
matic approach that Glaude offers however allows us to take the current
experiences of African Americans seriously and make them the priority
over a reified past. What is instructive about Glaude, however, is the way
in which he rightly identifies that what undergirds this fixation with the
past is a longing for “permanence, totality, the real essence, and God.”36
52 J.E. CLARK
struggle to answer the question: how does God work in the world? And
he was not settled on this matter after the publication of Black Christian
Nationalism. One must read Cleage’s later writings to fully appreciate
the evolution of his doctrine of God from the belief that God was black
to a conception of God as cosmic energy and creative intelligence. This
evolution evinces the way his conception of God manifests his pragmatic
method since this new conception discloses a God that is useful to black
people in their search to attain power and overcome a pervasive and cor-
rosive black inferiority complex.
“If God created man in his own image, then we must look at man to see
what God looks like. There are black men, there are yellow men, there are
red men, and there are a few, a mighty few, white men in the world. If God
created man in his image, then God must be some combination of this
black, red, yellow and white. In no other way could God have created man
in his own image.”38
This quote has often been used by other black religious scholars as an
articulation of Cleage’s doctrine of God. While this is unfair since this
excerpt from one sermon was not necessarily intended to be a developed
doctrine of God, it is also true that Cleage never wrote a systematic or
constructive theology. It is true, however, that his theology evolved as
the needs and existential realities of his community evolved; thus, all his
sermons were articulations of his theology in process, his theology to that
point. Black and womanist theologians, however, in works published in the
last 20 years, continue to use the aforementioned quote as representative
of Cleage’s thought and fail to acknowledge the evolution of his doctrine
of God, which began as early as 1979. In fact, Cleage was responsive to
54 J.E. CLARK
Such a “dance of energy,” led Cleage to conclude that all that is in the
universe is connected to, and exists within, a field of energy. This energy
field then is synonymous with God; thus, as human beings we actually
NOTHING IS MORE SACRED THAN THE LIBERATION OF BLACK... 55
“live, move, and have our being in God (Acts 17:28).” For Cleage, “God
continues to be the energy field in which all the forces of nature are
united… All the forces of nature are united in one single energy field. The
energy field is God which permeates everything, the spiritual foundation
of the universe.”42 We are energy beings and if we could open up our
energy pathways, we might be able to access more energy at greater levels
of intensity. In theological terms, this means the human beings possess an
inner divinity, the God incarnate. The point of religion and spirituality is
to activate that inner divinity and have it connect with external divinity, the
God transcendent. Consequently, Cleage began to muse that the worship
of God, the experience of God, is an effort to open the seeker, and increase
his/her access, to more energy and power (intelligence) unavailable to
him/her otherwise. Worship is not performed then to please, pacify, or
ingratiate oneself to a Supreme Being, but worship serves a practical func-
tion for human beings: to increase the community’s collective access to
divine power, or higher levels of energy and consciousness. Cleage argued
that this was in fact what Jesus was trying to teach his disciples and would
often quote the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospel of John 14:12, “The
one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will
do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” Cleage
formulated a doctrine of God that merged the insights of modern science,
with the description of the creation of the world in the book of Genesis.
In the beginning nothing existed but the power and creative intelligence of
God. Out of a mystical explosion of divine energy, the cosmos and every-
thing in it was created. This act of creation provided an orderly unification
of the four fundamental forces of nature in a Unified Field controlling the
functions and interaction of all things. It took some 15 billion years from
the moment of divine creation for mankind to evolve into a recognizable
human form on the continent of Africa. Whether or not a similar evolution-
ary process produced human beings on other planets or in other galaxies we
have no way of knowing.43
NOTES
1. Albert B. Cleage Jr., “The Black Christian Nationalist Manifesto,” Church
document.
2. Albert B. Cleage Jr., Black Christian Nationalism (New York: William
Morrow and Company, 1972), p. xviii.
3. Ibid., p. xv.
4. Ibid., p. xvi.
5. Albert B. Cleage Jr., “An Introduction to Black Christian Nationalism,”
unpublished essay.
6. Albert B. Cleage, Black Christian Nationalism, p. xvii.
7. James Cone, A Black theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books,
1970), p. 7.
8. Ibid., p. 23.
9. Ibid., p. 38.
10. Ibid., p. 38.
11. Victor Anderson, “Ontological Blackness in Theology,” in African
American Religious Thought, eds. Cornel West and Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), p. 894.
12. Ibid., p. 898.
13. Ibid., p. 907.
14. Ibid., p. 917.
15. Anthony B. Pinn, “Black theology,” in Liberation Theologies in the United
States (New York: New York University Press, 2010), p. 24.
16. Eddie Glaude, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black
America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 72.
17. Albert B. Cleage, Black Christian Nationalism, p. xvi.
18. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), p. 280.
19. J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008), p. 191.
20. Ibid., 190.
21. Ibid., 192.
22. Ibid., 192.
23. Michel Foucault.
24. Charles Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation
of Religion (Aurora: The Davies Group, 1986), p. 187.
25. Ibid., p. 207.
26. Ibid., p. 208.
27. Ibid., p. 209.
28. Ibid., p. 210.
29. Albert B. Cleage, Black Christian Nationalism, p. xvii.
NOTHING IS MORE SACRED THAN THE LIBERATION OF BLACK... 57
30. Eddie Glaude, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black
America, p. 86.
31. Ibid., p. 83.
32. Victor Anderson, “Ontological Blackness in Black theology,” in African
American Religious Thought, ed. Cornel West and Eddie Glaude, p. 903.
33. Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (New York: Orbis
Books, 1972), p. 250.
34. Ibid., p. 250.
35. Eddie Glaude, In a Shade of Blue, p. 87.
36. Ibid., p. 87.
37. Ibid., p. 87.
38. Albert B. Cleage Jr., The black Messiah (Trenton: Africa World Press,
1989), p. 42.
39. 1973, p. 125.
40. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1975),
p. 330.
41. Ibid., p. 330.
42. Albert B. Cleage Jr., “The Divine Reality,” a sermon, preached June 30,
1991.
43. Albert B. Cleage Jr., “Introduction to BCN Theology,” unpublished essay,
1984.
CHAPTER 4
Stephen C. Finley
INTRODUCTION
The Reverend Albert B. Cleage Jr. (Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman) was one
of the first black religious leaders (perhaps the first) to offer an interpreta-
tion of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in relation to one another,
as complementary rather than as oppositional, which was the prevailing
metanarrative of his day. Therefore, it is no coincidence that his sermons
on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. are arranged successively in
Cleage’s collection, The black Messiah.1 Their close proximity symbolizes
how important they were in Cleage’s religious thought and how insight-
ful his radical interpretations of them were. Through a textual analytical
of the dominant ways that Martin and Malcolm have come to be viewed
presently in academic (and popular) black religious thought. I disagree
at points with Cleage’s conclusions, which I will discuss at the end of
the essay, but, here, he lays the foundation for how he interprets Martin
and Malcolm—ways that I understand to be salient presently, especially in
the imperative that they should be read together in order to glean their
impact. Particularly in the sermons “Dr. King and Black Power”3 and to
a lesser extent “Brother Malcolm,”4 Cleage contends that King has to be
read as dichotomous: on the one hand, for the things he said, much of
which Cleage rejects, and, on the other hand, for the things he did, which
Cleage celebrates, almost reveres, and views as essential for the existence
of radical black politics that are not dependent on white people and which
help to shape a radical black theo-political entity that he calls “The Black
Nation.” And it is in this discursive space that he sees King and Malcolm
as complementary.
“Dr. King and Black Power” is arguably Cleage’s most important ser-
mon—at least with respect to the current subject—and perhaps beyond.
Delivered on the Sunday after Dr. King was assassinated (Thursday, April
4, 1968), Cleage makes a genius (but flawed, at times) distinction between
the King of public pronouncement and the King of public action. He sees
a contradiction in the two that he is able to reconcile masterfully. Cleage
notes, “I never agreed with most of the things he said, but I have loved
everything he did because the things he did had no relationship to the
things he said.”5 This trope, “it had no relationship to the things he said,”
reappears multiple times in Cleage’s sermon. I would disagree, here, that
King was completely dichotomous and contradictory. The ever-evolving
King was complex, much more so than any binary view of him would
capture, and I would argue that at times what King was saying was just as
radical as some of what Malcolm was saying. The problem is, I think, that
Cleage reduced King’s thought to three categories: integration, redemp-
tive suffering, and nonviolence. This reification of King does a disservice
to the radical trajectory of his complex thought and ignores what James
Cone observes as the complementary and corrective nature of the religio-
political thought that Martin and Malcolm exchanged.6 I will return to
this idea later. Notwithstanding my modest difference in his interpretation
of Martin and the relationship to and influence on Malcolm, that he privi-
leged Martin’s actions should be clear. He “loved” the courageous King,
62 S.C. FINLEY
Dr. King was saying one thing and [black people] were learning another.
He set up the situation, he set up the confrontation, and black folks, as they
stood up against white people, saw that these people were not invincible.
These were no super-beings… This was a movement inside black people.
It had no relationship to what Dr. King was saying, either in his speeches
or in his books. It was something that black people were learning. They
were learning that they could stand up against the white man, that black
people could come together as a group, that they could find unity in their
struggle against oppression, and in their desire for justice. We were discover-
ing something, and it had no relationship with what he was saying. White
folks remember what he said, his words. But we remember where we were
thirteen years ago, and where we are today. Not that he did it by himself, but
he created the confrontation situations in which we could learn, in which we
could work, and which Brother Malcolm could interpret.7
freedom was met with white resistance. Therefore, both Martin and
Malcolm were necessary for black progress. Martin took action (some-
thing that he fails to critique Malcolm for not doing), and Malcolm
told black people what the response of white people and the action of
black people meant. Black liberatory praxis, for Cleage, was one in which
action and reflection, political agitation and theory, were necessary com-
ponents. Seen together, Martin and Malcolm were exemplars of black
radical praxis in the religious thought of Cleage.
Most important for my purposes, however, is to emphasize this con-
nection between what Martin was doing and what Malcolm was saying.
Which is to say, what Martin was doing was necessary so that “Brother
Malcolm could interpret” it. The “doing” and “saying” was not that clear,
of course. But what Cleage wanted to emphasize was that Malcolm used
the confrontational tactics of Martin’s “nonviolent” movement in order to
make it clear that African Americans were dealing with systems of power.
White supremacy was a system of power, and it was going to take the
development of power in order to defeat it. Black people needed power,
and, according to Malcolm, it would not be given by attempting to appeal
to white people, who showed themselves, in their responses to Martin and
nonviolent African Americans, to be the enemy. These are the main ideas
of the sermon, “Brother Malcolm,” and Cleage posits that Malcolm’s pro-
nouncements about the nature of white racial animus were made possible
by Martin’s work. The two go together. They are intertwined.
I want to return for a moment to Cleage’s sermon on Dr. King
within the context of his social philosophy that he sees as consistent with
Malcolm’s, and to reflect on a few of Cleage’s responses to King that have
currency in our present moment in the USA. The first is relevant to some
public criticisms of the Black Lives Matter8 protests, which have been over-
whelmingly peaceful and not destructive. Black Lives Matter is a loosely
organized group of young, primarily African American, women and men,
who have led marches and disruptions of political events in order to bring
attention to the human rights violations by an increasing American police
state that disproportionately commits violence against African American
men and women, especially—but not limited to—police brutality and the
killing of black people for which police officers or those functioning in
the modality of policing, such as George Zimmerman, are rarely arrested
or charged with a crime, and when they are, they are seldom convicted.9
Cleage lodges three critiques of King that are important for our con-
temporary socio-political context in America, which speak to the protest
64 S.C. FINLEY
methods of African Americans (and others), who are involved with Black
Lives Matter and other black dissent movements. I mention them, here,
because they are utilizing many of the same methods and discourses as
Martin did that Cleage found untenable and because they demonstrate
the continuing relevance of his social and religio-political thought. First,
Cleage thought marching as a primary response to injustice was futile.
Marches, he intimated, were simply opportunities for white power to exert
itself through violence against peaceful protesters, and the same could
be said of protest marches in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Maryland,
and all over the country. He also thought that marching was a symbol
of asking the system for something—a request that indicated a sense of
belief in America that did not make sense for black people. And march-
ing also represented a certain misunderstanding of America, that it signi-
fied a belief that America was good. “The mass demonstrations were very
simple,” Cleage said, “he [Dr. King] just asked all black people to come
out to march, to protest, until white folk did something. You know what
the white folks did? They beat them, they locked them up, they did every
cruel, inhuman, bestial, barbaric thing that white folks could think of.
They did it day after day, because day after day black folks would come
out of their little hovels and shacks and march.”10 Cleage intimated that
marching was antithetical to the goals of black liberation because what
was needed was power, and one cannot ask one’s enemy for power. People
must organize to build power.11 Hence, marching was a flawed method.12
Eddie Glaude echoes Cleage in terms of the problems inherent in
marching, although Glaude was much more generous with Dr. King’s
marches, since he sees them as purposeful. Quite often, African Americans
were marching in direct violation of laws and norms that discriminated
against them, so marching, in particular places and ways (such as with-
out permits), itself was meant to challenge unjust laws that structured
where and when black bodies could be present. Thus, the march itself
was subversive.13 Glaude, like Cleage, also wants to see marches as coura-
geous.14 Nevertheless, Glaude channels Martin and Malcolm in his dis-
cussion of Black Nationalism, Black Power, and marches, and he tries
to reconcile them. That is, his discussion mirrors those of Martin and
Malcolm and the debates about ideologies and methods among their sup-
porters and detractors.
Marches as a primary method of protest remain a problem for Glaude,
however. Not only does marching as a default method keep African
Americans wedded to the past in unhealthful ways, it stymies intellectual
“WE NEEDED BOTH OF THEM”: THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF REV.... 65
Freudian psychoanalysis may help to make sense of it. “I’m sure Freud
could have explained it.”20 Violent rebellion is a natural response to the
ongoing systematic violence committed against African Americans. Look
at what happened to Dr. King, the prince of nonviolence, Cleage notes.
He was killed by a white man and a white system, despite his pronounce-
ments that African Americans should be nonviolent toward white people.
Accordingly, it makes sense, then, that African American youth retaliated
against symbols of white oppression for the murder of Dr. King, he con-
tends, intimating that black people should not be ashamed of violence,
especially in retaliation for the murder of one of its beloved figures.21
Hence, Cleage remains a relevant critical and constructive voice to this
day. His sermons on Martin and Malcolm continue to offer perspectives
that could potentially inform religious and youthful movements such as
Black Lives Matter, and his work may have been the first to elucidate
the significance—for black religious thought and black radical politics—
why Martin and Malcolm had to be interpreted in relationship to one
another. He does not dismiss Dr. King as irrelevant, as some youthful
radicals might do. Indeed, he says, Dr. King made a genuine contribution
that “militants” should acknowledge.22 What’s more, he gives—locates—
the major weight of why African Americans needed both men, not with
Malcolm, but with Martin:
We needed both of them. It wasn’t enough to say, “We’ve got our enemy.
We’ve got to fight” [Malcolm]. No one would have listened to Brother
Malcolm until Dr. King had created the confrontation situations in which
we began to learn, step by step, that black people can unite, black people
can fight, black people can die for the things they believe in. This is the kind
of thing that Dr. King actually accomplished. I criticized the things he said,
but I have only admiration for the things he did.23
It is clear that he felt much more intimacy with the ideas of Malcolm and
in his relationship with him, which is why Malcolm was “Brother,” while
Martin was “Doctor,” but what we glean from Cleage is the insight that
they were both important and necessary. The significance of one might
have been diminished without the other, and this is not to say that they
were not relevant as individuals. They were, indeed. But the strength of
this conclusion is something that cannot be denied, and it continues to
inform popular movements and academic discourses. What Cleage also
bequeathed was a pragmatic realism that was interested first and foremost
68 S.C. FINLEY
in how the two men informed work in the real world that had concrete
effects on African American religion, politics, and scholarship on Martin
and Malcolm.
Given the section above, one could argue, as I would, that the enduring
scholarship on Martin and Malcolm, seen as complementary rather than as
antagonistic, may represent the legacy of Rev. Albert Cleage’s early rumi-
nations on the matter. I make this point seriously but modestly, as I attempt
to demonstrate this possibility. It seems to me that the most likely point of
departure, to begin this mapping, is with the work of James H. Cone, the
putative “Father of Black Theology.” Cone was inspired to develop Black
Theology in the late 1960s, he reports, in response to the Black Power
Movement and to Malcolm X. But his Christian inspiration came from
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. His
Black Theology & Black Power appeared in 1969.24 Cone clearly states that
this initial attempt to articulate in Christian faith as a black man in America
was, in part, a remonstrance to white people, but more importantly, an
account of his wrestling with how to reconcile his commitments to Martin
and Malcolm as a Christian minister. In his own words:
Note that these issues and the matter of how Martin and Malcolm fit
together, how to “reconcile” them, parallel and, at times, mirror Cleage’s
sermons on Martin and Malcolm in The black Messiah. I am not arguing
“WE NEEDED BOTH OF THEM”: THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF REV.... 69
We should never pit them against each other. Anyone, therefore, who claims
to be for one and not the other does not understand their significance for
the black community, for America, or for the world. We need both of them
and we need them together. Malcolm keeps Martin from being turned into
a harmless American hero. Martin keeps Malcolm from being an ostracized
black hero. Both leaders make important contributions to the identity
of African Americans and also, just as importantly, to white America and
Americans in general.37
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. argues that Martin and Malcolm
were incredibly alike biographically, except, oddly enough, in their dis-
parate deaths—one having been killed by white people and the other by
the black people “he loved.”45 Yet, one literary work has to be addressed
because of its unequivocal germaneness to the topic at hand, that is,
James Baldwin’s essay, “Malcolm and Martin.”
First published in Esquire magazine in April 1972, Baldwin’s “Malcolm
and Martin” was reprinted in Malcolm X: As They Knew Him, edited by
David Gallen.46 The brilliantly creative essay recounts his experiences with
Martin and Malcolm, how he knew them, and some of the momentous
occasions about which he reminisced. Baldwin’s candor is astounding, as
he spoke of his past as a Christian minister and his present militant social
vision. He used the stories of a suit that he had purchased to wear for
Martin’s funeral and a play about Malcolm’s life that—with Alex Haley
and others was slated to be turned into a “Hollywood” movie that he ulti-
mately declined, due to his perception that it would ultimately do injustice
to the depth and complexity of Malcolm’s life—would make a controver-
sial claim about the two men’s lives in relation to one another.
Reading these excursuses about a suit and a Hollywood movie had me
glued to the pages, to every word, with the anticipation of what this had
to do with Martin and Malcolm. All of this was an elaborate way to sug-
gest that Martin and Malcolm did not fit in this world, how they both saw
America as a great hoax in a manner that white people could not, would
not. He lamented the grief, the deep sense of loss, a mourning that he
felt personally, and a mourning for African Americans. We needed both of
them. We still do. Baldwin’s conclusion? The same as mine. Namely, that
at their deaths, there was little difference between them. In his own words:
lives they lived. Why are Martin and Malcolm no longer here? Because
our children needed them, Baldwin retorted. And because black children
needed them, America killed them. “America has always done everything
in its power to destroy our children’s heroes.”48
Consistent with a great deal of scholarship on Martin and Malcolm,
Baldwin sees much more intimate ideological resonances between the two
men than does Cleage. His voice is but one of many that offers a corrective
to Cleage’s early perspective on the relationship to Martin and Malcolm.
Some responses, like Moses’, were explicitly written to address Cleage’s
position, while others, like Cone’s, acknowledge Cleage, and their words
speak directly to matters that he raised, without directing their rejoin-
ders to him overtly. Another group, like Wilmore, Lomax, and more, is
but a chorus that proclaims “we need them both.” And yet, Rev. Cleage
and his work may be an important reason why these conversations exist,
why we talk about Martin AND Malcolm. Again, in some cases, this is
more than an inference. In other cases, it may be modest speculation.
Without a doubt, Cleage was insightful when he offered his interpretation
of them together and the necessity of the aggregation, even if scholarship
debated some of the particulars of the nature of the meaning of Martin
and Malcolm. Because of their importance, their keen and prophetic dis-
cernment, and their utter significance to ongoing scholarship, black pro-
test movements, and black religious thought, we might surmise and glean
in all of it a trace of Cleage’s initial formulations. A legacy, perhaps.
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
I first learned of Rev. Albert Cleage, the Holy Patriarch of the Pan African
Orthodox Christian Church, more than a few decades ago. I saw him only
once in my life, at the Shrine of the black Madonna in Houston, Texas,
one Sunday morning in the early 1990s. He was an old man, then, in his
80s. I was not able to meet him, though I desired to, but I remember it
like it was yesterday, how excited I was, how influential he had been to
me. I had read his two major publications: The black Messiah and Black
Christian Nationalism. The sermons published in the former stuck with
me. Maybe they are still with me. Perchance his interpretation of Martin
and Malcolm, which I recall reading then, principally found in “Dr. King
and Black Power,” still resonates. I am now a tenured university professor
at Louisiana State University, where I teach my own course called “The
Religious Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.” My course
is based on a PhD seminar in the Department of Religious Studies at Rice
74 S.C. FINLEY
NOTES
1. Albert B. Cleage Jr., The black Messiah (New York: Sheed and Ward, Inc.,
1968).
2. James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991).
3. Cleage, The black Messiah, 201–213.
4. Cleage, The black Messiah, 186–200.
5. Cleage, The black Messiah, 207.
6. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, 246–271.
7. Cleage, The black Messiah, 209.
8. http://blacklivesmatter.com/. Accessed August 31, 2015.
9. See, Stephen C. Finley, and Biko Mandela Gray, “God is a White Racist:
Immanent Atheism as a Religious Response to #Blacklivesmatter and
State-sanctioned Anti-Black Violence,” Journal of Africana Religions
(Forthcoming, Oct. 2015). This article offers a discussion of potential
African American responses and solutions to state-sanctioned anti-black
violence and an analysis of Black Lives Matter.
10. Cleage, The black Messiah, 208.
11. See, Albert B. Cleage Jr, “A Black Man’s View of Authority,” in Erosion of
Authority, ed. Clyde L. Manschreck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971),
pp. 59–91.
12. For major studies on the history of Black Power, in general, and black radical
politics in Detroit in the 1960s, which give major attention to Cleage, see
Angela D. Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in
Detroit (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2010); Peniel
E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black
Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006).
“WE NEEDED BOTH OF THEM”: THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF REV.... 75
13. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black
America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 137.
14. Glaude, In a Shade of Blue, 113.
15. Glaude, In a Shade of Blue, 137.
16. Cleage, The black Messiah, 203.
17. Cleage, The black Messiah, 211.
18. Cleage, The black Messiah, 193.
19. Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967),
pp. 155–159. Utilizing psychoanalysis himself, Fanon contended that rac-
ism eroticized and sexualized black people, particularly African American
men vis-à-vis white men. This is why Fanon argued racism and white racial
violence were homoerotic, and that racism was suggestive of a sense of
white sexual inferiority.
20. Cleage, The black Messiah, 197.
21. Cleage, The black Messiah, 203.
22. Cleage, The black Messiah, 212–213.
23. Cleage, The black Messiah, 210.
24. James H. Cone, Black Theology & Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 1997).
25. Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, viii.
26. Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, 116.
27. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation. Twentieth Anniversary
Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986, 1990), pp. 38, 114, 123,
134, 210n7.
28. Albert B. Cleage Jr., Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the
Black Church (Detroit, MI: Luxor Publishers of the Pan African Orthodox
Christian Church, 1987), p. xvii.
29. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, xiii.
30. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, 2.
31. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, 5.
32. Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America, 3–17.
33. Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America, 16; Vincent Harding, There is a
River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 83.
34. Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America, 2.
35. Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1964); See also, Wilson Jeremiah Moses, black Messiahs
and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth.
Rev. Ed. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
1993), p. 210.
36. Rev. Albert Cleage and George Breitman, Myths About Malcolm X: Two
Views (New York: Merit Publishers, 1968). These debates were published
in a number of other places and texts. See, for example, Rev. Albert Cleage,
76 S.C. FINLEY
“Myths About Malcolm X,” in John Henrik Clarke, ed. Malcolm X: The
Man and His Times (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990), pp. 13–26;
International Socialist Review 28/5 (Sept.–Oct. 1967): 33–60; https://
www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isr/vol28/no05/cleage.htm.
Accessed August 31, 2015; https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writ-
ers/breitman/1967/03/speech.htm. Accessed August 31, 2015.
37. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, 316.
38. Moses, black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, 209–225.
39. Moses, black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, 224.
40. See, for example, Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1963); Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New
York: Signet Classics, 2000). Originally published in 1963.
41. Moses, black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, 224.
42. Clayborne Carson, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
(New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1998), p. 325.
43. See, for example, Lauren Gambino, “Black Lives Matter Network Disavows
Political Ties after DNC Backs Movement.” http://www.theguardian.
com/us-news/2015/aug/31/black-lives-matter-democratic-national-
committee. Accessed August 31, 2015.
44. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An
Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans, 3rd ed.
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998).
45. Louis E. Lomax, To Kill a Black Man: The Shocking Parallel in the Lives of
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Los Angeles: Holloway House
Publishing Co., 1968, 1987), p. 9.
46. James Baldwin, “Malcolm and Martin,” in Malcolm X: As They Knew Him,
ed. David Gallen (New York: Ballatine Books, 1992), pp. 283–311.
47. Baldwin, “Malcolm and Martin,” 308.
48. Baldwin, “Malcolm and Martin,” 308.
CHAPTER 5
Torin Dru Alexander
INTRODUCTION
The role of theodicy is central to African American religion and African
American religious thought. Since the Africans first encounter with the
absurdity of chattel slavery, they have been confronted with the challenge
of finding meaning for the situation in which they found themselves. In
this chapter, the author explores the efficacy of the theodicean teachings
and practices of Reverend Albert B. Cleage Jr. (Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman)
and the Shrine of the Black Madonna (Pan African Orthodox Christian
Church [PAOCC]) in light of their commitment to the liberation and the
flourishing of Black people.
THEODICY
The existence of evil has been and continues to be a challenge to numer-
ous theological and philosophical traditions. As the theologian Terrence
Tilley notes in his influential text The Evils of Theodicy,1 it is particu-
larly a problem of monotheistic traditions; indeed, Tilley maintains that
• Firstly, God is understood to be all loving and all good, thus God
would not want there to be evil and suffering in the world
• Simultaneously, God is also understood to be all-powerful, and thus
be able to prevent evil and suffering from occurring; evil and suffer-
ing are present and persist
• Subsequently, God is able to prevent evil and suffering and does not,
and is thus not all good and loving or God desires to prevent evil and
suffering but is unable to do so, and is thus impotent (or at least not
all-powerful).
BLACK SUFFERING
How have African Americans theologically engaged the problems that
have plagued their communities in the past and in marked ways persist
to this day? How have and do African Americans steel themselves against
aggressive and invidious assaults on their persons; their families; and their
social and cultural institutions, traditions, and faith? Further, how do
African Americans, as a people for whom religion has played a significant
role in the constitution of their identity and their understanding of the
world, maintain a belief in a beneficent Deity as they experience oppres-
sion in its innumerable incarnations?
With respect to the latter contention, an assessment of African American
theodicean strategies and tactics is significant. In keeping with a conviction
perpetuated by generations of African Americans, the foremost enemy of
Black survival in America has never been simply physical oppression or
exploitation, but rather the nihilistic threat manifest in the loss of hope,
the loss of a sense of identity, and the loss of purpose. Thus, in the words
of the late African American church historian James Melvin Washington,
Black folk have been “stalkers after meaning.” Consequently, in an effort
to try to make sense of their suffering, African American religious adher-
ents, particularly those who identify as Christians, have deployed various
theodicean strategies.
According to Anthony Pinn in his monograph Why Lord?: Suffering
and Evil in Black Theology, in African American religious liturgy, hymnody,
prayers, and sermons, one finds records of African Americans wrestling
with the issues of evil and suffering, with some the earliest theological
80 T.D. ALEXANDER
reflections evinced in Negro spirituals. Pinn notes that while other scholars
have turned to the spirituals as a source for theological reflection, most,
if not all, have ignored the degree to which a number of them point to a
paradox of God’s benevolence and Black suffering. Indeed, Pinn asserts
that the spirituals represent a complete, although nascent, Black theology.3
In an examination of nineteenth-century African American religious
thought expressed by the likes of Richard Allen, Daniel Payne, David
Walker, Maria Stewart, Frances Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, Absalom
Jones, and Henry McNeal Turner, Pinn asserts that these Black ances-
tors developed an extensive theodicy of redemptive suffering to address
the evil manifest in the oppressive institution of chattel slavery. The clas-
sic articulation of the doctrine of redemptive suffering, in addition to a
particular understanding of atonement, frequently invoked the story of
Joseph in Genesis 50. Invoking this tradition, the African American divine
Alexander Crummell comments:
But when Joseph told his brethren – “it was not you that sent me hither, but
God,” he did not mean that they had not acted brutally toward him; but
only that, in all the dark deeds of men, there is a higher, mightier, and more
masterful hand than theirs, although unseen – distracting their evil counsels,
and directing them to goodly issues. God, although not the author of sin, is
nevertheless, the omnipotent and gracious disposer of it.4
all responsibility for suffering and evil. In his early writings, God is not
equanimous, but God is expressly on the side of Black people. God is
Black and Jesus is the revolutionary Black Messiah. As God empowered
Jesus in the struggle for the liberation of the Black Nation Israel, God can
empower Black people today in their collective struggle against exploita-
tion, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. In
the later theology of Cleage and the PAOCC, in which God is construed
as cosmic energy, theodicean strategy appears to be that suffering, includ-
ing Black suffering, is the result of apathy at best and resistance to the will
of the Divine at its worst.
Almighty GOD who called together the Black Nation Israel, through Thy
son, the revolutionary Black Messiah, Jesus, hallowed be Thy name. May
Thy Black Nation speedily come and they will be done on earth as we accept
a commitment to daily sacrifice and struggle. Give us this day, our daily
bread and forgive our trespasses, as we forgive Black brothers and sisters
who trespass against us. Help us to resist temptation, as we struggle against
individualism, and may the Black Nation stand, as a living witness to Thy
power and Thy glory, forever and ever. AMEN
In the Old Testament and in the Synoptic Gospels, God is concerned with a
people, not with individuals. Yet, the slave Christianity that we were taught
told us that God is concerned with each individual. And the master told
each slave, “If you are a good slave, God is going to take care of you and you
will be saved.” He didn’t tell them that if all you Black people love God and
fight together; God is going to help you get free from slavery. The group
concept is historic Christianity. Individualism is slave Christianity… This
was the emphasis that the slave master wanted to make so that he could use
religion to control his slaves.9
way to freedom. Jesus tried to teach the Nation Israel how to come together
as a Black people, to be brothers, one with another and to stand against their
white oppressors.10
For Cleage, however, the Black nation is not a place, and yet it is tan-
gible—it is real, it exists. As such, the commitment of PAOCC was to
pursue the health and happiness of Black people.
In his message for Synod 2000, the new patriarch of the PAOCC stated
that Cleage’s vision emerged out of Black people’s historic struggle to be
restored to our original place of power and dignity in the world. Further,
the vision was rooted in the apocalyptic prophesy of a Kingdom of God
on earth preached by Jesus and taught by the first Christian church of
the Disciples. Finally, the objective of the vision was a communal social
order governed by love. This vision reflects “the will of God for the world
and the desired goal of all human strivings… The Pan African Orthodox
Christian Church is the tangible manifestation of this comprehensive
vision.”11
good vs. evil gives us a more accurate basis of judgement for doing the will
of GOD, a more understandable position on the great issues of our time,
and a paradigm that arms us with an intelligent and sophisticated analysis of
our condition at the beginning of this new millennium. We are no longer
fooled by those who exploit the blackness as a means to an evil and indi-
vidualistic end. We are free to judge all of human existence in light of the
eternal struggle between good and evil. The past, present, and future come
together in light of this continuing struggle between good and evil and the
will of GOD is easily discernable.
THE BLACK MESSIAH AND BLACK SUFFERING 85
Our struggle is not simply for Black power, but also for righteousness, jus-
tice, communalism, and goodness – power that is used in compatibility with
the will of GOD. We seek always to do the greatest good for the greatest
number of people. The good – evil paradigm gives us the means to make our
church universally and eternally relevant to the human struggle to do the
will of GOD in the world. This is the evolution of Black theology!14
Thus, Jaramogi Kimathi asserts that such transitions represent the fru-
ition of the original vision while making the PAOCC a more effective
instrument for realizing God’s will on earth.
The sermons included in this volume were preached to Black people. They
are published in the hope that they may help other Black people find their
way back to the historic Black Messiah, and at the request of many Black
preachers who are earnestly seeking ways to make their preaching relevant
to the complex and urgent needs of the Black community. White people
who read these pages are permitted to listen to a Black man talking to Black
people.16
The other work, Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black
Church, is a manifesto aimed at radicalizing the Black Church against white
oppression. It is for this reason that William R. Jones, in his seminal text
Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology, asserts that Cleage is
best interpreted as a theological pragmatist as opposed to a systematician.
His system is advanced as the quickest and most viable way of leading blacks
to authentic blackness. This is accomplished primarily by simply transvaluing
what blacks already accept as true. They believe in God, but a white God; so
the pragmatic strategy here is to color God Black. As a pragmatic theology,
what is most important? What is the criteria for pragmatism. Does it work?17
THE BLACK MESSIAH AND BLACK SUFFERING 87
We know that Israel was a Black nation, and that the descendants of the
original Black Jews are in Israel, Africa and the Mediterranean area today.
The Bible was written by Black Jews. The Old Testament is the history of
Black Jews… Jesus was a Black Messiah. He came to free a Black people
from the oppression of the white Gentiles. We know this to be a fact.18
When we talk about the Black Nation, we have got to remember that
the Black Nation, Israel, was chosen by God. Out of the whole world, God
chose Israel to covenant with, to say, “You will be my people, and I will be
your God.19
The ascription of literal blackness to the nation Israel, Jesus, and God is
integral to Cleage’s nascent theodicy as it seemingly allows him to embrace
the Exodus or the Christ event as definitively exaltative and liberative for
Black people, evincing that God is on the side of the poor and oppressed.
Thus, God wishes to bring about the liberation of Black people today, just
as God did thousands of years ago.
Because God has made the goal of Black people his own goal, Black
Theology believes that it is not only appropriate but necessary to begin the
doctrine of God with an insistence on his blackness. The blackness of God
means that God has made the oppressed condition his own condition ….
The blackness of God then means that the essence of the nature of God is to
be found in the concept of liberation.20
God is concerned with a people, not with individuals. Yet, the slave
Christianity that we were taught told us that God is concerned with each
individual. And the master told each slave, “If you are a good slave, God
is going to take care of you and you will be saved.” He didn’t tell them
that if all you Black people love God and fight together, God is going to
help you get free from slavery. The group concept is historic Christianity.
Individualism is slave Christianity.21
Jesus was the non-white leader of a non-white people struggling for
national liberation against the rule of a white nation. Jesus was a revolution-
ary Black leader, a Zealot, seeking to lead a Black nation to freedom.22
One thing that might dispel the charge of divine racism would be a
definitively exaltative and liberative event. In the case of Black people,
however, the reality of such an event having transpired would seem moot
given what Jones calls the maldistribution of evil manifest in ethnic suffer-
ing, that is, the continued and disproportionate suffering of Black people.
Even more disturbing, however, is that Cleage does not seem averse
to a theodicy of deserved punishment. This is most clearly manifest in
Cleage’s sermon, “Come in out of the wilderness.”23 Here Cleage draws
upon the Numbers 14:33 narrative that recounts the faithlessness of Israel,
the fears of Israel, the lack of courage of Israel, and God’s punishment.
Subsequently, Cleage asserts that the fault of Black suffering rests on Black
people.
You could have fought your way through, if you had had the courage … the
people who accept oppression, who permit themselves to be downtrodden,
those people are faithless because Gods did not make men to be oppressed
and to be downtrodden. And many times a man faces the choice between
living as a slave and dying as a man. And when we choose to live as slaves, we
are faithless and our children will be shepherds in the wilderness.24
Until we make amends, we are not fit for a Promised Land. Don’t ask,
“When is the Kingdom coming?” Ask, “What can I do to wipe out one
hundred years of self-hatred, cowardice, and betrayal? What can I do now in
my lifetime to wipe out those years of which I am ashamed, those years in
which I was afraid to defend my brothers and sisters.”25
Even though Joseph had been sold into bondage by his brothers, he main-
tained his sense of identity with the Nation Israel. It was as though God had
used the hatred of his brothers to save Israel.26
If one chooses the tact of Cleage, one seems compelled to raise ques-
tions of proportionality, that is, the punishment proportionate to the
offense. Moreover, one must be willing to vindicate the corresponding
prosperity of non-black persons.
As noted above, Cleage’s theology changes over time, notably an
“inward turn” and the conceptualization of God as cosmic energy and
creative intelligence with the primary paradigm of struggle evolving from
simply Black versus white to good versus evil. Regarding the current
90 T.D. ALEXANDER
The restoration of divine order in our lives and in our world is a constant
struggle. In this struggle, let us be guided by God’s promise spoken through
the Prophet Isaiah, “If my people who are called by My name will humble
themselves and return to Me, I will return to you and heal the land.”27
The Mystery Temples taught that personal development was a primary reli-
gious obligation and that through development of our potential we could
rise from our lower animal nature to full expression of our higher divine
nature. The Egyptian system regarded the development of one’s potential as
the greatest and highest good and the fulfillment of human destiny.28
Further, Kimathi contends that “the way” of Jesus was a way of trans-
formation, a way of enlightenment, and a way that leads to a higher
consciousness. Such developmental faith is built on an energetic under-
standing of reality.
James E. Faulconer, “if there were more or less evil in the world, the
world would be defective.”34
As mentioned earlier, Terence Tilley has written extensively on the
problematic nature of theodicies. In The Evils of Theodicy, it is his asser-
tion that theoretical theodicies “disguise real evils,” indeed, in this sense,
theodicy “creates evil.”35 Tilley asserts that such rational discourse is a
post-Leibniz phenomenon. Further, such theoretical contentions obfus-
cate real evil rather than facilitating substantive intentional responses to
human suffering. Utilizing the speech-act theories of Searle and Austin,
Tilley asserts that theodicy is a “destructive discourse” and thus should
be “abandoned.”36 Moreover, Tilley is not alone in this regard. No less a
theologian than Jürgen Moltmann has asserted that one should be con-
cerned more with the proper response to human suffering than with a
defense of the Divine. Moltmann says, “The question of theodicy is not a
speculative question: it is a critical one.” The question “is the open wound
of life in this world.” Those who are truly persons of faith will not rest
content with any slickly explanatory answer to the theodicy question. And
he or she will also resist any attempts to soften the question down. The
more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suf-
fering in the world, and the more passionately he asks about God and the
new creation.37
Theologian Thomas Billing posits that a theoretical account of the
problem of suffering—even if it has great explanatory power—should
be rejected as inadequate.38 Kenneth Surin, in Theology and the Problem
of Evil, has been critical of figures such as Richard Swinburne, Alvin
Plantinga, and John Hicks as offering an “overly abstract treatment of the
question.”39 Yet, I must ask is there really no place for critical and consci-
entious reflection on such matters. In the tradition of Pseudo Dionysus,
Kant, and Kierkegaard, perhaps evil should be seen as the limit case of
reason.
As mentioned in the overview of theodicy, for many individuals, the
existence of evil is sufficient to nullify the claims of God.40 For the likes of
Tilley and Moltmann, however, evil is a call to move beyond the efforts
of justification/defense, which is the quintessence of theodicy, and in its
stead to focus one’s attention on the appropriate moral or ethical response
to evil. In this way, the intractability of the problem of evil might func-
tion positively rather than negatively. In other words, the insufficiency of
reason to give an account might provide that space for faith to manifest
and to act.
94 T.D. ALEXANDER
Indeed, to look for a way to integrate evil into our understanding of the
world has a potential to be distracting and at worst, evil itself. There is a sense
in which for evil to be evil, it must not be explained away. “Evil is excessive of
the world. It cannot be an object of thought; it is transcendent, this is why
it is insoluble.”41 Evil and suffering, thus, remind us the transcendent, that
which is not given conceptually or through reason. It is experienced.
NOTES
1. Terrence W. Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press, 1991).
2. Hans Kung, On Being a Christian, trans. E. Quinn (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1976), p. 432.
3. Anthony B. Pinn, Why, Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (New
York: Continuum, 1995), pp. 27, 35.
4. Alexander Crummell, The Future of Africa: Being Addresses, Sermons, etc.,
Delivered in the Republic of Liberia (New York: Schlein, 1862),
pp. 125–126, 122–123.
5. Pinn, Why, Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology, 89.
6. Bulletin of The Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox
Church 960 R.D. Abernathy Blvd., S.W. Atlanta, Georgia 30310, October
2, 2011 and October 9, 2011. The Hymn, “Rise Nation, Rise, One Nation,
One Race, One Destiny” is a traditional hymn of the Black Christian
Nationalist movement.
7. The elements of the KUA transformation system recounted here are
expressed in documents such as the Synod Pamphlet from 2003, by
Jaramogi Menelik Kimathi “Religion is Developmental” as well as what
appears to be a redacted version of the same text under the title “Religion
is Developmental” by Jaramogi Menelik Kimathi published on http://
www.theyearofrestoration.org site.
8. Bulletin of The Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox
Church 960 R.D. Abernathy Blvd., S.W. Atlanta, Georgia 30310, October
2, 2011.
9. Albert B. Cleage Jr., The Black Messiah, 43–44.
10. Albert B. Cleage Jr., The Black Messiah, 110–111.
11. Souvenir Booklet of the 4th Pan African Synod, August 4th–9th, 2000, 8.
12. Souvenir Booklet, 8.
13. Souvenir Booklet, 10.
14. Souvenir Booklet, 11.
15. Interview with Cardinal Aswad Ambidwile, Shrine of the Black Madonna,
Houston, TX, December 2003.
16. Cleage, The Black Messiah.
THE BLACK MESSIAH AND BLACK SUFFERING 95
17. William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology, 1st
ed. C. Eric Lincoln Series on Black Religion (Garden City, NY: Anchor
Press, 1973), p. 235.
18. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 111.
19. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 53.
20. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 121.
21. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 43.
22. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 3–4.
23. Cleage, The Black Messiah, chapter 20.
24. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 267–268.
25. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 271.
26. Cleage, The Black Messiah, 241.
27. Jubilee Celebration, August 1–3, 2003, Detroit, MI, 28.
28. “Religion is Developmental” PAOCC 2013 Jaramogi M. Kimathi Rev. 2014
An earlier version of this essay appears in Jubilee Celebration, August 1–3,
2003, 58–62. See also George G. M. James, Stolen Legacy: The Greeks Were
Not the Authors of Greek Philosophy, but the People of North Africa, Commonly
Called the Egyptians (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954), p. 1.
29. Jubilee Celebration, August 1–3, 2003, 60.
30. Theodore Walker, Mothership Connections: A Black Atlantic Synthesis of
Neoclassical Metaphysics and Black Theology, Suny Series in Constructive
Postmodern Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004).
31. Walker, Mothership Connections: A Black Atlantic Synthesis of Neoclassical
Metaphysics and Black Theology, 60.
32. Peter J. Paris, The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common
Moral Discourse (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).
33. Martin Heidegger, Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 46.
34. James E. Faulconer, “Another Look at the Problem of Theodicy”—unpub-
lished (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University—Department of Philosophy,
2004), p. 7.
35. Terrence Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington: Georgetown University
Press, 1991), p. 3.
36. Tilley, 219.
37. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God,
trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), p. 49.
38. Todd Billings, “Theodicy as a Lived Question,” Journal for Christian
Theological Research 5, no. 2 (2000).
39. Kenneth Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1986).
40. Anthony Pinn, Why Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (Continuum,
1995).
41. Faulconer, 12.
CHAPTER 6
Aswad Walker
A. Walker ()
Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church,
Houston, TX, USA
We, the black people of the State of Michigan, and of these United States,
in this historic period of worldwide revolutionary change, recognizing our
desire to achieve our own destiny through our own efforts; recognizing
our desire for independent black political action after 188 years of political
subservience; recognizing that our struggle for freedom and equality can
issue, meaningfully, only from our own leadership and candidates, do estab-
lish the only independent political movement dedicated to the unity and
liberation of all black people – the FREEDOM NOW PARTY.10
POLITICS IS SACRED: THE ACTIVISM OF ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR. 101
The party’s national ambitions were curtailed, however, when it was only
able to secure a place on the ballot in Michigan. There, the party ran sev-
eral candidates during the 1964 election, including Loy Cohen, secretary
of state; James Jackson, lieutenant governor; Milton Henry, representative
of the 14th Congressional District; and Cleage, governor. In doing so,
Cleage became the first black man to run for governor in the USA since
Reconstruction. Freedom Now Party candidates ran not to win but to
expand the political dialogue to include issues of importance to blacks.
Still, Cleage’s involvement with the FNP, according to some Detroit his-
torians, was not all positive. It is asserted that Cleage was initially reluctant
to get involved with the FNP, though no specific evidence of this nor any
such statements by Cleage have surfaced. Moreover, there is no indication
that Cleage had any other dealings with the FNP after the election leaving
some to conclude he was disappointed with the group, or saw no long-
term viability to future FNP efforts.11
From 1963 to the mid-1970s, Cleage was involved in a flurry of
other traditionally political activities including creating the Inner City
Organizing Committee (ICOC), an umbrella organization that attracted
progressives to exchange ideas about community development and con-
trol. Under the ICOC tent was the Inner City Housing Conference, Black
Retail Employees Association, Inner City Parents Council, Black Teachers
Workshop, Inner City Students Organization, Afro-American Committee
Against Racist Wars, and Michigan Inner City Organizing Committee.12
As “the titular head of the 700,000-member Detroit Black Church com-
munity”, according to the Detroit Free Press in 1967, just after the Detroit
Rebellion, Cleage continued his faith-driven efforts to affect political
change. In hopes of rebuilding Detroit in an image reflecting the chang-
ing demographics of the city due to a combination of black population
growth and white flight, Cleage founded the City-wide Citizens Action
Committee (CCAC), a federation of black organizations that promoted
economic self-determination through cooperative economics and busi-
ness/service ventures.13
The CCAC initiative gave birth to more ventures founded by Cleage
aimed at helping the black community gain control of its economic destiny.
Among these were the Black Star Co-op Market (grocery store), Black
Star Co-op Housing, Black Star Service Center, and Black Star Clothing
Company, which later gave birth to the Sudan Import and Specialty Shop,
that ultimately transformed into the Shrine of the black Madonna Cultural
Center and Bookstore—one of the Shrine’s premier institutions, run for
decades by Cleage’s sister Barbara “Nandi” Martin.
102 A. WALKER
Cleage became part folk hero in the midst of the CCAC’s work of
rebuilding Detroit after returning $100,000 given to the group by the
New Detroit Committee (NDC), a white business organization designed
to oversee the rebuilding of the city. Cleage accepted the money offered
by the NDC, formed by Henry Ford II and others, to fund CCAC efforts,
but was adamant that the NDC have no say over CCAC decisions. When
the NDC attempted to assert control, Cleage returned the money on the
basis of principle. Still, not all were in support of Cleage’s decision. Certain
activists viewed the move as a foolish waste of capital that could have been
used to rebuild Detroit in a more racially diverse image. Some have sug-
gested that Cleage’s popularity as a leader in the black community and his
influence upon the city’s white power brokers waned as a consequence.14
However, such claims are difficult to fully substantiate. For, during this
period, Cleage used what others defined as his growing celebrity to push
for political power in additional ways, one of which included joining the
college lecture circuit in hopes of politicizing young adults while calling
them to join the movement in general, and his church more specifically.
From 1970 to 1972, Cleage addressed over 80 colleges across the nation.15
Moreover, Cleage participated in national organizations focused on
changing the country’s existing power realities. Cleage was a member of the
National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), an ad hoc collective
of 51 black pastors who collaborated to support young Civil Rights work-
ers who had begun to publically call for “Black Power” during the1966
“March Against Fear” just outside Greenwood, Mississippi. The call was
made by SNCC leaders Stokely Carmichael, who later joined the Black
Panther Party, and Willie Ricks. Many white liberal clergy denounced
“Black Power”, arguing it was inconsistent with the movement’s principles
and Jesus’ teachings. On July 31, 1966, the NCNC purchased a full-page
ad in the New York Times publishing their statement of support for “Black
Power”, arguing that the call was in fact consistent with the movement’s
principles and the teachings of Jesus.16
Cleage was also part of Operation Connection, a New York-based orga-
nization consisting of roughly 20 Protestant denominations, the Catholic
Church, and Jewish groups. He was also a member of the Inter-religious
Federation for Community Organization and the Commission on Racial
Justice. During this period, Cleage acted as a diplomat representing the
interests of black people, sitting on numerous boards and commissions.
Of this work Cleage stated, according to historian Paul Lee, “Since it is
obvious, even to white people, that black people mean to have power, I
POLITICS IS SACRED: THE ACTIVISM OF ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR. 103
Years before Cleage worked with Young, Cleage organized the black
community attempting to increase their voting power and maximize black
representation in city, county, and state politics. Cleage did this by pro-
moting a strategy called “plunking”, leveraging votes by voting only for
a select few candidates in voting areas that had a multi-seat election pro-
cess as did Detroit’s City Council. The Cleage-led “Three Plus One” and
“Four and No More” campaigns founded upon this strategy were suc-
cessful. Black votes were concentrated, allowing them to gain significant
political power and moved the city toward a body of elected officials more
representative of the city’s racial reality. This history of organizing the
black community to achieve political success, along with Young’s victory
helped, in 1973, to found the Black Slate, Inc. as an independent political
lobby organization, recognizing and honoring the law of the land—sepa-
ration of church and state.25
The Black Slate, Inc., operating with volunteers from all over Detroit,
began what became a long-standing tradition of publishing a list of Black
Slate interviewed and endorsed candidates for each election. The Black
Slate’s success was profound. Thanks to the Black Slate, black candi-
dates were getting elected to city council, county and state offices, and
federal positions. An entire generation of successful politicians point to
the Black Slate as the launching point of their careers. Some of these
include Mary Blackmon (Detroit Board of Education), Barbara-Rose
Collins (Michigan and US House of Representatives and Detroit City
Council), Bernard Kilpatrick (Wayne County Commission, Wayne County
Executive’s Office), Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (Michigan and US House
of Representatives and former Congressional Black Caucus chairperson),
Kwame Kilpatrick (former mayor of Detroit), Ada Edwards (Houston
City Council), and Judge Cynthia D. Stephens (State Bar of Michigan
Board of Commissioners, Wayne County Circuit Court), among others.
The impact of Cleage’s Black Slate was not confined to Michigan. As
the Shrine opened churches in Atlanta, Georgia, and Houston, Texas,
the Black Slate began operations in those cities as well. When the Shrine
officially opened the doors of its Atlanta church in 1975, Black Slate orga-
nizers participated in various political initiatives that strengthened and
supported Atlanta’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, elected in 1974.
In Houston, a city not known to be as socially or politically progressive as
Detroit or Atlanta, the Black Slate was still able to participate in the elec-
tion of Houston’s first waves of black elected officials as the Shrine and the
Black Slate began operations there in 1977.26 In Princes Shall Come Out
POLITICS IS SACRED: THE ACTIVISM OF ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR. 107
McIntosh, following Cleage’s lead and relying upon his counsel, coordi-
nated and launched the New Affirmative Action After-School Program
in 1997 aimed at providing black students with instruction and activities
to bring them up to competitive equality. The effort’s impact was felt
predominantly by youth who were members of the church, and thus did
not have the broader, citywide impact hoped for. With that said, the vast
majority of participants in that program went on to graduate from college
and become productive citizens.
At Cleage’s behest, Houston’s Shrine was part of the city’s Operation
Unity, a coalition of ten progressive organizations that collaborate reg-
ularly on various issues. One such issue was coordinating Houston’s
response to man-made disasters that befell Rwanda and Haiti in the early
1990s. Shrine #10 served as ground zero for collecting aid sent to these
nations. America’s governmental responses to these incidents were part
of a growing national conversation on race-based inequality, making the
response by Cleage’s church equal parts political statement and ministry.
Similarly, Houston’s Shrine, with the support of its sister churches, came
to the aid of those displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita (August and
September, 2005, respectively). Shrine #10 housed more than 200 people
110 A. WALKER
more vocal about the need for black Christians to advocate black power
than Albert Cleage Jr.”38 A partial listing of these individuals include Paul
Robeson, Abbey Lincoln, Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, Haki Madhubuti
(Don Lee), Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, James Cones,
Gayraud Wilmore, Jeremiah Wright, and Frank Reid III. Additionally,
Maulana Karenga, founder of Kwanzaa, the seven-day, African-American
holiday celebrating principles basic for self-determination, was a regular
visitor at Cleage’s church and participated in his ministerial training pro-
gram along with Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan, Egyptologist, and ex-NAACP
chief executive Benjamin Chavis.39 The political impact of the aforemen-
tioned individuals can at least be partially attributed to Cleage’s influ-
ence, just as the work of Black Nationalists who preceded Cleage can be
credited with impacting his theology and political ideology. Cleage can
also take partial credit for whatever political impact has been rendered
by those outside US borders who have professed to have been inspired
by Cleage. For example, many of the leadership of South Africa’s anti-
apartheid movement found solace in Cleage’s written words. Strinivasa
“Strini” Moodley, one of the founding members of South Africa’s Black
Consciousness Movement of the 1960s, stated while speaking at the Shrine
Cultural Center in Houston in the early 1990s, “While we [Oliver Tambo,
Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, and others] were imprisoned on Robben
Island, we kept our spirits up by reading under candlelight, a smuggled
in copy of Reverend Cleage’s The black Messiah. His words helped us to
keep the faith in the righteousness of our cause. Because when we felt
like we couldn’t go on we’d read the tattered pages of The black Messiah
and find the strength to hold on.”40 Moreover, practitioners of liberation
theologies in Latin America and Africa, including Gustavo Gutierrez and
Allen Boesak, have confirmed the profound influence the black theologi-
cal movement of the 1960s had upon their own theological growth.
A large part of political impact is disseminating one’s message. To
do this, Cleage used the aforementioned Illustrated News and Michigan
Chronicle. Moreover, in addition to the hundreds, if not thousands, of
sermons preached over the course of his career (Cleage preached into
the early 1990s), Cleage published The black Messiah (1968) and Black
Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church (1972). His
writing continued into the 1990s as well, though the works have not yet
been published nationally. This fact has hampered scholars from obtain-
ing a full grasp of Cleage’s continued theological evolution from 1940s
112 A. WALKER
NOTES
1. Diarmuid O’Murchu, Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New
Physics (New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 2004), p. 6.
2. Karenga, Maulana, Introduction to Black Studies, 4th ed. (Los Angeles:
University of Sankore Press, 2010). p. 294.
3. Ibid., pp. 294–295.
4. These include Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Edward Wilmot Blyden,
David Walker, and insurrection leaders Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey,
and Nat Turner.
5. Juan Williams and Quinton Dixie, This Far by Faith: Stories From the
African American Religious Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2003),
pp. 268–270.
6. Paul Lee, “The Early Outreach Ministry of Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman
(Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr.): 1950–1972,” PAOCC Jubilee Celebration
Booklet (Detroit, August 2003), pp. 40–41.
7. Interview with the Shrine’s Cardinal Woodrow “Aminifu” Smith, May 1995.
8. Lee, “The Early Outreach Ministry of Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert
B. Cleage, Jr.): 1950–1972,” PAOCC Jubilee Celebration Booklet, p. 41.
9. Interview with the Shrine’s current Presiding Bishop, D. Kimathi Nelson.
September 2010.
10. Posted March 15, 2013 at http://findingeliza.com, administered by
Cleage’s daughter, Kristin Cleage.
11. Interview with Black Slate, Inc. director, Frank “Baye” Landy. October
2010.
12. Lee, “The Early Outreach Ministry of Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert
B. Cleage, Jr.): 1950–1972,” PAOCC Jubilee Celebration Booklet, p. 41.
13. Ibid., p. 41.
14. Interview with Black Slate, Inc. director, Frank “Baye” Landy. October
2010.
POLITICS IS SACRED: THE ACTIVISM OF ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR. 113
15. Aswad Walker, Princes Shall Come Out of Egypt: A Comparative Study of the
Theological and Ecclesiological Views of Marcus Garvey and Albert B. Cleage
Jr. (Dubuque: Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2012). p. 99.
16. Ibid., p. 100.
17. Lee, “The Early Outreach Ministry of Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert
B. Cleage, Jr.): 1950–1972,” PAOCC Jubilee Celebration Booklet, p. 42.
18. Albert B. Cleage Jr., The black Messiah (Trenton: Africa World Press,
1989), pp. 19–20.
19. Interview with Shrine #9 pastor, Randy “Mwenda” Brown. April 2015.
20. Based on college speaking invitations, requests for participation in national
organizations, and interview requests via TV, newspaper, and radio.
21. Cleage explains “Slave Theology/Christianity” throughout his book Black
Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church, but does so in
more detail in chapter 2, entitled “The Black Church.”
22. Nelson Blackstock, Cointelpro: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom
(New York: Pathfinder Press, 1988).
23. Interview with the Shrine’s current Presiding Bishop, D. Kimathi Nelson.
January 2014.
24. Interview with Black Slate, Inc. director, Frank “Baye” Landy. October 2010.
25. Ibid.
26. Interview with Shrine Christian Center of Houston’s Chief Operating
Officer, Loretta Green. January 2014.
27. Walker, Princes Shall Come Out of Egypt, p. 107.
28. Interview with Atlanta NPU-T members, Jerry “Tacuma” Brown, Asha
Hill, and Milton Fann. September 2013.
29. Albert B. Cleage Jr., The BCN Message and Mission (Houston: Pha Green
Printing, 1987), p. 5.
30. Ibid., p. 6.
31. Ibid., p. 6.
32. D. Kimathi Nelson outlined this argument throughout the entirety of ser-
mons preached during the Shrine’s Anniversary Month 2014.
33. Interview with members of the Shrine’s Holy Order of the Maccabees,
Andrew Seegars, Fabian Green, and Robert Stubbs. August 2013.
34. Shelley McIntosh, Mtoto House: Vision to Victory: Raising African American
Children Communally (Lanham: Hamilton Books, 2005), p. 42.
35. Ibid., pp. 42–43.
36. Houston’s Shrine was celebrated for their relief efforts surrounding hurri-
canes Katrina and Rita by several organizations, including the New Orleans
Association of Houston (NOAH), which honored the congregation dur-
ing its observance of the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on
September 4, 2015.
114 A. WALKER
Velma Maia Thomas
Albert B. Cleage Jr. founded the Shrines of the Black Madonna of the Pan
African Orthodox Christian Church following his unveiling of a mural of
a Black Madonna and Child in 1967. His decision to feature and prioritize
the Black Madonna in the title of the church instead of Jesus, the revolu-
tionary Black Messiah, invites a discussion about the role of women and
mothers in the Black Christian Nationalist movement. Cleage explained
his choice to name the church after the Black Madonna as being motivated
by his contention that the church is supposed to represent the ideals of
a “good” mother. The church should be nurturing and is responsible for
the physical, psychological, and spiritual growth of God’s children. But
what of the Madonna herself? Does the church have a developed doctrine
or theological posture on her? And how is womanhood and motherhood
lived out in the experiences of Black women in this church? If the church
itself signifies motherhood, then what does it mean for individual moth-
ers who have to raise children in this movement? Did the church manifest
traditional Protestant notions of motherhood and womanhood or dis-
rupt these notions yet still pressure women to conform to a masculinist
MAIA
Maia joined the church in 1980. She is the chief information officer and
a former manager of the Shrines of the Black Madonna Cultural Center
and Bookstore in Atlanta. She speaks of her experiences and those shared
by others.
We were young. We lived in a communal setting. We believed in libera-
tion. We dropped everything, traveled across the country to begin new
churches. We were led by Rev. Albert B. Cleage, who realized he had hun-
dreds of young people in his church and had to devise a program to keep
us focused, challenged and engaged. Reverend Cleage was unique in his
vision and openness to women as leaders. He saw potential in everyone,
regardless of gender.
In the 1980s we became more spiritual, less “revolutionary.” Were
women finally allowed to show their softer side? Could we lower the Black
power fist and maybe hug ourselves and others. Could we openly express a
desire to marry and raise a family? For some women, then in their late 20s
or early 30s, motherhood became more important. And some believed
they had to choose, become a mother, cuddle your Black Messiah, or drop
your child in a bulrush basket as did Jochebed, the mother of Moses, and
allow someone else to raise him or her. Some women chose motherhood,
and stepped down from leadership levels of the church. Others chose dif-
ferently, and perhaps to this day wonder if they made the right decision.
THE BLACK MADONNA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 121
To care for the children, the church established a communal system for
raising children. Women and men, not necessarily birthparents, became
house parents, freeing mothers to continue with “the struggle.” Did these
women see their child’s first step? I didn’t. Did they hear his or her first
words? Not I. Did they wrestle with potty training? Breast feed at will?
Tickle chubby toes, kiss skinned knees, read bedtime stories? Not always,
some would say rarely. Did sisters want to? Most assuredly, but so did
women in the working world. Moms who had to drop their kids off at day
cares and hoped they were being taught and cared for and not left in the
crib to stare in the air. At least in the nation we knew our children were
loved, educated and immersed in Christian values. We waved at them,
hugged them, and anxiously waited when we could spend time with them,
as did moms in the outside world who juggled family and jobs. We knew
those caring for our children held the same values as we did and loved
them as deeply as we did.
As adults, we sat in the meetings at the same table as the men. Some
of us had no trouble expressing our thoughts or going toe to toe; others
grew weary of crude remarks, the constant battle, the loudest voice win-
ning. We didn’t speak up when we should have, or we spoke as callously
as they, wondering if this was the only way to be heard. Was I being silly,
sensitive? Did I dare cry or let my emotions lead? No, too risky. We did
not want to be marked as being a “woman.” As if that were bad, as if the
Madonna were a mask, as if truly men ruled here as in the wider culture.
Some of us donned hobnailed boots and took on a swagger. And we cor-
rected our fellow sisters, those whom we saw as “weak,” those who gave
the Black Madonna a bad name. Can’t I lead without acting like a man? Is
there room for compassion and quiet strength?
Many of us who joined in the 70s are in our 60s, now. We have chil-
dren, grandchildren. Some of us altered our total commitment to com-
plete college, focus on family, chase dreams, and follow careers. Some of
us made the church our career. It is where we spend 80 percent or more or
our time. We looked at the Black Madonna in our mature years and close
our eyes to hold back tears. We’ve talked to her, even when we couldn’t
talk to Jesus. We know what she knows, that life can be difficult for Black
women. We find ourselves holding babies, loving them, but wondering if
we could ever hold true positions of power. At this, the 50th anniversary
of the unveiling of the Black Madonna and Child, we are still wonder-
ing if we will ever wear the title “pastor,” or if there will ever be a “Holy
Matriarch?”
122 V.M. THOMAS
Have women’s voices been heard in this church? Are we more than the
silent, resilient, go it alone if we must Black women who embrace a child
and guide a nation? Can I speak? Will I be heard? Can I say “no?” Can I
be sassy, classy, brilliant, naïve, mothering, powerful, determined, stub-
born, giving, disagreeable, caring and still be a Black Madonna? Can I be
Martha and Mary? Can I be Deborah and Miriam? Can I be more than a
chancel mural?
JENDAI
Jendai is a leader in the church, and is one of the founding members of the
Shrines of the Black Madonna church in Atlanta.
She looks back on her tenure, the role of women, the conversations about
women and assesses the good and the bad.
Jendai recalls that discussions about women that were not always flat-
tering. She notes men felt they didn’t have to temper their conversation in
the presence of sisters.
THE BLACK MADONNA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 123
DEBORAH
Deborah is an ordained minister who has served in each region, yet served
the majority of her years in Houston, Texas. She is well respected and
although not as active, remains beloved and faithful. Hers has not been an
easy path. Coming of age under the Shrine’s founder, she was a contem-
porary of its current leader and did not always agree with his leadership
style. She continued her education, worked professionally, married, and
had a child. After nearly 30 years, she resigned her leadership position, but
holds membership in the church.
know about until later), where the final decisions were made or where talk
continued. There came a time when we openly expressed the need for men
to have more leadership roles. We saw other “intelligent, good looking
men” leading other churches and pushed for the same.
It was said of my region, “We need to have men at the forefront. The
church is not growing because women are running things.” That was the
perception. The brothers went to Yale Divinity School. A few sisters went
to seminary but most of those who went were men. You would find the
sisters working with the youth or in the kitchen. At one conference, it was
determined that no one was going to be ordained unless more men were
going to be ordained.
REHEMA
Rehema joined in August 1965. She holds a wealth of memories and
knowledge. She sat in meetings with the founder and saw young women
develop into leadership.
When I joined, the church wasn’t the Shrine of the Black Madonna. It was
Central Congregational Church of Christ. I was there before the changes
started coming around. I worked on the committee for the painting of the
THE BLACK MADONNA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 125
Black Madonna with quite a few sisters and some brothers as well. We gave
money, held fashions shows, and different Black events for the commission
of the painting. I was a part of the whole thing.
She understands the impact of the image of the Black Madonna, how it
changed her and why it is so powerful. That’s why the image had to be
authentic. It had to be African. She had to be powerfully Black.
When you think about what you’ve been taught about who Jesus was and
to learn that all that was false, and you have evidence to back it up. To show
that Jesus’ mother was not a white woman. She was a Black woman. It’s
hard to explain. It’s a different kind of energy and a different kind of feeling
you get knowing that you have a chance to really let the world see the truth.
Jaramogi (Cleage) spoke with the painter of how she would look. That was
not the first copy of the Madonna. The first copy was modeled by someone
with real keen features. She was Black, but she had real keen features. Some
of the members thought she did not completely represent Black women as a
whole. If you look at her, everybody would think Black women had to have
a straight nose, keen features, something like that. So he went back and
redid it in terms of incorporating Black women as a whole. What is there
now is not the first. That was the second portrait.
Women’s role as far as I know was not different from the men’s. Jaramogi
ordained women as much as he ordained men. All had to go through train-
ing, and all had to learn to preach. You get to go on the pulpit and preach.
Some women did not want to be preachers. They wanted other roles in the
church, including myself. I preached, but I never wanted to be a preacher.
I see myself doing other things. Working with groups is a passion for me.
That’s where I put my energy. Women could do whatever they had the abil-
ity to do.
If women felt their voices were not heard, Rehema didn’t hear about it or
experience it. At the time that decisions were made, she and other women
were sitting right there in the meetings.
I’ve never seen it that way, that women weren’t heard, not in the Central
Region. As a matter of fact, it seems like lot of the important responsibilities
in terms of running the church, women had those. I can only speak of the
Central Region. I can’t speak for the other Shrines.
126 V.M. THOMAS
That came up later on. One thing that was important to us was that children
would be taken care of, if you were doing something else. That was devel-
oped in terms of Alkebulan (the church youth program), after Alkebulan
then there was Mtoto House. I never thought my children were not being
cared for. The children had problems with it though. They never said that
much at the time. But when they were older, they said they felt their par-
ents were not around enough for them. They felt they were raised by other
sisters. At the time, we didn’t see it that way, but it did come up after the
kids got older.
Unlike some younger women who joined later, Rehema disagrees that
women had to be tough or masculine to survive or to be taken seriously.
Everybody has to have his or her own personality. I didn’t see that you
had to be tough. Being a group leader, we were taught the foundation of
the church was groups. If you don’t have strong groups, you don’t have a
strong congregation. We had brothers as group leaders but the majority of
group leaders in the Central Region were women. You developed your way
with what you were taught.
Now, some brothers did have trouble taking orders from women. You’d
have to be real careful about the way you talked to them or approached
them. Once you became confident in what you were doing, that became
different. You were not driven by your ego, but your spirituality.
At that time I didn’t see it, but this time around we would set up the Mtoto
House differently. The parents could have been more involved than just
having a certain group of sisters who take care of the children. It was fash-
ioned off the Kibbutz in Israel so they could lead after the parents got older.
Those children had more commitment than our children. It didn’t work as
well as we thought it would. If I had to do something different, that’s what
I would have done different.
MAXINE
Maxine joined as a teenager. She has spent her adult life in the church,
grew up with many of the leaders and has served in just about every capac-
ity—except that of pastor.
THE BLACK MADONNA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 127
I have asked, ‘Why not me?’ And people have asked me, ‘Why aren’t you
the pastor?’ Maxine continues, “I find myself thinking, if I had been male, I
would have been by now. It’s an internal struggle. I ask myself is this true or
it this just my particular thought?
Maxine, like many sisters in the church, was raised in a traditional Baptist
church. In her Baptist experience, women had assigned roles. They served
on the Mother Board on the Nurse Board, or taught Vacation Bible
School. At the Shrines, she saw women in the pulpit. They were leaders,
not just followers.
It was intriguing. As I advanced in the church, I never felt there was any goal
outside my reach as a woman. It was more my age than gender. As I got
older and was given ministerial duties, I began to feel some limitations. Yet
that may have come more from outside the church than in our own culture.
When I joined, and would invite other people out, they would say, “Oh,
you’re one of those Black Madonnas.” But we didn’t see ourselves as role
models. As a teen or a young adult, you didn’t look at it with the magnitude
you do today.
We’re in the Bible belt and when I would represent the church at the
funeral of family members, I could see the surprised look on their faces
when I processed to the front. I could almost hear a gasp! Their looks said,
“Where is she going? I know she’s not going to the pulpit! Oh yes she is!”
I understood, but I would ignore the stares and keep on walking. I heard a
member of this church say the Black community isn’t ready for women pas-
tors. When I heard that, I wondered if that were true from within.
I’ve never been told I couldn’t do something. I see myself as a servant of
the Lord, and didn’t seek any position within the church. But sometimes I
do ask myself, “Are their limits for women in BCN?” My answer depends on
the time of day, on how I’m feeling and what’s going on inside. I could be a
pastor, but I must be careful of what I ask for. Being a pastor is an immense
responsibility. Am I ready for such a task?
The question of motherhood arises. Maxine offers her opinion. Her chil-
dren were raised in the communal setting. To her it was a blessing.
Motherhood in the church required personal choices. For sisters who were
more active in the church, it left less time for mothering. We had communal
childrearing. There were a group of sisters helping. I didn’t feel as though I
was being denied. I thought this was more ideal. I helped sisters with their
children and they helped me with mine. Babies were with their mothers
128 V.M. THOMAS
when I joined. I never saw it as a church policy where you had to decide that
being committed to the church was more important that rearing your child.
She has seen changes over time, but credits the foundation that Jaramogi
Abebe laid that allowed sisters to reach their potential.
Jaramogi would say that sisters could do anything better than men. Security.
Preaching. He would say that women are more focused. He was a champion
of women. He dispelled any doubts about what women could do. However,
I do think it is time for a female pastor. I think now it would be accepted.
ANGELA
It was her traditional southern Baptist background that grounded her, and
eventually led her to seek elsewhere. She has found the truth in the Shrine
of the Black Madonna. She joined in the early 1990s.
For an institution whose name implies that there must be some major sig-
nificance, relevance, and importance of the Black Madonna, the church has
not done a good job in revering the mother of Jesus. In fact, I have only
on few occasions heard a word spoken of the mother of Jesus. Even when
various women have preached on Mother’s Day, in my experience, they
have only casually mentioned the mother of Jesus while mentioning other
women of the Bible. Women in the church receive their due on Mother’s
THE BLACK MADONNA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 129
Day and, now, during Women’s History Month, and the establishment of a
National Women’s Ministry. Perhaps, the respect of women in the church is
a matter of course, but I cannot say that such reverence is overtly obvious.
Angela, too, had a child in Mtoto House. She acknowledges children were
well cared for, but wished there had been more parental involvement,
more openness to suggestions and individual and unique needs of parent
and child. She and others circumvented rules to meet what they saw as
their child’s needs. It left her feeling guilty. It left her miffed as to why
she had been placed or allowed herself to be placed in a position where
such guilt was experienced. Couldn’t leadership be more open? Why not
change a meeting place to better accommodate women with young chil-
dren? What about different activities for teenagers? Did we not know that
not all children have the same needs; not all mothers and parents have the
need to parent in the same way?
Angela also shared her experiences living on church property (a church-
owned apartment complex) while being in a long-term, committed, same-
gender relationship.
MICHELLE
Michelle wishes we had focused on the feminine energy of the Creator
and that we had paid more homage to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Because
the church didn’t, she believes we missed a lot of the mystical and the
unknown.
We need a more balanced approach to the feminine aspect of God. The male
energy still dominates. We lose a lot of the power of feminine energy. We
130 V.M. THOMAS
are trying but usually the female aspect is an aside. We might catch ourselves
and say God, She. But that’s about as far as it goes. The female energy is
intuitive, vase, secretive, mysterious. It focuses less on what you can see. It’s
more in tuned with nature, flow of seasons.
I admired them for giving their lives to this highest calling. I thought about
being a nun for a long time. I admired their sense of service of working in
rural areas.
You had your baby and were quickly moved to getting back to assignments.
Spending time with your child was not encouraged. I tried to follow along,
but found myself feeling resentful and rebellious. I didn’t question the way
things were, but I said to myself, if it doesn’t work for me I’ll leave the
church. Soon, I decided to put my child first, no matter what.
Also, relationships were confusing. Who was dating? Who was married?
Who was no longer married? It didn’t seem like a show of affection between
couples was encouraged. Marriage was like the lesser of the sacraments. We
should have had counseling, so we could enter marriage in the right frame
of mind, so we could work on our marriages. We were not very skilled at
keeping marriages intact.
THE BLACK MADONNA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 131
BINAH
Binah has held every leadership role in the church: minister, Shrine
Administrator, finance officer, group leader of children and adults, educa-
tor, youth minister. She soared to the top, but knew something was miss-
ing. She joined in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, 1971. Binah
is the daughter of a Baptist minister. She became familiar with the church
through her sister, who purchased a copy of the Black Messiah. She read
the book in about three days, and decided to go to the church. On that
particular Sunday, Rev. Albert B. Cleage was preaching. She joined that
morning.
She remembers the chancel mural in Detroit. She describes the Black
Madonna as definitely a dark skin woman with African features. The
woman held a baby in her arms, her baby, a Black baby who represented
Jesus, and he was Black, too.
There was no mistake that she was of African descent. I realized that I had
not been told the truth. I asked my father if he knew people in Bible were
Black, were African. He said he did, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
Binah states firmly that when she joined the church, she didn’t come
empty-handed. She brought skills with her.
The Shrines of the Black Madonna became her family and her home. The
nuclear family structure was not emphasized enough, however.
Responsibilities of church often pulled a husband away from his wife. You
participated in missionary outreach, and on that weekend you were not with
your spouse. There was also a guideline at that time. Within our nation, no
one said you could not have a baby. It was stated you could not have a baby
on the expansion cadre, not until the cadre had become well established.
My experience was I was pregnant with my son. His dad was in Houston,
and he was not there when I had my son. My husband couldn’t get permis-
sion to come back. To me, that was not productive and did not contribute
132 V.M. THOMAS
While youth may have felt separated from their parents, they developed
strong ties with each other. Even now, when her grandchildren celebrate
birthdays, she knows they are going to have 60 or 70 people over. They
are her children’s Mtoto House friends and their children. And they are
always there for each other.
As they grew up and became teenagers and young adults, we didn’t make
room for them in the church. There was a vast difference when I came up
young in the church, and when they came up in the church. When they
THE BLACK MADONNA AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 133
graduated from high school, they did not have the support to assist them
in the next phase where they could become the leadership. Jaramogi Abebe
passed away. There was no consensus on what the young adults should be
doing.
ANDRETTA
Andretta joined the church in the early 1990s. She is a college graduate
and also graduated from seminary.
JARIBU
When Jaribu was a young child, she joined the church with her mother.
She remembers Rev. Olubayo was her primary caregiver in the nursery
where she was taught to be proud of who she was. Olubayo pulled her first
two teeth and she remembers the excitement she felt upon accomplishing
the feat of spelling her name.
Jaribu is now an adult and has been encouraged to pursue leadership
roles in the church. Men and women have encouraged her to preach and
pray publically. She feels empowered to represent Black women. She has
noticed however that there has not been much church discourse on Mary.
The Black Messiah Jesus is heavily emphasized and Black males by exten-
sion. But other than giving birth to Jesus, who is the Black Madonna really?
134 V.M. THOMAS
After purchasing Beulah Land, our 2,600 acre farm and establishing the
Shrine Christian Center in South Carolina, the church placed less emphasis
on its expansion program. We still have full-time missionaries whom we sup-
port. Marriage counseling is available. Marriages last longer. Parents now
take full responsibility for raising their children. We haven’t abandoned our
youth program. We educate our children and children in the community
with the same stellar results. Women strengthen bonds through the wom-
en’s ministry. Yet as one young leader stated, there is still a glass ceiling for
women. Women lead our legal team and our Information Technology min-
istry. Women serve as the National Chief Executive Officer and as National
Chief Information Officer. Sisters continue to preach, pray, lead groups,
work in the finance office, and sit at the tables of decision. Is the Shrines
of the Black Madonna a utopia for Black women? No. But perhaps we will
get there.
NOTES
1. Shelly McIntosh, Mtoto House: Vision to Victory: Raising African American
Children Communally (Maryland: Hamilton Book, 2005).
2. Patricia Hill Collin, Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 167.
3. Ibid., p. 169.
CHAPTER 8
Melanee Harvey
M. Harvey ()
Art Department, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA
Fig. 8.1 Glanton V. Dowdell, black Madonna chancel mural, sanctuary of the
Shrine of the black Madonna, #1, Detroit, 1967, oil on canvas. Photography by
James Ribbron, 2016
138 M. HARVEY
We have been told and shown through Italian Renaissance painters that
Jesus was Aryan with blonde hair and blue eyes. We were also led to believe
that Christianity called on black people to do nothing about oppression…
We reject these distorted teachings. Therefore, the Heritage Committee has
embarked on the noble task of setting the record straight. That is showing
the real meaning of our religion. Our first project was to commission a black
artist to paint a picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus—our black Madonna.
We have also placed pictures of famous black heroes in the Fellowship Hall
and Nursery.9
This radical declaration situates this mural in a larger art historical dis-
course concerning the denial of African presence in Western Christian
art. Furthermore, this inaugural commission offers an example of African
Americans participating as a communal body in the art production process.
This act and the circulation of the history of this artwork is an empower-
ing example of how a community can actively redefine their visual identity.
Detroit-born artist-activist Glanton V. Dowdell received the commis-
sion to paint a large-scale mural in the Shrine of the black Madonna, #1,
sanctuary at the age of 44. The majority of his biographical facts come
from newspaper articles as well as Detroit Police and Federal Bureau of
Investigation observation records as very few art historians have engaged
his art production beyond bibliographic citation. Press coverage of Dowdell
begins in the late 1950s, presenting him as a prison artist. By the 1970s,
140 M. HARVEY
both the Detroit Free Press and national African American media outlets
such as Jet magazine covered the USA’s extradition efforts to retrieve him
from Stockholm, Sweden, where he sought political asylum after painting
the mural. In Dowdell’s accounts of his teenage years, he recalls, “When
I was 16[…] I was sent to reform school for armed robbery. I was in
the low income bracket and full of the devil.”10 In this newspaper article,
where this recollection was published, the unidentified writer then goes
on to narrate Dowdell’s life: “Instead of being reformed, however, he
later plunged deeper in trouble and was sent to prison.”11 In fact, Dowdell
served twelve years and ten months in Michigan’s Jackson State Prison
for what one newspaper account described as “a slaying growing out of a
street argument.”12 While incarcerated, Glanton Dowdell was introduced
to oil painting and gained a criticality that led him toward activism.13
A few years before his release, Dowdell earned honorable mention in
the 1958 state-wide juried exhibition, “Michigan Artists Show” for one
of his two accepted submissions, entitled, Southeast Corner of My Cell.14
When asked about this artwork during an interview, Dowdell offered
this interpretation of this painting: “That picture was probably the most
damaging indictment of prison life that ever went out of [that prison]…
The critics fully understood the message of futility.”15 In December 1959,
The Pittsburgh Courier featured the artist in an article entitled, “Glanton
Dowdell… Artist and Ten-Year Prisoner!” This article illustrates how his
ideas concerning visual expression and social consciousness coalesced for
the artist. Explaining his views on the role of the artist in society, Dowdell
reflects:
The artist as a mutation on the social body has no will. His function is
to absorb, synthesize and eject. The compulsion to place within the range
of perception the heretofore unperceived is almost libidinal in nature—the
ultimate purpose of which is to further the evolutionary process… I think
each man having suffered long is entitled to a message to future generations.
My function then is to send that message. Perhaps, I remember too well the
prayers of a nine-year-old boy who looked at empty skies and begged, “Help
us, please, God, sir.”16
At this point of my research, this is one of the few written accounts I have
found of Dowdell referring to himself as an artist and outlining his artis-
tic philosophy. Considering this position, Dowdell had a strong interest
in formulating a visual vocabulary that would communicate ideas about
improving humanity’s plight.
BLACK POWER AND BLACK MADONNA: CHARTING THE AESTHETIC... 141
states how light, spatial voids and tonal contrast functions to convey God
as a figure of infinite consciousness. Furthermore, this design aesthetically
and formally corresponds with the large-scale chancel mural in the Shrine
of the black Madonna, #1.
I believe this interpretive sketch, characterized by a flattening of form
articulated though tonal value variations, guided the artist’s rendering of
a young mother from the local neighborhood. In Rev. Albert Cleage’s
papers at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Library, this portrait of the
mural’s model, Rose Waldon, is filed alongside the first newspaper article
on the commission. The three-quarter length photographic portrait pres-
ents Waldon, gazing upward, maximizing the almond-like shape of her
eyes. The light emphasizes the strong sharp line of her nose, balanced by
the horizontal orientation of her mouth. The sitter wears a tooth hound
pattern jacket, spherical hanging earrings, and a shortly cropped afro. It is
unclear whether this photograph was taken for Dowdell to paint from or
if it was captured for promotion purposes by a Detroit Free Press photo-
journalist. This photograph of Rose Waldon demonstrates an attention to
the ability of light and value to convey the depth and spectrum of African
American skin tones. In The Detroit Free Press article, Dowdell contextual-
izes this mural in his personal experiences, stating, “[The black Madonna
mural] is me…I can’t divorce the Madonna from black women. I don’t
think that any of the experiences of the Madonna were more poignant
or dramatic than those of any Negro Mother.”29 The artist’s reference to
Negro mother signals an iconography prominent in the history of African
American art. Although Marcus Garvey commissioned portraits of the
black Madonna and the Black Man of Sorrows, those original artworks
have not been located.30 In 1941, Opportunity published James Allen
Latimer’s 1930s photograph, Madonna and Child, on the cover of the
widely circulated periodical.31
By the 1950s, black artists such as Selma Burke featured mother child
iconography in their oeuvre.32 Burke’s untitled painted red oak statue,
which stands about 47 inches tall, depicts a mother clutching a nude
child to her chest. Whereas the mother’s face remains fully visible, the
child’s face is only partially in view. This iconography of the protective
mother, guarding her child directly informs Dowdell’s black Madonna
design. It is important to consider this imagery in the context of pub-
licized instances of African American mothers advocating for justice for
children. From the mothers of the Scottsboro Boys from the 1930s to
Mamie Till in the 1950s, the visible images of black mothers confronting
144 M. HARVEY
On either side of the black Madonna, I would like to see a picture of Jesus,
done by a black artist. I would like one to be of the Crucifixion with the
white Romans at the feet of the black Messiah, the jeers and mockery upon
their faces and the hatred in their eyes. Only a black artist could paint that
picture. On the other side, I would like to see a picture of Jesus driving
the money changers out of the Temple, a powerful black man supplanting
the weak little mamby pamby white Jesus. The money changers would be
depicted just as they were, Uncle Toms, exploiting their own people with
the connivance and support of the white Gentile oppressors.35
Fig. 8.2 Glanton V. Dowdell, detail of black Madonna chancel mural, sanctuary
of the Shrine of the black Madonna, #1, Detroit, 1967, oil on canvas. Photography
by James Ribbron, 2016
the pulpit lectern with the iconic black Madonna mural in the backdrop.49
This inclusion visually confirms the Shrine of the black Madonna as one
of the foremost religious Black Power spaces in the nation. Examining
these images collectively, the visible pairing of the black Madonna mural
and a male figurehead of the movement becomes a recurring iconography
that frames the circulation of the mural reproductions, revealing the gen-
der dynamics within both the Black Arts Movement and the Black Power
Movement. The photograph of Baraka compliments the Cleage/black
Madonna formula that undergirds how the mural and black Madonna
imagery became a symbol of liberation.
CONCLUSION
Rev. Albert Cleage and the Shrine of the black Madonna, #1 bridged two
important developments in African American thought: the revolutionary
advancement in how one interprets the African American experience with
Christianity as represented in Black Liberation Theology and the aesthetic
revolution of the Black Arts movement, committed to the visual redefini-
tion of black culture by artists-activist. Cleage, Dowdell and the Shrine
community invented and cultivated a new symbol to project the pride
of black consciousness and social revolution. This chapter has been con-
cerned with how The black Madonna chancel mural, in artistic produc-
tion and through circulation in reproduction, visually conveys ideas at
the heart of the Black Arts Movement and Cleage’s conception of Black
Liberation Theology. This commission also inaugurated a mural tradition
across the Pan African Orthodox Christian Community. Shrine of the
black Madonna sanctuaries in Detroit, Atlanta, and Houston all feature
large-scale murals executed by artists of African descent.50 These three
murals only represent a larger tradition as the Shrine of the black Madonna
community often maintained cultural centers where art exhibitions were
held and in the case of Atlanta, art is still available for sell. This cultural
work of cultivating a culturally conscious aesthetics was typified in the
public life of Pastor Albert Cleage.
In 1962, The Negro Digest published a 17-page article that assessed that
state of the fine arts in Detroit.51 Celebrating the trend of artists groups
establishing gallery space, Alma Forest Parks highlights 1958 as the year
that “signaled the beginning of a revolutionary era for art in Detroit.”52
African American artists claimed space for cultural and artistic production
and self-definition. I would argue that the aesthetic thought associated
BLACK POWER AND BLACK MADONNA: CHARTING THE AESTHETIC... 149
Fig. 8.3 George Knox, Black Christ Crucified, 2004, bronze, Reid Temple AME
Church foyer, Glen Arden, Maryland, photograph by the author, 2014
BLACK POWER AND BLACK MADONNA: CHARTING THE AESTHETIC... 151
NOTES
1. Rev. Albert Cleage Jr., “An Epistle to Stokely,” The black Messiah (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), p. 42.
2. Lisa Gail Collins, “Activist that Yearn for Art that Transforms: Parallels
between the Black Arts and Feminist Art Movements in the United
States,” Signs 31, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 3. In this essay, the author established
the chronological perimeters of The Black Art Movement beginnings,
which is 21 February 1965, with the assassination of Malcolm X; the flight
of artists such as Amiri Baraka out of NYC the Village to Harlem.
3. Alex Poinsett “A Quest for a Black Christ,” Ebony (March 1969): 178.
<https://books.google.com/books?id=JeIDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA170&ots
=mL2MXz2lZo&dq=ebony%20A%20Quest%20for%20a%20Black%20Christ
%2C%E2%80%9D&pg=PA170#v=onepage&q=ebony%20A%20Quest%20
for%20a%20Black%20Christ,%E2%80%9D&f=false> (accessed 31 Oct. 2015)
All references to Johnson Publication magazine layouts, including Ebony and
Negro Digest/Black World, as well as artwork from the collections of the
Smithsonian Institute, will provide a URL that contains the digitized image
discussed in the text.
4. Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, “Sharing Our Founder’s Gifts:
Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman (Rev. Albert Cleage Jr.) (Chronology),” N.d.,
Albert Cleage Papers, Box 1, Bentley Historical Museum, University of
Michigan, 3.
5. Ibid., 3a.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ed Vaughn and et al., Welcome to the Black Nation!: A Guide for Members
of Central United Church of Christ, The Shrine of the black Madonna,
Albert Cleage Papers, Box 9, Bentley Historical Library, University of
Michigan, 3.
9. Ibid.
10. “Prisoner Painter Teaches Art to Fellow Inmates,” unidentified newspaper
article, General George Baker Papers, Black Power Movement Collection,
Part 4: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1965–1976, micro-
film collection, 3:0515, Library of Congress.
11. Ibid.
12. “2 Get Probation in Gun Arrests,” unidentified newspaper article, n.d.,
General George Baker Papers, Black Power Movement Collection, Part 4:
The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1965–1976, microfilm col-
lection, 3:0868, Library of Congress.
13. Ibid.
152 M. HARVEY
29. Ellen Goodman, “black Madonna Stirs Empathy of Negros,” Detroit Free
Press, 25 March 1967, Albert Cleage Jr. Papers.
30. While Garvey is acknowledged as the first to commission a black Madonna
in an African American community, both Robert Alexander Young
(“Ethiopian Manifesto,” 1829) and Henry McNeal Turner An Apology for
African Methodism (1867) laid the foundation for this motif of a black
Madonna and Christ. For more information, see Edward J Blum & Paul
Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 2012).
31. Camara Dia Holloway, “James Latimer Allen, Madonna and Child,”
Object Narrative, in Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the
Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (2014) <http://mavcor.
yale.edu/conversations/object-narratives/james-latimer-allen-madonna-
and-child> (accessed 22 May 2014) and Deborah Willis, “Photography
(1900–1970s),” Image of the Black in Western Art, The Twentieth Century:
V, Part II, The Rise of Black Artists, David Bindman and Henry L. Gates,
eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 83–84.
32. By the mid-twentieth century, perhaps influenced by the subordination of
traditional religion in socialist ideologies, artists like Elizabeth Catlett
maintained compositional form in numerous interpretations on the theme.
Catlett’s Mother and Child (c.1956, terracotta, Philadelphia Museum of
Art) is representative of her contribution to the motif. Other examples of
this iconography include: Selma Burke, Untitled (Mother and Child), c.
1950, painted red oak, Smithsonian American Art Museum; Selma Burke,
Mother and Child, 1968, pink alabaster; Romare Bearden, Madonna and
Child, 1969, collage, Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institute. For a
photographic reproduction of Selma Burke’s Untitled, (Mother and Child,
<http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=71832>.
33. Alma F. Parks, “A City Survey: The arts in Detroit,” Negro Digest (Nov.
1962): 90. This article states that Sampson only practiced as a sculptor a
short period before dedicating his creative energy toward performing as an
actress, concert singer, and poet <https://books.google.com/books?id=
WToDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA90&dq=florence%20pate%20sampson&pg=
PA84#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
34. Ibid., 84.
35. Cleage, “The Resurrection of the Nation,” The black Messiah, 86.
36. Ibid., 97.
37. Cleage, “Resurrection of a Nation,” The black Messiah, 98.
38. William Seigmann “Figure of Mother and Child (Phemba): Unidentified
Kongo (Yombe Subgroup) Artist,” African Art: A Century at the Brooklyn
Museum, 2009, 194–195; Timothy Verdon, Melissa R. Katz, Amy
G. Remensnyder, and Miri Rubin. Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea
(Washington, DC: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2014).
154 M. HARVEY
39. Ellen Goodman, “black Madonna Stirs Empathy of Negros,” Detroit Free
Press, 25 Mar. 1967, Albert Cleage Jr. Papers.
40. Dudley Randall, “Black Arts Convention,” Negro Digest XVII, no. 1 (Nov.
1967): 42–48 <https://books.google.com/books?id=xjkDAAAAMBAJ
& l p g = PA 4 2 & d q = s e c o n d % 2 0 b l a c k % 2 0 a r t s & p g = PA 4 2 # v =
onepage&q=second%20black%20arts&f=false>.
41. Ibid.
42. My analysis of the multitude of cultural work at play in the exchange of the
black Madonna Chancel mural is informed by Jerry Z. Park, and Joseph
Baker, “What Would Jesus Buy: American Consumption of Religious and
Spiritual Material Goods,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46,
no. 4 (2007): 501–517.
43. Jennifer L. Strychasz, “Jesus is Black”: Race and Christianity in African
American Church Art (PhD. Diss., University of Maryland at College
Park, 1996).
44. David Llorens, “Ameer (Leroi Jones) Baraka,” Ebony (August 1969): 83.
<https://books.google.com/books?id=AtsDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA75&dq=
David%20Llorens%2C%20%E2%80%9CAmeer%20(Leroi%20Jones)%20Bara
ka%2C%E2%80%9D&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q=David%20Llorens,%20
%E2%80%9CAmeer%20(Leroi%20Jones)%20Baraka,%E2%80%9D&f=false>.
This photograph featuring Amiri Baraka and The black Madonna chancel
mural was included in Ebony’s Black Power issue. Whereas the mural had
previously been photographed with the Shrine’s pastor and the mural’s artist,
this photograph amplified the narrative around the mural by reinforcing its
ties to the Black Arts Movement.
45. Michael Harris, “Urban Totems: The Communal Spirit of Black Murals:
1967–1975,” Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride: African American Murals
and James Prigoff and Robin Dunitz (San Franscico: Pomegranate, 2000),
and Jennifer L. Strychasz, 1996. “Jesus is Black”: Race and Christianity in
African American Church Art (Ph.D. Diss., University of Maryland at
College Park, 1996).
46. Timothy Verdon, Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea (Washington,
DC: National Museum for Women in the Arts; Distributed in the book
trade by Antique Collectors’ Club Limited, 2014). Some traditional
approaches to rendering the Madonna and Child include rendering the
pair in a triangular compositional form and emphasizing the Madonna
with various hues of blue. Bearden’s collage is housed in the collection of
the Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institute. <http://hirshhorn.si.
edu/search-results/?edan_search_value=bearden&edan_search_button=S
earch+Collection#detail=http%3A//hirshhorn.si.edu/search-results/
search-result-details/%3Fedan_search_value%3Dhmsg_86.272>.
BLACK POWER AND BLACK MADONNA: CHARTING THE AESTHETIC... 155
47. Alex Poinsett “A Quest for a Black Christ,” Ebony (March 1969): 178.
<https://books.google.com/books?id=JeIDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA170&
dq=quest%20for%20black%20christ&pg=PA170#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
48. Ibid.
49. David Llorens, “Ameer (Leroi Jones) Baraka,” Ebony (August 1969): 83.
<https://books.google.com/books?id=AtsDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA75&d
q=David%20Llor ens%2C%20%E2%80%9CAmeer%20(Ler oi%20
Jones)%20Baraka%2C%E2%80%9D&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q=David%20
Llorens,%20%E2%80%9CAmeer%20(Leroi%20Jones)%20Baraka,%E2%80
%9D&f=false>.
50. Flyer advertising the opening of Shrine of the black Madonna Cultural
Center (Detroit), featuring Carl Owens “Black Moods” exhibition, Albert
Cleage Jr. Papers, Box 8, Bentley Historical Library, University of
Michigan. Detroit-born artist Carl Owens was an artist promoted in this
religious community. I found several advertisement posters announcing
exhibitions for Owens hosted at the Shrine’s Cultural center. Owens’
Atlanta black Madonna is much brighter in palette but remains in the
Madonna and Child motif. The Houston sanctuary features a triptych
mural. During a period of expansion during the 1970, new Shrine congre-
gations emerged in the Detroit such as Shrine, #3—Wyoming Ave. By
1977. Shrine, #7 was opened in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The archive lists a
Shrine #2, Shrine #9, and Shrine, #10 (Houston).
51. Alma F. Parks, “A City Survey: The arts in Detroit, Negro Digest (Nov.
1962): 78–93. It is important to note that eight pages were dedicated to
the visual arts out of the sixteen-page feature article.
52. Ibid., 87.
53. Jon O. Lockard, “Black Art by Jon O. Lockard” Negro Digest (Mar. 1968):
94. <https://books.google.com/books?id=SDoDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA
1&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
54. “Artists Portray a Black Christ,” Ebony (Apr. 1971): 177 <https://books.
google.com/books?id=FdsDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA176&ots=EU_
RqWtue1&dq=ebony%20artists%20portray%20black%20christ&pg=PA17
7#v=onepage&q&f=false>.
55. The artists included Keithen Carter, Alvin C. Hollinsworth, LeRoy Clark,
Douglas W. Williams, Otto Neals, Timothy Washington, Murray DePillars,
and Omar Lama.
56. Rev. Dr. Lee P. Washington, interview by author, digital recording, Reid
Temple AMEC, Glen Arden, Maryland, 19 Apr. 2014.
CHAPTER 9
Lee H. Butler
INTRODUCTION
The biblical record declares that human beings have been created in the
image and likeness of God from dirt. Ideologies of race have resulted in
qualifying human existence by qualifying the dirt. Some bodies of dirt
have been declared clean and, therefore, human. While other bodies of
dirt have been declared unclean and, therefore, nonhuman. Black bodies,
although most resembling the dirt, have often been identified as dirty,
Godless and soulless. With this negative attribution upon black bodies,
how have African Americans been able to claim being created in the image
and likeness of God?
Affirming the biblical record means one makes the claim that human
beings have been formed from dirt to reflect the image of God, yet there
often seems to be a disconnect between the statement of the Imago Dei
and one’s self-perception. Present a mirror to most people, and ask, “Who
do you see?” Rarely will a person respond, “I see God.” Ask them to look
around and identify where they see God, their tendency will be to identify
the evidence of God in nature. Again, it is the rare person who identifies
seeing God in the people all around herself or himself. Nevertheless, there
of the cognitive dissonance that did not allow many then (and sometimes
not even now) to see black humanity as the image and likeness of God?
A Vignette
In March 1969, I was 10 years old living in central Pennsylvania. Like
many households of that era, my mother had an Ebony magazine subscrip-
tion. On the day the March 1969 issue arrived, I sorted the mail for my
mother. I, therefore, was the first to view the bold, and for me startling,
black Jesus Christ on the cover of Ebony. My experience, however, was
anything but enthusiasm. I clearly remember my shock and disapproval as
I viewed what I should have experienced as a mirror of myself.
I was a “cradle” Missionary Baptist, meaning I was born attending
a Baptist church. Perhaps not in March, but at age ten, I was a baptized
believer and member of the Tabernacle Baptist Church. I knew what Jesus
looked like. The sanctuary of my church had a large wall mural of Jesus. He
was white with blonde hair and blue eyes. All the Sunday School materials,
the church fans and images in my Bible presented Jesus the same way, White!
Knowing what “my Lord and Savior” looked like, and knowing that the
cover of Ebony had desecrated his image, I exclaimed to my mother, “THEY
have gone too far now!” Who was the “they?” They were all the black mili-
tants. To my mind, they could work to transform our social realities, but they
could not, should not, change my God! That was just going too far!
and gave it positive meaning and thereby made it a symbol of pride. But
unless his ancestors fought for the Confederacy, I would be hard-pressed
to accept his attribution of the Confederacy or its battle flag. A more
important question: If the 20-year-old young man identified with a black
Christ, could he still identify positively with a Confederate flag?
Poussaint’s 1969 assessment of this millennial generation man would
likely not describe him as being confused about his identity as much as he
would identify him as someone seeking to distance himself from the shame
he associates with being black in America. Poussaint commented, “It is clear
that much of the passion by some Afro-Americans to be ‘integrated’ repre-
sents only a thinly disguised form of racial self-hatred.”9 Poussaint explained:
Cleage, who preceded both Jones and Hood, made foreground state-
ments that supported both of their perspectives. Poinsett paraphrased
Cleage: “What is needed, instead, is a black church with its own black
Messiah,” the minister contends, “a church preaching Black power,
Black unity and Black nationalism, a church moving beyond ‘black is
beautiful’—however wonderful that may be—to the building of black
political and economic power and black control over black cultural
institutions.”13 Interesting how Huey Newton enthroned on a peacock
wicker chair did not disrupt the black psyche in the same way the image
of the black Christ did.
“The Black Christ, painted on the dome of St. Cecilia Church in
Detroit by black artist Devon Cunningham, is a startling contrast to the
more traditional portrayal of Christ by (white) artist Warner Sallman.
Controversy over the Messiah’s color erupted (in Detroit) when the
gray stone Christ at the Sacred Heart Seminary was painted black during
Detroit riot.”14 While it is not necessary for the source of black humanity
to be the image of a black Christ, it is necessary for black Christians to
see their image and likeness of God represented in a black Christ. Father
Raymond Ellis, a first-generation Lebanese, rector of St. Cecelia Roman
Catholic Church, Detroit, Michigan, stated:
We make no claim that Christ is only black. We merely wish to affirm that
Christ today is also black. Rightly or wrongly, that affirmation had survived
THE POWER OF A BLACK CHRISTOLOGY: AFRICANA PASTORAL THEOLOGY... 167
centuries of Christian art in which Christ most often was portrayed as a long-
haired hippie. Hundreds of painted and sculptured black Madonna’s, cra-
dling their black baby Messiahs, had been patron saints in Poland, Austria,
Costa Rica, Portugal and numerous European, Central and South American
cities. Throughout Christian areas of Africa, Christ had been depicted as a
black man. In America, He had been a central figure in Marcus Garvey’s
Back-to-Africa movement in the 1920s. Members of his African Orthodox
Church were taught to tear down and burn any pictures in their homes of a
white Madonna and a white Christ and replaced them with black Madonnas
and black Christ’s for their children’s training. One of Garvey’s aged follow-
ers had gratefully offered her African Orthodox pastor five dollars for telling
her of the black Christ. It was clear to her that “no white man would ever
die on the cross for me.”15
AFRICANA AS LIBERATION
African American culture is the dynamic synthesis of an African past and
a reinterpreted and reframed American experiential present. Remaining
conscious and conscientious of the influence of African life in the diaspora
is what shapes an Africana understanding. Africana pastoral theology is a
liberation theology that has been developed and mobilized by the syn-
thesis of African healing traditions and African religions responding to
the traumas inflicted upon persons of African descent by America. The
praxis and practices of the field have evolved in response to the social
conditions of every historical period of American history. The story that
marks this land is a history of violence through massacres, chattel slav-
ery brutality, lynching nightriders and demoralizing segregation. African
Americans have resisted annihilation through the creative resourcefulness
of the spirit.16
Africana pastoral theology is a healing and liberating voice that has
been empowered by what Gayraud Wilmore identifies as black religion,
pragmatic spirituality and black radicalism. These three categories—reli-
gion, spirituality and radicalism—have inspired African American survival;
however, not just survival as a concept of subsistence, rather survival as an
overcoming and thriving in life. African American culture, as one of the
sources of Africana pastoral theology, is best understood for this work as a
“resistance culture.” The forces of death have been resisted and family and
communality have been celebrated as the highest joy and gifts from God.
Africana pastoral theology, guided by resistance and liberation, speaks out
168 L.H. BUTLER
CONCLUSION
These are reasons why the image of the black Christ became so vitally
important during the black consciousness movement. Seeing a black Jesus
provoked our belief (or disbelief) in our humanity being connected with
God’s divinity. Seeing a Jesus that looked like us declared that he knows all
about our struggle. The black Jesus for black people represented true soul
power! The point at which we fell short with our connection with Jesus as
the black Christ is while we recognize Jesus as the Son of God, we did not
accept that looking at the black Jesus was like looking in the mirror and
seeing ourselves as the children of God.
THE POWER OF A BLACK CHRISTOLOGY: AFRICANA PASTORAL THEOLOGY... 169
NOTES
1. Poussaint, “A Psychiatrist Looks at Black Power,” 142.
2. Poinsett, “The Quest for a Black Christ: Radical Clerics Reject ‘Honky
Christ’ Created by American Culture-Religion,” 172.
3. Ibid., 170.
4. Poussaint, 142.
5. Poinsett, 171.
6. Ibid., 174.
7. Ibid., 174.
8. Ibid., 176.
9. Poussaint, 144.
10. Ibid., 144–146.
11. Roman 7:24.
12. Jones, The Color of God, viii.
13. Poinsett, 178.
14. Ibid., 170.
15. Ibid., 171–172.
16. See Butler, Liberating Our Dignity, Saving Our Souls, 104–118.
17. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folks, 9.
CHAPTER 10
Almeda M. Wright
“We really don’t need a sermon this morning,” Jaramogi Agyeman began.
“We could just sit here and look at the black Madonna and marvel that
we’ve come so far…; that we can conceive of the possibility of the son of
God being born by a black woman.
“And that’s a long way for us ’cause it wasn’t so long ago when that
would’ve been an impossible … conception because our idea of ourselves
was so distorted. We didn’t believe that even God could use us for His pur-
pose because we were so low, so despised, because we despised ourselves.”1
Like the original mural unveiled in 1967 in Detroit, the mural by Carl
Owens in Shrine Nine in Atlanta is the centerpiece of the worship space.
It was there that I first fully experienced the power of an image of the
divine and understood Albert Cleage’s words that “today we don’t really
need a sermon” Upon entering, one immediately is drawn to the mural
that appears over 20 feet tall, covering the entire wall behind the pul-
pit. The young black Madonna’s brown skin is radiant, and light beams
from a halo around her head. The brown-skinned baby, also painted with
a halo of light emanating from his head, lies resting peacefully as his
mother looks on. Her hands are clasped in a sign expressing any possible
array of emotions, such as gratitude, hope, expectancy, and love. The
physical layout of the Shrine Nine all point to and center on this repre-
sentation of an African American young woman looking lovingly upon a
brown-skinned child.
***
My initial experience of visiting the Atlanta Shrine along with reading
Cleage’s work remains significant because of the relative absence of any
discussion of the color, ethnicity, and social location of Jesus, or even a
robust concept of the imago dei in my own Christian upbringing. As a
child of the late 1970s, I assumed that my faith communities reflected the
best that Cleage (and other black theologians) had to say about black reli-
gion and pride, but the truth is none of my congregations had advanced
beyond images of a white Jesus on church fans and stained-glass windows.
Thus, the discussion and role of the imago dei in my upbringing at best
was absent, at worst it continued the perpetuation of whiteness as the only
representation of the divine.
In conversation with Cleage’s work and my early experiences, in this
chapter I wrestle with the ongoing legacy of the imago dei for black young
people. In particular, I explore
• Where does the image of God show up for black youth and where is
it absent? and
• What does imago dei mean when the lives and bodies of African
American youth are regularly policed, destroyed, and defamed?
young people look up and see themselves in roles that are positive and
affirming.’”11 Thus, there have persisted images within Christian com-
munities, which many see and name as significant for the lives of African
American young people.
Outside of Christian education literature and churches, images of a black
Messiah and references to the image of God have also become infused in
some interesting ways with the culture of black youth. For example, as recent
as 2014 neo-soul artist, D’Angelo released an album, black Messiah featuring
samples of Cleage’s sermon on a track entitled, “1000 Deaths.”12 In 2012,
rapper Kanye West produced his album, Yeezus, with no cover art, but which
featured a single “I am God.”13 Other artists, such as India Arie also created
songs such as “I see the God in you” in 2001.14 It is almost impossible to
capture all references to a black Messiah or the image of God in African
American music during the last 50 years. For many youth, they have listened
to (even if they have not critically reflected upon) myriad songs such as
these. While there is less diversity, images of God and a black Jesus have also
intersected with popular culture in mainstream movies and television.
black youth have been exposed to an array of images of the divine, which
have emerged during the 50 years since Cleage’s unveiling of the black
Madonna. I affirm this array as a wonderful demonstration of the agency
and creativity of black people. But it also speaks to the complexity of how
and where these images of God emerge. For example, it is not surprising
that black artists and musicians continue to serve as major producers of
black culture and images for black youth. Likewise, I am not surprised at
the range of representations within the physical buildings and educational
resources of predominantly African American churches. This variety, and
at times inconsistency, has also paralleled a persistent criticism of the irrel-
evance of the black church within the social movements and lives of black
youth. In other words, the images that made young people sit up and take
notice are not the ones in their Sunday school literature. I argue that this is
because the images have not been accompanied by a wider discourse which
challenges the prevalence of white Jesus alongside other representations
and the ongoing struggle to articulate why or how a black Messiah, or even
being created in the image of God, is significant in their lives.
different races and ethnicities asked me what I thought God looked like,
and I responded “If I had to offer an image, God is a fierce Black woman,
with a big afro who’s super efficient and resourceful.” One young man
voiced shock at the idea of God as anything beyond male, another youth
questioned if “we could just create God in our own image?” That con-
versation evolved into a larger discussion of contextual theology, gender
identities, anthropomorphism, and power in naming or defining what was
true. During this conversation, I could tell that these young people were
still processing visceral reactions to my response even as I tried to push
them to interrogate why an image of God (even if they purported to only
see God as spirit or a conscious) was important to them.
More recently, in a conversation with two young African American
women, who grew up in a theologically conservative rural black Baptist
church, I asked directly “what color is God?” One young woman answered,
without equivocation: “He’s black! Jesus was black and he created him in
his own image…so I’d say black.” The other young woman, somewhat
more inquisitive, wanted to know why I was asking, what I was work-
ing on? She even replied “Isn't that the name of a book?”15 But as she
reflected, she said that she did not think of color when it came to God, she
had never seen God and thought it was bold that humans would even dare
to create an image of God. In this exchange, her sister backed down a little
on her conviction that God was black, but she was very clear that Jesus
was not white and based on her understanding of Palestinian Jews, he was
brown skinned. Asking for clarity on the idea that God was “colorless,” I
asked the young women to do a quick experiment using Google images,
to look up images of God. The response of the younger, more inquisitive
woman (who affirmed a colorless God), was telling: “I Googled God and
I got white Jesus!” At that point, our conversation resolved in laughter;
but there was an undercurrent of frustration with the way Jesus and God
are represented, historically and now. This brief exchange pushed me to
reflect further on why or how they connected with this colorless or black
God? Of how God interacted with them or whether it helped them to see
or say that God was on their side.
However, more significant than the responses or reactions I receive
when I have pushed young people to reflect on the image of God, I always
get excited when young people initiate these discussions or allow me to
“eavesdrop” on their reflections. For example, a few years ago I got an
emphatic call from an African American young man, who grew up in an
urban area in the Southeast and had attended both conservative white
Evangelical and black churches. He also attended a predominately white
178 A.M. WRIGHT
Christian high school. He started the phone call: “Jesus smokes Black and
Milds.” After he calmed down, he explained that he was out with some
friends that night and they experienced car trouble. As they were on the
side of the street trying to figure out what to do, a middle-aged black man
appeared from seemingly nowhere. He was smoking a Black and Mild
cigar. He knew exactly how to fix their car issue. Once the engine cranked,
they asked the man if they could offer him something for his help. He
said “no” and hurried off. At first glance, this is not an unusual narrative;
the story takes on different dimensions when one recognizes that this
“stranger” decided to help a group of Black male teens. He did not see
them, with their sagging jeans and locs as thugs or criminals. He saw them
as fellow humans, somebody’s children even, and decided to help them.
Likewise the young men did not get paranoid and refuse the assistance
of this black man, who they did not know and who smoked cigars. In
this moment, they saw and experienced a bit of the divine and named it
as such. My gratitude for this unknown man is immense on many levels,
for not leaving these teens stranded and for serving as a catalyst for this
deeper reflection. I am grateful that the teens experienced this man in this
way. As a scholar of adolescent spirituality, I often criticize the individual-
ism of youth spirituality, in that they focus on God helping them in times
of personal need; however, it is also transformative that they experienced
God’s presence and that they both offered and received affirmation of
their humanity and image of God within them in this exchange.
Contemporary youth have been exposed to more history and conversa-
tions about the probability that the historical figure of Jesus looked noth-
ing like most of the popular representations of him. However, in the midst
of this expansion of the array of representations of and images of Jesus
available to black youth, the complexity of the discussion of the signifi-
cance of these images has not been fully explored. In particular, what does
it mean for “Black Jesus” to become a parody on Adult Swim (trafficking
in many stereotypes) and not an empowering or iconic figure in the major-
ity of black Christian communities? Also what does it mean for black male
teens to name an experience of kindness as Jesus? Is this a reflection of the
nascent theology of black youth or an indictment on the state of affairs
and attitudes toward black youth in the USA? In that same year, 2013,
there were numerous news stories of black youth stopped on the side of
the road or seeking help after a car accident, who did not get assistance,
but were murdered.16
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING? THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IMAGO DEI... 179
too familiar with the demeaning stereotypes held about [them] and [their]
racial group, must add, “I am not what you believe black people to be, and
I am black.”20
Ward also points to the powerful role that churches and religious organi-
zations can have in helping adolescents shape their values and identity.21
Therefore, expanding upon Ward and others, I wrestle with how ideolo-
gies regarding the imago dei can also intersect with the development of
black youth. In other words, are religious organizations failing to offer
youth an essential resource for combating popular media images and
tropes which blame and dehumanize black youth, instead of affirming
their inherent worth and reflections of God?
It’s become impossible for black people to use Sunday school literature from
white publishing houses. Literature from Black publishing houses is just as
bad because it is a copy of the same material. Such is the persistence of white
authority. When white publishing houses began to put Black pictures in
every quarterly just to make it “respectable,” this did not change the basic
white orientation of the literature. Black church-school literature must teach
Black children at all age levels that there is nothing more sacred than the
liberation of black people.22
I was taught that I shared the same religion with the Whites who scorned me
daily. No one ever told me that my religion was different—that the White
Christian experience and the Black Christian experience were rooted in con-
tradictory ideas about God and humanity.
It was not until I read the works of James Cone … that I was able to
locate my questions about God and humanity within the larger tradition
of Black religion… I did not know that black people actually had a distinct
Black theology of liberation that reflected our historical collective social
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING? THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IMAGO DEI... 183
However, Diakite notes that even as she eagerly pursued readings by black
Theologians and as she sought answers to her questions about God and
humanity within black Christianity:
a lot of damage had already been done. In the furthest reaches of my soul,
I realized that Cone’s books could not erase the ubiquitous Whiteness of
Jesus Christ, which was deeply embedded in my consciousness and sub-
consciousness. My intellect was loyal to the Black Christ, but nothing in
my social reality, including my black church community, reinforced Cone’s
Black Christ proclamation. I knew the Black Christ was the true Christ, but
I did not believe it.24
CONCLUSION
My initial visit to the Shrine of the black Madonna included a baptism
ceremony. That Sunday, a young boy with a pacifier in his mouth, his par-
ents, and a host of extended family all joined together for the baptism of
another Black Christian Nationalist. The minister read briefly from Mark
10:13–16:
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch
them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this he
was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not
stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs… And
he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
(NRSV)
boy into her arms to be sprinkled with water. The ceremony ended as she
closed in prayer—reminding the parents and community to “renounce
the slave culture” and acknowledge the “revolutionary power of the black
Messiah Jesus that is born again in each generation.”
This practice is a reminder of Cleage’s call that we give young people a
nation. It affirms at birth that there is a community, which sees the imago
dei within this young person. And it is a reminder of the ongoing commu-
nal struggles to counter narratives which are not affirming to black youth
or that would not allow them to see God in themselves or each other.
Therefore, while image is not everything, affirming the imago dei within
black youth as a counter-narrative to a culture of disposability is a neces-
sary component in their ongoing development and well-being.
NOTES
1. Excerpts and paraphrase from Dr. Cleage’s sermon on March 26, 1967.
Transcript at http://www.theyearofrestoration.org/Jaramogi-Abebe-
Histor y.html . Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb77s
UDHMh8 (Accessed June 20, 2015).
2. Michelle Gonzalez offers a good overview of the debate within feminist
theology in Created in God’s Image: An Introduction to Feminist Theological
Anthropology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2007).
See also Nancy Eisland, Disabled God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994).
Or Thomas E. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability
and Hospitality, (Brazos), 2008 for a discussion of imago dei in conversa-
tion with disabilities studies.
3. Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), pp. 7–8.
In the introduction she discusses the ways that a black Christ is limited in
that in its current permutations it only empowered the black church to
deal with issues of race, but left it ill prepared to attend to ensuing gender
and other oppressions both within and outside of the church.
4. See a discussion of this trend in Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The
Color of Christ (UNC Press, 2012), pp. 205–207 offers a telling exchange
with Martin L. King Jr. where he models this position of the refuting the
importance of the skin color of Jesus, but never challenging the historical
accuracy of these claims.
5. I include examples of interviews with black youth who express these senti-
ments in “Integrated-Integrating Pedagogy: A Practical Theological analy-
sis of fragmented spirituality among African American adolescents” (PhD
diss., Emory University, 2010). http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/8kfj0
6. See also Evelyn Parker, Trouble Don’t Last Always (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim
Press, 2001).
186 A.M. WRIGHT
I include images of the Madonna and Child, images of Jesus, angels, and
religious and Biblical figures. This does not reflect a robust and nuanced
definition of what is divine or makes something divine; however, I am
simply reflecting on the roles of black artist in creating art for religious and
cultural purposes during this era.
This is also not an attempt to say that this was the first time that images of
God or other divine figures were painted as black or of African descent.
There are black images of the divine pre-dating Christianity. However, part
of the Black Power movement included a unique aesthetic component.
7. Alex Poinsett, “The Quest for a Black Christ,” Ebony, March 1969.
8. Examples include: Urban Ministries, Inc., David C. Cook Publishers, and
Abingdon Press, among others.
9. Examples such as AWANA’s, Lifeway, Group Publishing, among others
come to mind here. I also argue that by embracing this pre-packaged cur-
riculum, black churches have short-circuited many opportunities to articu-
late a theology that affirms black lives, or black youth as human. To be
honest, this issue goes beyond educational resources. But black churches
have in many ways offered a curriculum as if black lives and culture do not
exist, let alone matter.
10. A quick review of the resources promoted on mainline denominational
websites clearly represents this phenomenon. For one example, see http://
www.uccresources.com/collections/summer-2015-vbs- and-camp-
resources (Accessed June 24, 2015).
11. John W. Fountain, “Church’s Window on the Past, and the Future,” New
York Times, February 9, 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/
us/church-s-window-on-the-past-and-the-future.html (Accessed June 24,
2015).
12. The official website of the album is available at http://blackmessiah.co/
The album was originally scheduled to be released in 2015, but D’Angelo’s
team says that he was frustrated by the events in Ferguson, MO, and the
murder of Eric Garner that he pushed the release date up to
mid-December.
13. Kanye West, “I am God,” Yeezus, CD Track 3, Def Jams, 2013. Lyrics
available at: http://genius.com/Kanye-west-i-am-a-god-lyrics (Accessed
June 24, 2015).
14. India Arie, “I see God in You,” Acoustic Soul, CD Track 11, Mowtown,
2001. Lyrics available at http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/indiaarie/isee-
godinyou.html (Accessed June 24, 2015).
15. Referring to the text by Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
16. Renisha McBride was shot in the face as she sought her after a car
accident
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING? THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE IMAGO DEI... 187
BaSean A. Jackson
INTRODUCTION
“We don’t want to offend anyone!” These were the words that haunted
and hurt me as I heard them read to me in the middle of a contentious
staff debate. This was the rationale of an anonymous member of the pre-
dominantly Black church I pastor, when articulating why we should not
use pictures of ourselves (our Black selves!) on a sign we were considering
posting on our newly acquired land.
In a previous staff meeting, we entertained the possibility of including
candid pictures of our members, worshippers, and leaders on our sign.
We quickly sensed that this was a deeply important decision not only
about who we were, but about who we could, would, and wanted to be.
Whether we wanted to or not, we knew that advertising our church with
Black faces would further entrench us as a Black church. Existentially, we
were a Black church, but some of our staff questioned should we want to
be just a Black church. One idea was to use pictures of people who did not
even belong to our church and did not look like people in our church to
broaden the appeal of our church beyond our race. The conversation took
several turns. Each saddening me more and making me more aware of the
In the Old Testament and in the Synoptic Gospels, God is concerned with a
people, not with individuals. Yet, the slave Christianity that we were taught
told us that God is concerned with each individual. And the master told
each slave, “If you are a good slave, God is going to take care of you and you
will be saved.” He didn’t tell them that if all you Black people Love God and
fight together, God is going to help you get free from slavery. The group
concept is historic Christianity. Individualism is slave Christianity.5
His disdain for individualism was not only a result of its practical tendency
to stunt social solidarity, but it was a product of what he understood Jesus
to be fighting against in the world. Cleage paraphrases Jesus as telling his
disciples before he died: “You must serve the Nation because the Nation
is more important than you are. You must be willing to let your body be
broken, to suffer, and to shed your blood for the Nation.”6 In short, indi-
vidualism has no place in the mission of a messiah sent to save a nation.
Religion teaches us to be concerned with what concerns God.
Therefore, God’s soteriological intentions for humanity sets the tone for
the Christian’s greatest striving, at least in a perfect spiritual world. In far
too many places where Christianity’s sole salvific consumption is found in
saving individuals through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the
tone is set for an individual to be consumed with self. This kind of indi-
vidualism kills the possibility of a Black Love that claims, embraces, and
fights for our social selves. When one sees personal salvation as ultimate,
social solidarity is seen as an afterthought at best and a hindrance to spiri-
tuality at worst.
Another feature of the Black Messiah is that it understands Jesus as
being far more existentially focused than eschatologically concerned.
Like many liberation-minded critics of Christianity, in and outside of
the church, Cleage believed that Christianity’s focus on heaven did not
serve the socio-political purposes of an oppressed people. The dominant
soteriological end in many forms of Christianity is eternal life in heaven.
This idea is one of the few Christian “fundamentals” that transcends most
194 B.A. JACKSON
The Black Nation of Israel had degenerated into total corruption and hope-
lessness. Black people no longer believed in themselves and Black people no lon-
ger loved each other (emphasis mine). Their lives were molded by what they
thought they could get out of the Romans. They loved their oppressors and
hated their brothers because their oppressors had power and their brothers
were powerless.
means by claiming that Jesus was Black. Yet, when reading Cone, he must
be distinguished from Cleage in how they articulate the blackness of Jesus.
On the one hand, I don’t believe Cone ever disagrees with Cleage that the
color of Jesus was Black. In fact, he even acknowledges the profound debt
he owes to Cleage when he asserts, “Black theology must show that the
Reverend Albert Cleage’s description of Jesus as the Black Messiah is not
the product of minds ‘distorted’ by their own oppressed condition, but is
rather the most meaningful Christological statement in our time.”9 Cone
goes further in a note at the end of the chapter to say that he and Cleage
share a belief that Christ is Black. However, Cleage and Cone describe
Jesus’ blackness in very different ways. Cleage’s idea of Jesus’ blackness is
deeply rooted in his understanding that the historical evidence points to
the fact that the color of Jesus is Black. The weight of Cone’s argument
for Jesus’ blackness heavily relies on the idea that blackness is a symbol for
oppression. Whereas, for Cleage, Black as color is ultimately important in
Jesus, Cone sees the condition of blackness as most important. We see this
clearly when Cone states, “Our being with him is dependent on his being
with us in the oppressed Black condition, revealing to us what is necessary
for our liberation.” This idea moves Cone to later suggest that the Black
Jesus is “an important theological symbol.”10
Two of Cone’s students, Jacquelyn Grant and Kelly Brown Douglas
engaged Jesus, Christology, and blackness as well. In, White Women’s Christ
and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist’s Response,
Grant argued that the condition and experience of Black women serves
as a present and particular lens in which to understand the work of Jesus
Christ. Like Cone, she stressed the historical Jesus’ identification with “the
least” as a point of departure for understanding of Jesus Christ as cur-
rently manifest in the reality of Black women. Formulaically, however, she
adopted the same prioritization of the condition of Black people as the key
to understanding Jesus’ blackness. On the one hand, she quoted Cleage
by pointing out his conclusion that “To free (humans) from bondage was
Jesus’ own definition of his ministry.” Nevertheless, from here she comes
to more Coneian conclusions when she says, “This meant that as Jesus
identifies with the lowly of his day, he now identifies with the lowly of this
day, who in the American context are Black people. The identification is so
real that Jesus Christ in fact becomes Black.” For Cleage, there is no sense
of Jesus becoming Black through the current condition of Black people.
Better stated, there is no need for Jesus to become Black—he was Black.
Jesus Christ was a Black man sent to a Black people, even if by Black Cleage
simply, and loosely, means non-white.
198 B.A. JACKSON
shape the minds of Black children and give them hope for their future. As
a parent with a child who attends a predominantly white public school in
Atlanta, I have been able to point to the blackness of our mayor and our
president to assure and reassure my child to have confidence in his race
and in himself. Black people seeing other Black people in places of social
esteem and consequence helps Black people to Love themselves. Even
though all Black people are not theists, formally religious, or Christians, a
panoramic view of the landscape of American Black culture quickly reveals
the magnanimous place of Christianity and the Black church. How could
the blackness of the central figure of the most dominant religion of North
American Black people not build, boost, and buttress the Love Black peo-
ple have for themselves? Just as Black people have identified with the tri-
als and tribulations, persecutions and problems of Jesus to maintain their
sanity and self-esteem through the journey of white racism and American
oppression in all of its varying forms, being able to identify their black-
ness in the person of Jesus would undoubtedly have a tremendous effect
in combatting the legacy of white supremacy in America and positively
impacting the Black self-image.
Sadly, too many Black Christians, Black preachers, and Black thinkers
are still afraid to commit to claiming Jesus as Black. Often, when white
Jesus’ are problematized and the blackness of Jesus is proclaimed, many
flee from Jesus’ particularity and historicity all together. Yet, we can dis-
cuss the value of recognizing Jesus as non-white without limiting him or
essentializing him to race. So often, the argument for a colorless Jesus is
only a response to the struggle of what to do or say about Jesus’ contrived
whiteness or historical color. Rather than confront the racist history and
oppressive possibilities of a white Jesus, and explore the liberative and
affirming potentialities of a Black Jesus, the insignificance of Jesus’ race
is espoused. Thus, the colorless Jesus, and all attempts to de-historicize
and de-particularize Jesus, speaks to the power of white supremacy not
to its protest. It is another attempt to avoid white supremacy and not
confront and combat it. Jesus’ race can and should matter! It should mat-
ter to progressive and conscious white people who recognize the need
to critique and deconstruct “whiteness” as a construct that propagates
and perpetuates white supremacy.14 The color of Jesus can and should
matter to Black children who rarely see people who look like them in
prominent places, positions, or power. It matters to little Black girls and
little Black boys who grow up in Sunday School, Children’s Church, and
Vacation Bible School with images that move them to envisioning Jesus as
200 B.A. JACKSON
white. Having a conversation about how it matters, and even how much it
matters, is more progressive and productive than running away from the
color of Jesus.
theology of Jesus and that of Paul. Moreover, I believe this is the first real
death blow to the Black Messiah that Cleage unearths in his reading of
the gospels. In Paul, we see the beginning of eschatology eclipsing the
existential and of individualism overshadowing community. This is not to
say that Paul, alone, destroys the Black Messiah, rather he sets the founda-
tional framework for Christians to leave and lose some of the fundamental
commitments of Jesus as presented in the synoptic gospels.
Cleage credits Paul with the reconfiguring of who Jesus was and what
he meant, and the reshaping of Christianity. Against Jesus’ efforts at sav-
ing a people in this life, “Paul preached individual salvation and life after
death.”15 There are implicit and explicit reasons given for why Paul’s
Christianity and his version of Jesus and his purpose wins out. First, Paul’s
contact with the Greek and Roman world gave him ideas and philosophies
that he mixed and added to the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus
teachings. These ideas would have resonated more with a Roman world
that he was attempting to proselytize.16 Also, Cleage argues that Paul
wrote more and because the original disciples wrote less theology than
Paul, their theological understanding of Jesus died to Paul’s new recon-
struction.17 In short, Paul’s Greco-Roman infused rearticulation of Jesus
started an obfuscation of the Black Messiah that was completed in the
Middle Ages and given its most pernicious form in the slave Christianity
of America. In short, “The Christianity which we see in the world today
was not shaped by Jesus.”
The tension between ideas espoused by Jesus and ideas espoused by
Paul can be seen in several comparisons between Jesus as represented in
the synoptic gospels and the letters of Paul. For example, in Matthew 7,
Jesus hammers home the idea of bearing fruit and acting upon hearing
the message of Jesus. This is crystallized in the 21st verse when Jesus says,
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, lord will enter the kingdom of
heaven but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven’” (empha-
sis mine). Paul, however, argues in Romans 5:1 that “we are justified by
faith.” This is one of the major tenets of Protestant Christian theology,
but it is absent in the words attributed to Jesus in the gospels. Paul and
Jesus even seem to have varying views on the cross. In Matthew 16, after
predicting to his disciples that he would die, Jesus says, “If any want to
become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me.” Here, it seems Jesus sees his cross as an example and a model
of living and sacrificing in a life of Love for God and people. His following
words that if one attempts to save their life they will lose it square with
202 B.A. JACKSON
Cleage’s claim that Jesus was anti-individualism. The cross, in this light,
could easily be seen as the ultimate symbol of individual sacrifice for the
community. Paul, on the other hand, in 1 Corinthians 15 believes that
Jesus died for sins. He makes the cross some cosmic tool that is needed to
repair the relationship between God and humanity, as if God’s forgiveness
and Love is not enough. Also, the synoptic gospels do not quote Jesus as
connecting the purpose of the cross with the sins of humanity.
In numerous Bible studies, I have attempted to highlight how much
of our Christianity is shaped by Paul and not Jesus. Many people in our
church are shocked to hear this, and are even more surprised when I give
weight to this claim by highlighting the fact that in the New Testament
there were multiple ideas pertaining to how one is saved. More point-
edly, there is an idea of salvation Jesus seems to proclaim and adhere to,
and an idea that Paul espouses. For most Christians, their doctrine of
salvation is primarily informed by Romans 10:9—“because if you confess
with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you will be saved.”18 To date, few Christians I know
disagree that this Pauline text properly articulates the process of salvation.
However, I use at least two texts to show that the gospels give an account
of Jesus having another idea of salvation.
In Matthew 22, after Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment
is, he responds in verses 37–40 by saying, “You shall Love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang
all the law and the prophets.” This text, at the least, shows that Jesus felt
this was the centralizing ethical idea in Jewish law and in prophetic teach-
ing. However, another text, coupled with this answer Jesus gives, suggests
that Jesus thought this ethical prescription was salvific. In Luke 10:25–35,
we find the famous story of “The Good Samaritan.” This story begins as
a discussion about salvation. Jesus is asked about how to procure eternal
life, and he responds by asking the initial inquisitor what he thought in his
reading of the law. The lawyer answers, “You should love the Lord God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and
with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus responds, “You
have given the right answer; do this and you will live.” Jesus does not add,
edit, or expound on this answer. He simply tells the lawyer he is right. The
lawyer says nothing about “confess”-ing, “believe”-ing, or anyone being
raised from the dead, but Jesus, in a discussion about salvation, says you
A CRUCIFIED BLACK MESSIAH, A DEAD BLACK LOVE 203
are right. I ask my congregants and students, “What does it meant that
Jesus validates this formula for salvation?” The lawyer offers a version of
salvation that is more ethical (based on doing) than ideological (based on
belief), and Jesus affirms the veracity of this formula of salvation. Jesus
says, “You are right.” Of course, after pointing this out, my more theo-
logically ambitious congregants start doing theological gymnastics and
philosophical acrobatics to explain how what Paul says in Romans and
what Jesus affirms in Luke are really the same things.
Yet, in light of Cleage’s claims, let’s entertain the idea that these are dif-
ferent soteriological ideas. Confessing and believing that Jesus was raised
from the dead seems, at least on the surface, to make no social, com-
munal, or relational claim on our lives. This idea of salvation lends itself
to a very vertical, isolated, personal relationship with Jesus Christ that is
consumed and informed by belief in Jesus being raised from the dead. It
lays the foundation for how many Christians conceptualize their spiritual-
ity and prioritize what ultimately matters. However, Loving God and our
neighbor as ourselves deeply connects our salvation with how we live in
community and our existential relations with others. Of course, both Paul
and Jesus say other things that can give each of these scriptures greater
context and complexity. Still, one can see how these two starting points
can lend themselves to two totally different Christian trajectories. The
historical and quantitative victory that this Pauline theological trajectory
has seen in Christianity explains why Cleage’s Black Messiah seems alien,
even offensive, to so many. I have attempted to argue that the rejection of
Cleage, and refusal to take his portrait of Jesus seriously, is actually a rebuff
of a very viable portrait of Jesus found in the synoptic gospels.
about exhibiting the Black make up of our church and Black Christians
are reticent to claim the Black make up of our Christ, members of the
Black community are too often ambivalent about publically professing
that Black lives do matter. The colorless, racially transcendent Jesus that so
many Black people believe must be maintained to be universally relevant,
is similar to the all lives matter response to the Black lives matter move-
ment. Humanity and universality, so often masks for the desire for white
comfort, are effectually trampling the life and self-esteem of Black people.
If the murder of unarmed Black children is not enough for us to pause
to specifically address the Black plight, then what will it take for us to
Love ourselves? Disproportionate realities call for disproportionate atten-
tion. Yet, so many Black people, even those with knowledge of the imbal-
anced statistics and inequitable realities of everyday Black people still want
to trivialize the importance of blackness in our social conversations and
political activism. When a people will not care for their wounds or speak
up for their wounded, what are we left to conclude, other than there is a
lack of self-Love. When the atrocities of Black life are so palpable, but the
attention to Black wellness is so paltry, we must investigate every potential
cause and recreate much of our understanding. As a Black pastor, Albert
Cleage knew that he must start this process by re-understanding, reimag-
ining, and rearticulating Christianity and Jesus. As a present Black pastor,
I agree. If we are intent on revitalizing Black Love, then a good start is in
resurrecting the Black Messiah.
NOTES
1. Cleage eventually evolved in his idea of God. He did not continue to
believe or espouse that God was actually Black. However, I am more con-
cerned with the Christology of the Black Messiah than I am with the theol-
ogy of his once held belief that God was Black.
2. (p. 94).
3. (p. 107).
4. (p. 73).
5. (p. 43).
6. (p. 82).
7. (44).
8. The Lord’s Prayer.
9. A Black theology of Liberation (Twentieth Anniversary Edition), p. 120.
10. (Cone, 120).
11. The Black Christ, Kelly Brown Douglas, p. 83.
A CRUCIFIED BLACK MESSIAH, A DEAD BLACK LOVE 205
Kamasi C. Hill
only that God/Jesus were white but that the power dynamic would not
always work in their favor.
These nineteenth-century stalwarts laid the groundwork for twentieth-
century historians, theologians, and practitioners to challenge the domi-
nant paradigms about the historical Jesus. These twentieth-century
scholars who examined the role of black Jesus painted various pictures
of a black Jesus that spanned the ideological/theological spectrum, from
radical revolutionary, to apocalyptic preacher, to spiritual sage. The vary-
ing interpretations of the role and function of Jesus both reflected a
continuum or rejection of previous narratives. This chapter takes on the
audacious task of utilizing the literary construct of the Christ figure as an
allegory for the realities of the twentieth-century Urban Detroit. While
examining two representative cases in early twentieth -century Detroit,
this chapter positions the city as text and not simply geography. This offers
further possibilities for examining the relationship between the role and
efficacy of the black Christ figure and the black experience.
BLACK DETROIT
On paper, the city of Detroit resembled a beloved patriarch that provided
rewards to those who labored; in reality, blacks were treated as the ugly
stepchild of Detroit’s political and corporate fathers. What is also true
is that the city of Detroit can be described as a liminal space in relation-
ship to the black experience. This liminality was demonstrated many times
with enslaved Africans making their way from the South to the North,
THE CRUCIFIED CITY: DETROIT AS A BLACK CHRIST FIGURE 211
and migration, which opened the doors for racial and political strife as a
new urban proletariat began to emerge.4 Black Detroiters found respite
from the difficulties of their new transition in the faith community, the
same community that provided them solace when they lived in the South.
The black presence in Detroit before the twentieth century was
nominal at best. Although black settlement of Detroit began in the late
1760s, exact numbers are unclear because it was not until 1827 when
the Michigan legislature required that “all colored (free) persons should
be registered in the county clerk’s office.”5 Most black Detroiters in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were agrarian and domestic
workers. Black business ownership was formally documented by the early
1830s; barbershops, lunchrooms, and saloons were some of the initial ser-
vices offered in the black community.
Blacks who were able to depart from the South during this time were
members of a new generation. The elite of nineteenth-century black
Detroiters achieved a level of class clout as many of them obtained formal
education, exhibited entrepreneurial prowess, and carved a small slice of
the American dream for themselves in the post-Civil War North.6 This
group of blacks made their presence known by creating an institutional
presence that included but was not limited to mutual aid groups, cul-
tural organizations, lodges, and of course, churches.7 While institutions
like these articulated black, middle-class interests, unlike some black insti-
tutions of this time, many of them were created without the assistance
of white philanthropists. What distinguished the church from the other
institutions was its ability to serve as the nucleus for the black community.8
Many of the civic and social organizations evolved and disbanded over
the years and mainline denominational black churches became permanent
fixtures in the black communities of Detroit. Scholars of religion concur
that the church served as a central function for the black community;
however, it is important to note that this phenomenon was not exclusive
to the black religious community in Detroit. Many ethnic groups in the
city of Detroit found solace in their respective faith communities that were
generally located in an area on the east side of Detroit, commonly referred
to as Black Bottom.
RACE IN DETROIT
By the turn of the twentieth century, Detroit’s streets were stained
with the blood of a major race riot. In 1863, the front page of the
Detroit Free Press reported, “The bloodiest day that ever dawned upon
THE CRUCIFIED CITY: DETROIT AS A BLACK CHRIST FIGURE 213
Second Baptist, wrote to the Detroit Free Press, complaining about their
portrayals of black men as hyper-violent criminals, and for the most part,
these complaints fell on deaf ears.14 Additionally, Rev. Joseph Gomez, pas-
tor of Detroit’s largest church, Bethel AME was one of the main fundrais-
ers for the Ossian Sweet defense fund, and Bethel AME served as one of
the main venues various leaders used to speak out against the injustice of
racial violence in Detroit.15 Famed civil rights attorney Clarence Darrow
became the lead defense attorney. Darrow and Gomez developed a friend-
ship during this time and this event further added to the efficacy of the
black pastor in using the institution and his leverage in the city to help
bring about justice.16
Johnson and Walter White, the NAACP sought the opportunity to parlay
the case into a national exposé of racial discrimination and social inequality.
However, many blacks, including Gomez, felt that White’s and Johnson’s
focus on creating a national cause was designed to solicit funds from sym-
pathetic whites rather than achieving justice for the Sweets.
Prosecutor Robert Toms attempted to thwart Darrow’s masterful
defense of the Sweets in his closing argument. Toms told the all-white
jury, “It isn't your business to settle [the race problem].” He asked them
to remember that “this courtroom is just a tiny speck in the world,” and
that there “are other worlds to consider.” Furthermore, Toms disputed
Darrow’s claim that the people gathered outside the Sweet home had
malice in their hearts: “There is no scintilla of evidence to show that the
association banded together to drive Negroes out of the neighborhood.”20
In his instructions to the jury, Judge Murphy told the 12 men, “All
men are equal under the law, whether they be rich or poor, black or white,
humble or great. It is the duty of each of you to reach for justice.” On
November 25, 1925, the case went to the jury. The next day, the jury, after
deliberating for 46 hours, told Judge Murphy that they thought it would
be impossible to reach a verdict in the case. Murphy dismissed the jury and
declared a mistrial. According to reports, seven of the jurors had favored
conviction (for manslaughter) for Ossian and Henry Sweet; five favored
acquittal. For the other defendants, the vote was ten to two in favor of
acquittal. Darrow hoped that the hung jury would convince Robert Toms
to drop charges. However, much to Darrow’s dismay, Toms announced
plans to proceed with a second trial. After Darrow moved to have the
defendants tried separately, Toms decided to precede with a retrial of
Henry Sweet, Ossian Sweet’s younger brother, who had admitted to firing
shots out the front window in the direction of Leon Breiner. Released on
bail, the Sweets chose not to return to their Garland Avenue home. The
home was set on fire the winter of 1925–1926, but the blaze was extin-
guished quickly, and the house escaped serious damage. Upon Darrow’s
return to Detroit in April 1926, to prepare for the Henry Sweet trial, he
told reporters that he liked Detroit—especially because of its proximity
to Windsor, Ontario, where the prohibition amendment had no force.
Moreover, he looked forward to another trial before Judge Murphy, whom
he called “the kindliest and most understanding man I have ever happened
to meet on the bench.” Known for being a firebrand, Darrow even had
good things to say about the prosecutors. He described Toms as “one of
the fairest and most humane prosecutors I have ever met.” The second
216 K.C. HILL
structure.”33 The mingling of the Protestant work ethic with racial pride
demonstrates a form of black religious nationalism that most historians
credit with being the domain of male agents. However, Fannie’s seemingly
effortless ability to combine religion, race, and economics and the massive
organizational movement she built suggests that it was black women who
played an indelible role in the development of black economic nationalism
in the city of Detroit.
Fannie Peck’s embrace of Black Nationalism occurred within the con-
text of a larger nationalistic movement. Marcus Garvey’s Black Nationalist
organization, the UNIA, had a clear presence in the City of Detroit. Many
blacks in Detroit’s elite circles supported the aims of Black Nationalism,
though Garvey’s incendiary statements about some of the black religious
leadership created a rift between the UNIA and many of the leaders in
Detroit’s middle-class black community.34 Ten years prior to the arrival
of the Pecks in Detroit, Bishop Charles A. Smith, wrote a letter to the
Michigan attorney general from his office at Bethel implying that Garvey’s
comments represented a communist threat and furthermore spread false-
hoods and threats.35 Smith also judged Garvey to be “an adventurer and
grafter, bent on exploiting his people to the utmost limit.”36
The Great Depression revealed to many uplift ideologues in Detroit
that the economic vitality of the black community was just as important
as public respectability. But the legacy of UNIA wasn’t merely one of
economic self-sufficiency. Garvey’s brand of nationalism was steeped in
Christian rhetoric and theology. The UNIA’s Detroit local chapter would
be open on Sunday mornings and would often open up meetings with
worship sessions. Many UNIA members in Detroit would skip their own
worship services and attend the UNIA sessions instead. It is important to
note that the UNIA services weren’t formal worship services, but rather
were political meetings that acknowledged the presence of a God who was
on their side. Garvey’s theology wasn’t a bifurcation of religion and eco-
nomics; rather, it was a well-thought-out, non-sectarian framework, which
drew upon Christian sources.37 Even though the UNIA was expressly
political, their services could sound very religious, but while members
attended the Sunday meetings, there is no evidence to suggest that there
was a mass exodus of members from mainline churches relinquishing their
membership on church rolls.38
Five months after Fannie Peck articulated her black Christian nation-
alist impulses, W.D. Fard founded the Nation of Islam (NOI), which
also espoused its own brand of black economic nationalism. Thus, by
220 K.C. HILL
Twelve Million Negroes live in America. These citizens have been loyal
to this country’s traditions, speak its language, and obey its laws. These
Negroes spend their incomes, the same as other population groups, for
merchandise and products manufactured and sold in America. It is both
a custom and sound economics for all groups of consumers to receive cer-
tain recognition in the form of employment, proportionately and impartially
allocated. The Negro is not proportionately and impartially employed in
accordance with his purchasing power for the necessities of home and body.
A National Housewives League, representing the women of the 750,000
Negro homes, recognizing and deploring conditions, organized to conduct
an economic crusade on behalf of the employment of their children, and to
promote the progress of our race.44
CONCLUSION
Twentieth-century Detroit has produced its share of black religious leader-
ship. Religious leaders, who articulated and negotiated the black Christ in
Detroit such as Albert Cleage, Elijah Muhammad, and C.L. Franklin, not
only transformed their respective faith communities but also had a major
influence on the social and political culture of Detroit. While Detroit has
THE CRUCIFIED CITY: DETROIT AS A BLACK CHRIST FIGURE 223
seen its share of black politicians, civic and business leaders, it is the leaders
from the religious community that were directly and indirectly involved
in almost every facet of social, cultural, economic, and political decisions
that effected the black community. Black religious leaders in Detroit were
at the table with the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other labor
unions, supporters and developers of black businesses, housing projects,
educational policy, and the election of black politicians to local, state, and
national office. One example of political mobilization by clergy was the
development of the Black Slate by Rev. Albert Cleage, which was sup-
ported by other black church leaders like Rev. Charles Hill of Hartford
Memorial Baptist Church. The Black Slate was a vehicle first used to elect
Coleman Young, the first black mayor of Detroit. The slate was an organi-
zation that produced circular materials given to black voters that featured
the positions of black politicians whose goals were consistent with the aims
and goals that black religious and civic leaders articulated. Currently, the
Black Slate Inc., is in cities like Houston and Atlanta, and is well docu-
mented in assisting in the election of Atlanta’s first black mayor, Maynard
Jackson.48
Many leaders of faith communities in the USA were either forced to
address the existential crisis that plagued their communities by convic-
tion or circumstance. Those who responded found themselves engaging
in forces that appeared insurmountable with minimal resources at their
behest. Faith communities in varies cities and have always played a part
in shaping national discourse, provoking action, and summoning spiri-
tual truths within their respective epoch, often going against the grain,
and employing non-traditional methods and ideas. This is the true leg-
acy of cities such as Detroit serving allegorically as a Black Christ Figure;
agentive prophetic subjects, able to engage the political, economic, and
social milieu of their day and withstand the forces of dissent of resistance.
Detroit is going through its wilderness experience, but resurrection will
come.
NOTES
1. Teshale Tibebu, Edward Wilmont Blyden and the Racialist Imagination
(Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2012), p. 21.
2. Forrester B. Washington, The Negro in Detroit: A Survey of a Negro Group
in a Northern Industrial Center During the War Prosperity Period (Detroit,
1920), p. 21.
224 K.C. HILL
3. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black Detroit and the rise of the UAW
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981), p. 28. Henry Ford’s
plan to pay workers five dollars a day resulted in higher worker productiv-
ity and made Ford the richest man in the USA. However, it also created
massive problems, with an influx of immigrants and migrants yearning for
jobs, that Ford couldn’t possibly provide. Additionally, Henry Ford’s pro-
clivity toward racism and anti-Semitism informed his exploitative
practices.
4. Julian E. Zelizer, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security–
from World War Ii to the War On Terrorism (New York: Basic Books,
2010), pp. 4–5; Franklin D. Roosevelt had called Detroit, Michigan as the
“great arsenal of democracy” in one of his fireside chat radio reports in
1940. Roosevelt used the term in reference to the rapid transition of much
of the Detroit-area automotive industry’s conversion to produce weapons
during World War II.
5. Ibid., History of Detroit. MHC. p. 2, Feb. 8, 1928.
6. Historian William Cobb coined the term “Afrostacracy.” He describes the
Afrostocracy as the group of elite blacks who were able to achieve middle-
class status and recognition years before the beginning of the Great
Migration.
7. Thomas, Life for Us is What we Make it, 4.
8. Frazier, The Negro Church in America, 29.
9. Ibid.
10. Detroit Free Press, March 7, 8, 1863, morning eds., Detroit Advertiser and
Tribune, March 7, 1863, afternoon ed. John C Schneider, “Detroit and the
Problem of Disorder: The Riot of 1863,” Michigan History 58 (1974), 17.
11. John C. Schneider, Detroit and the Problem of Order, 1830–1880: A
Geography of Crime, Riot, and Policing (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1980), p. 13 Schneider discusses the Free Press and its insistence on
reporting on black criminality.
12. The Scottsboro Trial was the trial of nine teenage boys who were arrested
and accused of raping two white young women in Alabama in 1931. Dan
T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, Revised ed. (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), p. 135.
13. Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the
Jazz Age, Reprint ed. (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2005), p. 33.
14. Detroit Urban League Papers, 1933, MHC, box 11 folder 1933–1940.
15. Boyle, Arc of Justice, 34.
16. Ibid., 194.
17. Boyle, The Arc of Justice, 24.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
THE CRUCIFIED CITY: DETROIT AS A BLACK CHRIST FIGURE 225
39. Rosetta Ross: Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil
Rights (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), p. 150.
40. Detroit Housewives League Celebrates 51st. MHC.
41. Moon, Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes, 254.
42. History of Housewives League—Her Goal Black Solidarity. MHC.
43. Ibid.
44. Declaration of Purpose of National Housewives League. MHC.
45. New York Times, July 1997.
46. Ibid., Widick, 190.
47. Ibid., 191.
48. Dillard, Faith in the City, 304.
CHAPTER 13
Salim Faraji
S. Faraji ()
Africana Studies Department, California State University, Dominguez Hills,
Carson, CA, USA
and plenty, happiness, and the divine presence”6 to a land that has suf-
fered the calamity of foreign invasion rendered by the Persians, Greeks,
and Romans. These ancient Egyptian prophetic texts focus on the role
of divine kingship to address catastrophe and restore justice and there-
fore as “prophecy” they castigate the invaders of Egypt, the Persians and
Ptolemaic dynasties as illegitimate occupiers of the throne of Egypt. As
such these divine oracles announcing the triumph of a new savior-king
in defense of the sovereignty of Egypt actually functioned as “nationalist
propaganda” to motivate and justify resistance to what was perceived as an
interregnum of unjust and unholy reign.7
Even as the Hebrew prophetic books Ezra and Nehemiah addressed
Persian domination and Isaiah and Jeremiah spoke to the oppression of
Babylonian captivity, so too did the oracular prophetic texts of Late Egypt
confront the predicament of political subjugation. In fact, C.C. McCown
in his classic work “Hebrew and Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature” pro-
vides insight as to why Egyptian and Hebrew apocalyptic traditions are
extraordinarily comparable:
Yet there are remarkable similarities in both form and content … the use
of physical portents and disasters and of social disturbances, the bitter criti-
cisms of society and the passion for what was thought to be social righteous-
ness, and the expectation of the coming of a god-sent king exhibit such
unique likenesses to Hebrew ideas that the probability can hardly be denied
that the older Egyptian literature must have influenced the Hebrews.8
and Si-Osirie, dated to the third century BCE during the Ptolemaic era,10
provides a literary antecedent to the parable of Jesus in Luke 16: 19–31.11
The parable is often described as “The Rich Man and Lazarus.” In the
story, the rich man is subjected to the agony of fire in the afterlife and the
poor man who was ridiculed during his life was in death “carried by Angels
to the side of Abraham.” In ancient Egypt, Setne Khamwas was the fourth
son of the Pharaoh Ramses II (thirteenth century BCE), and he was her-
alded as a great and wise priest of the god Ptah. During the Ptolemaic
period, Demotic tales began to emerge about him as a result of his historic
legacy throughout ancient Egyptian history.
The Demotic Tale of Setne Khamwas and Si-Osirie is actually about the
son of Setne Khamwas, Si-Osirie. In the tale, Si-Osirie escorts his father
to the netherworld to show him a poor man who had been buried in a
mat with no one to mourn him, but in death was dressed in royal gar-
ments at the side of the god Osiris vindicated as just and righteous. His
counterpart, however, a rich man who had been buried in a coffin with
great honor and countless people mourning him was now in the spirit
world, imprisoned and denied recognition because his “misdeeds were
more numerous than his good deeds.”12
The birth of Si-Osirie in the tale is presented as an act of divine interven-
tion. Both his mother Mehusekhe and his father Setne Khamwas received
dreams announcing his conception. In fact, his father is told that his son
will be named Si-Osirie and “many are the wonders that he shall do in
Egypt.” This Demotic text which predates the Greek literature of the New
Testament is a literary forerunner to the description of Jesus’ divine birth
in Luke 1:26–38 and Matthew 1:18–25. Si-Osirie is also described as an
exceptional child in the tale who after being introduced to temple school
“he surpassed the scribe who had been given to him for instruction. The
boy Si-Osirie began to recite writings with the scribes of the House of Life
in the temple of Ptah.”13 The New Testament parallel of this Demotic lit-
erary trope is represented in Luke 2:41–52 where Jesus the boy amazes the
scribes and priests at the temple of Jerusalem. Although the representation
of Si-Osirie in The Demotic Tale of Setne Khamwas and Si-Osirie is not
identical in detail to the representations of Jesus in the books of Luke and
Matthew, the parallels suggest that these key Demotic literary themes were
widely circulated in Egypt and would have influenced the development
of early Christian literature. Consequently, the Demotic texts of ancient
Egyptian prophetic and apocalyptic literature would have also served as an
additional source for the development of New Testament motifs.
SAVIOR KING: RE-READING THE GOSPELS AS GRECO-AFRICANA LITERATURE... 231
This native Egyptian institution devoted to the copying and editing of reve-
latory texts … suggest a possible context for later Christian authorship of
apocalyptic literature. That is, it suggests that alongside the diverse Egyptian
Judaisms responsible for apocalypses and Sibylline Oracles one must con-
sider developments in the Egyptian priestly scribal institution as a source of
Egyptian Christian apocalypticism.15
this is the case with the acclamation εἷς Θεὸς (“God is One”), used by the
earliest Christian communities: this is derived from one employed in the
service of Sarapis (“One is Zeus-Sarapis”), and this in turn comes from the
early Egyptian theologians’ form (“One is Amon,” etc.)22
ditions: Judaism its father, Hellenism its midwife, and ancient Egypt its
mother.26 Describing ancient Egyptian religion as the “Mother Religion”
of Christianity, Luckert asserts that “one now must also acknowledge the
fact that ancient Egyptian religion has been Christendom’s more quiet
mother.”27
The notion of ancient Egypt as the “quiet mother” of Christianity may
be only applicable to Western Christianity and to a lesser extent Eastern
Christian traditions outside of the Nile Valley. Historians and scholars in
the Coptic Orthodox Church have long affirmed the continuity between
ancient Egyptian religion and Egyptian Christianity. The Coptic priest and
historian Father Tadros Malaty described Christian Egypt as a land that
was heir to both ancient Egyptian civilization and Christianity.28 In an
article entitled “Sons of Pharaoh and Christianity,” Malaty articulates the
dual legacy of Coptic Egypt as being rooted in both ancient Egyptian
religion and culture and Christianity. Another Coptic scholar Boulos Ayad
in his article “The Influence of the Ancient Egyptian Civilization on the
Coptic Orthodox Church” identified over 20 areas of similarities between
ancient Egyptian religious concepts and the central tenets of the Coptic
Orthodox Church. Ayad clearly situates the Coptic Orthodox Church
within the religious history of ancient Egypt “There is a very clear and
strong relationship between the cultures of the ancient Egyptians and the
Coptic Church… The Copts and their church have preserved to a great
extent the ancient Egyptian legacy which, combined with the Coptic tra-
dition, has played a large role in developing and preserving the culture of
Egypt.”29 As late as the sixth century CE, Coptic magical texts reveal that
some Coptic Christians saw no conflict between invoking Jesus along-side
Horus and Isis for healing and the alleviation of sickness and pain.30 Might
not this suggest that at least within early Egyptian Christianity, Jesus
Christ was perceived as a new Horus and son of Isis—and if this tradition
persisted in Egypt well into late antiquity, could it not have also provided
the formative basis for the construction of New Testament Christology.
The central proclamation of the New Testament kerygma is that Jesus is
the messianic savior-king as described in Mark 15:32 and Luke 23:2, and
that he was crucified and executed as “King of the Jews,” a pretender-king
to the throne of Judea (John 19:19; Luke 23:38; Mark 15:26; Matthew
27:37). Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all present diverse accounts of
Jesus. Yet they are all united in their representation of Jesus as savior-king,
and Mark and Luke specifically align the role of Jesus as messiah and king
together. Each book contains the “royal” triumphant entry of Jesus as
236 S. FARAJI
king into Jerusalem (John 12: 13–15; Luke 19:38; Mark 11:10; Matthew
21:5). Mark associates Jesus’ royal triumphant entry into Jerusalem as the
harbinger of the ancestral Davidic monarchy. For John, Jesus’ kingdom is
not of this world, yet he is also presented as a counter-king in opposition
to Caesar (John 19:12). We may pose the question what ancient kingship
traditions, motifs, narratives, and symbols informed the New Testament
author’s portrait of Jesus as the messianic savior-king. Jesus as the “King
of Jews” is the son of God (John 19:7; Mark 15:39; Matthew 16:16;
Luke 1:35). In Mark 15, Jesus is revealed to be the son of God, messiah,
and king, all at once. All four Gospels present Jesus as entering Jerusalem
as king, and each also presents his crucifixion and death as a result of his
pretention as “King of the Jews.” The “Kerygma of Messianic and Divine
Kingship” is the central claim of the four Gospels in the New Testament,
and it is because of this that these four books form the nucleus of the New
Testament canon.
Athanasius not only framed the homousia doctrine of the Nicene Creed
but he also authored perhaps most important theological treatise concern-
ing Christology, On the Incarnation, proclaiming that Jesus as the Son of
God was the Word of God made manifest among “men” because “He
gives them a share in His own Image, our Lord Jesus Christ, and makes
them after His own Image and after His Likeness, that is, the Word of the
Father, they may be able through Him to get an idea of the Father.” For
Athanasius Jesus, the Word of God became incarnate in order that human-
ity might become partakers of the divine nature:
By so ordinary a means things divine have been manifested to us, and that
by death immortality has reached to all, and that by the Word becoming
man, the universal Providence has been known, and its Giver and Artificer
the very Word of God. For He was made man that we might be made God.32
notion was absent from the Bible. At first glance, it is expected to find the
source of Athanasian theology in Greek philosophy, but indeed he was
an Egyptian who lived among the indigenous Egyptian monks of Upper
Egypt and offered to the world the most famous biography of the premier
desert father, Antony in his classic work The Life of Antony.
Athanasius emerged as a Christian theologian and bishop in an Egyptian
tradition that had been shaped by Plotinian metaphysics—a philosophy
that proposed a metaphysical unity called the One that manifested itself
as three hypostases, the One, the Mind, and the Soul. The One through
emanation differentiates itself into a multiplicity of entities that are never
ontologically severed or separated from the One. In fact, the One becomes
the many that the many may “remember” or “regain” their true essence
and nature and return to the One. Clearly, Athanasius’ theology of the
incarnation positions Jesus Christ as both one with the One, that is the
Godhead and as the Godhead’s emanation that becomes humanity in
order for humanity to become God.
Plotinian thought since the nineteenth century has been categorized
as “Neo-Platonic,” but this classification is erroneous because the third
century CE Christian theologian and church doctor Hippolytus reiterated
what was common opinion in antiquity that “The origin, then from which
Plato derived his theory of the Timaeus, is the wisdom of the Egyptians.”
He further comments citing Plato that the Greeks were like children “and
were acquainted with no theological doctrine of greater antiquity.”34
Platonic metaphysics as postulated in the Timaeus at its core was a reca-
pitulation of Egyptian metaphysics, so it was not Plotinus who was inno-
vating Platonic thought but Plato who was reinventing ancient Egyptian
philosophy for a Greek audience. Hippolytus expresses this sentiment in
a discourse where he suggested that Valentinian Gnosticism was derived
from Egyptian philosophy via Plato and Pythagoras, and its knowledge
among the Greeks could be explained accordingly “For Pythagoras and
Plato derived these tenets originally from the Egyptians, and introduced
their novel opinions among the Greeks.”35
Hippolytus also provides an extensive discussion and interpretation of
ancient Egyptian cosmology and its relation to mathematics. A review of
this commentary demonstrates that Egyptian philosophy was central to
the intellectual culture that shaped early Christian theology:
Do not the Egyptians, however, who suppose themselves more ancient than
all, speak of the power of Deity?… they asserted that the Deity is an indivis-
ible monad, both itself generating itself, and that out of this were formed all
SAVIOR KING: RE-READING THE GOSPELS AS GRECO-AFRICANA LITERATURE... 239
things. For this say they, being unbegotten produces the succeeding num-
bers; for instance the monad, superadded into itself, generates the duad; and
in like manner, when superadded into duad, triad and so forth, produces
the triad and tetrad, up to the decade, which is the beginning and end of
numbers. Wherefore it is that the first and the tenth monad is generated, on
account of the decade being equipollent, and being reckoned for a monad,
and because this multiplied tem times will become a hundred, and again
becomes a monad, and the hundred multiplied ten times will produce a
thousand, and this will be monad. In this manner also the thousand multi-
plied ten times makes up the full sum of a myriad, in like manner it will be
a monad.36
in the god Atum. Before the creation the Monad existed as a single, undiffer-
entiated seed of potentiality, floating inert in the Primeval Waters. Creation is
the process by which the One became the Many—through which the Monad
developed into the Ennead, sum of all the diverse forces and elements that
constitute the biosphere.40
In ancient Egypt, the creator is both the source of all life and the sum of
all creation, and as Amun, Ra, and Ptah, its essential nature although hid-
den is made manifest to the world.The “300th Chapter” of the Hymn to
Amun communicates this theme:
Although the gods are three, they are one in nature and three in their man-
ifestations. The uncreated creator as Amun is eternal and unknowable, yet
as Ra its immanent luminosity is shown to its creation and through Ptah
its myriad forms give design and structure to the world. Allen contends
that the three are each “gods” in their own right, “yet each too is one
aspect of a broader, unified conception of the divine.”
It is reasonable to assert that Amunian theology, Heliopolitan cosmol-
ogy, and Plotinian metaphysics provided the philosophical background for
Athanasius’ On The Incarnation as well as his support for the doctrine of
homousia as a theological explanation for Jesus’ nature in relation to the
Godhead. It was only after these theological questions were settled in the
late fourth century CE that Athanasius could then suggest or reconfirm a
biblical canon that was in agreement with the notion of Jesus Christ as the
divine savior-king, the Son of God as the essence of God sent to the world
to announce a new order. Although Athanasius’ conception of the savior-
king was far more metaphysical than earlier apocalyptic renditions, this
was necessary because a post-Constantinian Christology required a strong
metaphysical and theological basis for its claims. The New Testament
canon could only be confirmed after the Council of Nicaea had declared
Egyptian metaphysics and divine kingship as its official doctrinal posi-
tion—then the books that conformed to this tradition were recognized
and authorized as canonical.
242 S. FARAJI
I am the companion of a god, the son of a god; I will ascend and rise up to
the sky. I am the well-beloved son of Ra; I will ascend and rise up to the sky.
I was begotten for Ra; I will ascend and rise up to the sky. I was conceived
for Ra; I will ascend and rise up to the sky. I was born for Ra.44
The king as the son of Ra was the establisher of Maat. Maat was the high-
est ideal of moral philosophy and ethical practice in ancient Nile Valley
civilization.45 Even as the creator-god Ra instituted Maat at the founding
of the universe, the king too was expected to do Maat and live by Maat,
thereby fulfilling his sacred charge as arit mi Ra, “acting like Ra.”46 The
Pyramid Texts advise the king to be like Ra, “May you shine as Ra; repress
wrongdoing, cause Maat to stand behind Ra.”47 The motif of the king as
the son of Ra also appears in the Oracle of the Potter as the “king from the
Sun,” demonstrating this aspect of divine kingship persisted from the Old
Kingdom (2649–2150 BCE) to the late period in Egyptian history. In the
Oracle of the Potter, the duty to bring Maat must be accomplished in the
midst of foreign occupation and in this role the king becomes a messianic
savior-king.
The most prominent example of this “prophetic” literary tradition from
classical Nile Valley history is the Prophecy of Neferti dated to 1938–1909
BCE during the reign of King Amenemhet I in the Middle Kingdom.48
The “prophecy” retrospectively recounts events from the fourth dynasty
in the court of King Snefru where a renowned priest Neferti informs
the king of future calamities that will fall upon Egypt. Neferti describes
SAVIOR KING: RE-READING THE GOSPELS AS GRECO-AFRICANA LITERATURE... 243
Judea or Israel but ancient Egypt. The Oracle of the Potter has survived in
fragments of three extant papyri dating from the second and third centu-
ries CE. The events described in the texts however, date from the second
century BCE (130 BCE) since the prophecies are aimed at Ptolemaic rule
as opposed to the Romans. All three fragments were written in Greek,
although the original language for these texts was Demotic. The Oracle of
the Lamb is preserved in extent Greek copy dated to the early first century
CE although the original was written in Demotic and dated to the second
century BCE. The two prophecies together not only announce a new pha-
raoh, but represent an inauguration of a new era of peace and prosperity.
The Potter and the Lamb were symbolic of the creator-god Khnum in
ancient Egypt and therefore these prophecies presage divine revelation
as mediated through the priesthood of Khnum—for the potter discloses
the future of Egypt before the legendary king Amenhotep I, stating that a
king from the Sun established by Isis will restore order and drive away the
Greeks who have contaminated and defiled Egypt. Those who have sur-
vived the traumatic period will share in the blessings of the new age. Those
who have died will rise from the dead to claim their rightful position under
the protection of the new “King from the Sun.” Conversely, the Oracle of
the Lamb which may be a forerunner to the Christian image of the “Lamb
of God,” prognosticates in service of king Bocchoris that Egypt will suffer
for 900 years at the hands of the Assyrians and Persians, but in the new
Sothic cycle the world will be renewed as it was at the first time.
A consideration of ancient Egyptian and Nubian textual sources may
confirm Albert Cleage’s representation of Jesus as a “Revolutionary black
Messiah,” but with the qualification that New Testament Christology
was categorically about the triumph of a royal messianic king, a counter-
pharaoh that reaffirmed the sovereignty of the downtrodden over and
against the global imperium of Rome. Hence, Jesus is the black Messiah
because the New Testament narrators invested in him the legacy of ancient
Egyptian and Nubian divine kingship traditions—an institution that is
indigenous and most ancient in Africa.
Although Cleage did not affirm the divinity of Jesus as suggested by
the category of “divine kingship” we must not confuse ancient Egyptian
communotheistic understandings of divinity with Western monotheistic
conceptions of divinity as singular and exclusive. Communotheism asserts
that the divine is a community of interdependent, interrelated “gods”
who are united by a common ontological source.52 In such a cosmol-
ogy, the king did not exclusively embody the divine but participated in
SAVIOR KING: RE-READING THE GOSPELS AS GRECO-AFRICANA LITERATURE... 245
NOTES
1. Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament: History and Literature
of Early Christianity (New York and Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1982),
pp. 15–16, 41.
2. Ibid., p. 42.
246 S. FARAJI
17. David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds., The Image of the Black in
Western Art, Volume I: From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire
(Harvard University Press, 2010).
18. Sabrina Higgins, “The Influence of Isis on the Virgin Mary in Egyptian
Lactans-Iconography,” Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies,
Volumes 3–4 (2012): 71–91. Although Higgins argues that “there are clear
iconographic links” between Isis and Mary and that the image of Mary
“may well have been borrowed from the Isiac iconographic repertoire,”
she emphasizes the theological difference between the two in an attempt
to undermine the “cultic continuity” between Isis and Mary. In essence,
she does not dispute the fact of Isiac influence on Mary, but only that the
two divine mothers were distinct ideologically.
19. Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins
(Minneapolis: Fortress University Press, 1988), p. 285; Philpp Vielhauer,
“Erwägungen zur Christologie des Markusevangeliums,” Zeit und
Geschichte Erich Dinkier, ed. (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1964),
pp. 155–169.
20. Mack, A Myth of Innocence, p. 285.
21. Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a
Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra (Bloomsbury UK, 2011),
pp. 270–273; H. Brunner, Die Geburt des Gottkonigs (Wiesbaden, 1964).
22. Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion, trans. Ann E. Keep (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1973), p. 254.
23. Ibid., p. 257.
24. Charles S. Finch III, Echoes of the Old Darkland: Themes from the African
Eden (Khenti Press, 1991), pp. 179–216.
25. Although not considered within the domain of modern Egyptology, the
pioneering and influential work of Samuel Sharpe, Egyptian Mythology and
Egyptian Christianity (London: John Russell Smith, 1863) and Gerald
Massy, Ancient Egypt Light of the World (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907)
focused on the Egyptian background of Christianity. See also E.A. Wallis
Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians: Studies in Egyptian Mythology Vol. 1
(New York: Dover Publications, 1969), pp. xiv–xvi; The Gods of the
Egyptians: Studies in Egyptian Mythology Vol. 2 (New York: Dover
Publications, 1969), pp. 220–221; Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection
Vol. 2 (New York: Dover Publications, 1973), p. 306. Budge’s The Gods of
the Egyptians and Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection were originally pub-
lished in 1907 and 1911 respectively. See also Cheik Anta Diop,
Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology (Lawrence Hill
Books, 1991), p. 336. Diop provided commentary on Ancient Egypt’s
relationship to Christianity and suggested further exploration on the
Egyptian roots of Christianity and a study on the parallels between ancient
Egyptian temple ritual and Roman Catholic liturgy.
248 S. FARAJI
26. Karl W. Luckert, Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire: Theological and
Philosophical Roots of Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective (Albany:
State University of New York Press), pp. 28–29, 32.
27. Ibid.
28. Tadros Malaty, “Sons of Pharaohs and Christianity,” Coptic Church Review
1, no. 1 (Spring 1980): 18–21.
29. Boulos Ayad, “The Influence of the Ancient Egyptian Civilization on the
Coptic Orthodox Church,” Coptic Church Review 9, no. 4 (Winter 1988):
105–114.
30. For a discussion of Coptic magical texts, see Marvin Meyer and Richard
Smith, eds. Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power
(HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), pp. 95–97.
31. Athanasius, Exposito Fidei 2, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, Ante-
Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark and Grand Rapids, MI:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 84.
32. Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54, no. 3, p. 65.
33. Athanasius, Defense of the Nicene Definition 1, no. 1, p. 150.
34. Hippolytus, The Refutation of all Heresies 6.16, eds., Philip Schaff and
Henry Wace, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark and
Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996),
pp. 81–82.
35. Ibid.
36. Hippolytus, The Refutation of all Heresies 4, no. 43, pp. 40–41.
37. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 1.15, eds., Philip Schaff and Henry
Wace, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark and Grand
Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 315.
38. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 6, no. 4, p. 488.
39. James P. Allen, ed., Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian
Creation Accounts Yale Egyptological Studies 2 (New Haven, CT: Yale
University, 1988), p. 48.
40. Ibid., p. 57.
41. Ibid., p. 62.
42. R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1969), p. 225, lines 1461–1462.
43. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, p. 156, line 887.
44. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, p. 207, lines 1316–1318.
45. Maulana Karenga, Maat: The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt; A Study in
Classical African Ethics (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).
46. Ibid., p. 32.
47. Faulkner, Pyramid Texts, p. 238, lines 1582–1583.
48. Erik Hornung, History of Ancient Egypt: An Introduction (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 50.
SAVIOR KING: RE-READING THE GOSPELS AS GRECO-AFRICANA LITERATURE... 249
49. Fontes Historiae Nubiorum: Textual Sources for the Middle Nile Region
Between the Eighth Century BC and the Sixth Century AD Vol. I, eds.,
Tormode Eide, Tomas Hagg, Richard Holton Pierce, and Laszlo Torok
(Bergen: Norway: University of Bergen Department of Classics, 1994),
no. 9, pp. 62–118. Hereafter, cited as FHN.
50. FHN I, no. 26, pp. 181–190.
51. Donald B. Redford, From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient
Egypt (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), p. 107.
52. A. Okechukwu Ogbonnaya, On Communitarian Divinity: An African
Interpretation of the Trinity (New York: Paragon House, 1994), pp. 33–49.
Ogbonnaya devotes a chapter to discussing the communotheistic elements
of ancient Egyptian conceptions of the divine and views it as the theoreti-
cal foundation of Tertullian’s Trinitarian thought. For a more recent dis-
cussion, see Monica A. Coleman, “From Models of God to a Model of
Gods: How Whiteheadian Metaphysics Facilitates Western Language
Discussion of Divine Multiplicity,” Philosophia 35, no. 3–4, (Dec. 2007),
pp. 329–340.
CHAPTER 14
Pamela Lightsey
What can a reflection on the pastoral and political work of The Reverend
Albert B. Cleage Jr. contribute to queer theology? This chapter considers
that question putting Cleage’s work in conversation with womanist queer
theology. Admittedly, I balked at the very notion of writing about this
Black leader whose name brought to mind the imagery of Black national-
ism, a movement that I felt espoused a heavily patriarchal doctrine clothe
under the myth of a triumphant and separatist Black Nation.
It took a few days of going back to his written publications while at
the same time attending to my own anger with current acts of racism to
settle myself with the possibility that Cleage has left activists such as myself
a legacy upon which to build and yes, to problematize for the benefit of
the Black community, particularly Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
and queer (LGBTQ) persons. Just as Cleage’s name invokes a pushback
P. Lightsey ()
Boston University School of Theology, Boston, MA, USA
the Black Messiah’s nation building as inclusive of its Black LGBTQ fam-
ily and those who have given themselves to the call of God who is Black
because of God’s preferential option for the oppressed.
BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL
Cleage’s model of Jesus as Black Messiah extends from his context as a
Black Christian nationalist. The nationalists of his era argued that Black
people were an oppressed nation of people whose allegiance must be to
the uplifting of Black people. Self-determination, Black liberation, and
empowerment were key aims of this ideology. Black nationalists expressed
a growing discontent with the imposition of white supremacy by way of
societal racism against Black people and Black culture. Therefore, the work
of Black nationalists such as Cleage often focused on encouraging Black
solidarity against strategies of “co-existence” such as accommodation and
assimilation. What follows is an excellent description of nationalism:
It is true that Black nationalists of the late 1960s and early 1970s had
reason to be skeptical of messages of nonviolence and reconciliation. They
had witnessed too many Black leaders (including Dr. King) and innocent
citizens murdered despite preaching the very message of nonviolence. The
remnant Black leadership was left in the precarious position of encourag-
ing retaliation—and thereby betraying Dr. King’s memory—or continuing
nonviolent protest and collaborating with white political leaders, something
that would make them appear as weak sell-outs to the more militant nation-
alists. Disillusioned with what they felt was Black bourgeoisie status quo
leadership young Black nationalists, wanting to strengthen in-group values
picked up the rallying theme, “Black Power.” Their fists in air, Afrocentric
jargon, and exhortations to Black self-determination challenged the sense
HE IS BLACK AND WE ARE QUEER: THE LEGACY OF THE BLACK MESSIAH... 255
paintings, or by carvings, or any other form or figure, have conveyed the idea
that the God who made them and shaped their destinies was symbolized in
themselves, and why should not the Negroe believe that he resembles God.4
This insistence that God was Black was considered by nationalists such
as Turner as a theology essential to building an attitude of self-respect
among the newly freed people5 facing the rising terror of lynching and Jim
Crow laws. Perceiving God, almighty and revered, as Black was the key to
Black self-respect. To be the imago dei meant the dei must also be Black,
thus conferring dignity and value to their very being. Though his later
declarations about God differed from Turner, Cleage early on argued that
God was Black. He insisted, “Certainly God must be Black if he created
us in his own image.”6
As for Jesus, Cleage staunchly insisted: “Jesus was the non-white leader
of a non-white people.”7 The new theology which Cleage preached—that
which the Shrine of Madonna was predicated upon—needed to be “built
on the Black Nations’ conception of nation and God’s chosen people, and
the revolutionary teachings of the Black Messiah, Jesus. This alone trans-
forms the entire thought patterns of a people.”8
The Black Messiah, the Jesus, whom Cleage preached about to his con-
gregation was not only revolutionary, but human and not divine. He was
a “brother” who “stood up to the man.” This translated to the Black
Messiah’s teaching being able to influence Black people living under rac-
ist oppression to stand up to the ruling powers of their time. Jesus, in
Cleage’s vision, was a human transformative force by way of his revolu-
tionary practices.
Thus, Cleage’s sermonizing and activist leadership helped shift his fol-
lowers’ conceptualization of Jesus from the suffering servant and Lamb of
God motif to the Revolutionary Zealot. Abolitionists had often used the
suffering servant rhetoric and the imagery of Christ on the cross to uphold
a doctrine of redemptive suffering that influenced slaves to be obedient
to white masters and Black people of later generations to be religiously
patient with oppression.9 The faithful Black flock of Christ the Messiah
who was tortured on Calvary’s cross took comfort in bearing their crosses,
believing that just as Jesus ascended into power “after while by and by”
they would be rewarded “over in glory.” To be successful, Cleage would
need to disabuse Black people of the suffering servant and Lamb of God
motifs.
HE IS BLACK AND WE ARE QUEER: THE LEGACY OF THE BLACK MESSIAH... 257
The white man is not going to admit that Jesus was Black. He is going to
twist history to make it fit the pattern of white supremacy. He will continue
to paint pictures of Jesus looking the way he wants him to look… Jesus was
Black, and he did not preach universal love. Remember the white Gentile
woman who came to Jesus asking him to heal her daughter? “I don’t have
time to waste with Gentile. I have come to the house of Israel,” Jesus said.10
If the Black Messiah did not preach universal love as Cleage stated, what
did he preach and what was his ministry? Without equivocation, Cleage
stressed, “Jesus was born to a Black Mary, that Jesus, the Messiah, was a
Black man who came to save a Black Nation.”11 However, he contends,
“The new Black Church will not ask for faith in Jesus, a mystical Savior,
but for faith in one another and commitment to walk in the struggle as
defined by the Black Christian Nationalist movement.”12
Predicting resistance to his theology by Black Christians who had been
nurtured in Sunday school and their churches by white Christian scholar-
ship and religious imagery, Cleage preached that Black people had been
miseducated about Jesus, and that the Black Nation needed to “reclaim”
its history, faith, religion, and Black Messiah as well as reinterpret such
doctrines as that of resurrection.13 To those who criticized his theology
and social activism as lacking an emphasis on love for humanity, Cleage
responded that members of the Black Nation needn’t concern themselves
with loving everyone especially not one’s enemy. In fact, love could be a
distraction.
We have to concern ourselves with justice, not love. We can’t go to the white
man and ask him to love us. We’ve done it too long. It’s futile… Love is only
something for inside the Nation… Jesus didn’t spend all of his time walking
around talking about love. He was trying to bring the Nation together.14
It would take justice not love to gain their liberation. Here Cleage’s
theology is markedly different than Black people had become accustomed
to hearing. Reading, The Black Messiah, you get a picture not only of what
Cleage thought but also the resistance of some Black people to his preach-
ing and teachings.
258 P. LIGHTSEY
Yet because of the nation’s racial history, Black nationalists like Cleage
refused to respond to the questions and concerns of anyone not commit-
ted to Black Nation building. They felt no need to give an account for their
commitment to love or to blackness, no need to fear as had their ances-
tors been compelled when asked by white oppressors, “Whose nigger are
you?” They perceived most Black people were free in body but opined that
too many acted out each day with a niggerized—Uncle Tom—mentality.
Because Black people were, and still remain such a religious people,15 there
was profound value in preaching about the beauty and power of blackness.
This Cleage and other Black nationalists did brilliantly. Afrocentric discus-
sions rose significantly in the 1960s and 1970s. The beauty of blackness
was declared in music, in the arts and in our fashion. Declaring the
blackness of Jesus or of God was a not a new paradigm for Black Christians
but it took on increased value during this time of rising Black nationalism.
Is there still value in asserting the blackness of Jesus and to what end?
What, if any, pitfalls lie in this claim of a cultural identity based on race?
Is there any value to the claim of the Black Messiah for Black LGBTQ
persons?
The term has “cultural integrity,” Mr. Jackson said after a meeting with
other prominent African-Americans in Chicago on Monday. “Every ethnic
group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical
cultural base. African-Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity.”16
tors and their dark beauty. Yet, their connection as “African” was torn by
years of captivity. Indeed, when enslaved, they had no “naming” power.
Their identification was constructed by captors who named them Negro,
Negress, niggers, and colored. Centuries later, it was a political and cultur-
ally psychological triumph to identify us, our protest, our worship and our
Messiah as Black. It signaled a proud difference from white and established
a sense of esteem about darker skin pigmentation. Black was the baby and
no one dare call the baby ugly.
Cleage and others after him were not interested in what white people
thought of their blackness but what Black people thought of their Black
bodies. The Black Messiah resonated with their day-to-day experiences
and the story of his resurrection and power over death and dominion ush-
ered in an immense sense of self-worth. The Black Messiah as God in Black
flesh was a healing balm. God in despised skin. The Black Messiah as God
rejected by the power elite demonstrated the arrogance and foolishness
of racism. The image of the Messiah as a Black man, walking among the
Black outcasts of the world, healing them, partying with them, praying for
them, teaching them, and leading them to victory over oppressive ruling
authorities challenges racial stereotypes. This was, and is, a Jesusology not
easily dismissed now that it has taken root. It does have value for a group
of people who have had their liberties trammeled and social privileges
denied solely because they are regarded as Black and therefore inferior.
An artistic testament to the value of the Black Messiah paradigm can
still be seen across Black churches in America where stained glass images
of a white Christ have been replaced with that of a Black Christ. Further,
it is not uncommon to hear preachers interpret Revelation 1:14 to mean
the coming Messiah has physical characteristics (phenotype) to that of
a Black man or to hear them paraphrase the stories and sayings of Jesus
using cultural idioms.
Nonetheless, Cleage’s campaign of resistance against white hegemony
has also been rightly critiqued for its essentialist traits. Though promot-
ing the idea of group identity and self-determination has been a helpful
survival and resistance strategy there is no unique, inherent quality that is
true of all Black people. They (we) are not all the same and therefore to
suggest a Black groupthink is inaccurate and, what is more, problematic
because it too often rests on an ideology of victimization. The “we against
them” argument has limited mileage.
In addition, a careful analysis of Cleage’s publications reveals the tinge
of authoritarianism. Frankly, this does not, in my experience, appear to
260 P. LIGHTSEY
Both the Black nationalists movement and the Black Church are patriarchal
in nature… This meant, then, that the role presented for woman would be
subservient and private. For Black women, the affirmation of ‘Black pride’
meant acceptance of this role. Therefore, rather than serving as a solidifier
of the total Black community, both the Black nationalist movement and the
Black Church have relegated Black women to the lower level of citizenry.17
as Jesus identified with the lowly of his day, he now identifies with the lowly
of this day, who in American context are Black people. The identification is
so real that Jesus Christ in fact becomes Black. It is important to note the
Jesus’ blackness is not a result of ideological distortion of a few Black think-
ers, but a result of careful Christological investigation.20
Womanist scholars for quite some time have celebrated the value of
using the experiences of women who identify as Black as legitimate epis-
temological source for doing theological investigation. They draw upon
Black women’s history, fiction, and nonfiction narratives as well as eth-
nographic research. Similar to Black nationalists, they are committed to
the self-determination of Black people but think more broadly about the
“survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female,” including the
“woman who loves other women sexually and/or nonsexually.”26 Though
not yet perfect, womanist theologians are mastering the nationalist ideal
that critiques individualism expanding it to a community that is intention-
ally made up of diverse persons.
In the case of the “woman who loves other women sexually” not only
have we benefited from the work of Alice Walker and other Black women’s
narratives, but poststructuralists—especially queer theorists—have done
extensive work, identifying the limits of identity categories and how the
way we understand ourselves is constituted through language. We speak of
ourselves and about others using referents that are created and used within
a particular social context. So, for example, to say that I am “a Black queer
lesbian” is a mouthful because it conveys not only my understanding of
myself, the history behind the terms but also for the hearer the meanings
and possibly the stereotypes associated with these categories. And because,
“Black queer, is an ambiguous statement, a vague identity category that is
often lost in translation I elected to add “lesbian” to the term. Are there
ways of doing Black as it has been socially constructed and continually
framed? Dare we womanist LGBTQ scholars, borrowing from Cleage’s
Black Messiah imagery privilege the Queer Black Messiah?
HE IS BLACK AND WE ARE QUEER: THE LEGACY OF THE BLACK MESSIAH... 263
publications that articulate our theories regarding God, the Church, and
Creation. Among the most provocative manuscripts to treat the queer-
ness of God is the late Marcella Althaus-Reed’s The Queer God, where
she uses “theological queering” to “mean the deliberate questioning of
heterosexual experience and thinking which has shaped our understanding
of theology, the role of the theologian and hermeneutics.”29 Addressing
God’s transcendence, Althaus-Reed states:
With so many making theological claims about what Jesus (and God)
think about same-sex marriage and of course, human sexuality, it may be
that looking back at Cleage’s doctrine of the Black Messiah in particular
and Christianity in general is worth investigating. Though his assertions
against valuable relationship building between Black and white people are
untenable, his approach to the problem of oppression is helpful in that it
points scholars to re-examine the biblical text and what we have drawn and
continue to draw from the text about the Christ.
Avoiding separatism, Black LGBTQ persons ought never to declare as
Cleage that we are “God’s Chosen People.” Nevertheless, we must stead-
fastly demand recognition as God’s people. Black LGBTQ Christians do
well to embrace a theological ethic that commits to building God’s nation
though we must bristle with any talk of building a separate Black nation.
To be fair, Cleage’s vision for Black people was that of a “nation within
a nation” so as to allow for the liberation and independence of Black peo-
ple. Yet his idea of a “nation within a nation” would need to be nuanced
and held in tension with contemporary ideals of Black separatism. How
does his vision differ? How might his vision resonate with Black people
who longingly question why Black money can’t be primarily spent in Black
communities, “on our businesses and for our people”? Most importantly,
can we Black LGBTQ persons imagine our lives in Cleage’s quasi-self-
sufficient community of Black people and institutions?
As womanist, we diligently work for the folk because we are “commit-
ted to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.”33 I would
argue that the womanist ideal—vis-à-vis Black liberation—is best poised
to be the intellectual resource for social justice activism. As Christians, we
do hope that the time will come when racism and homophobia are eradi-
cated. It explores the complex lives of Black people in far more affirming
ways than people were willing or perhaps capable of doing during the days
of Cleage’s Black Messiah.
In the final analysis how we imagine the Jesus is subject to the teach-
ing we received and the contexts from which the teachers emerged. It is
worthwhile for Black LGBTQ Christians to affirm the Black Messiah has
entered the world, Son of the Queer God. Unlike Cleage, I argue that this
Black Messiah must be divine. When God took on flesh, Emanuel—God
With Us—in the person of Jesus came to seek and save those who were lost
(Luke 18:10). His sexed body with penis covered in loincloth walked the
dusty roads of Palestine and on the waters of the Sea of Galilee doing min-
istry consistent with that purpose. The performativity of his blackness was
266 P. LIGHTSEY
NOTES
1. William L. Van Deburg, “Introduction,” in Modern Black nationalism
From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, ed. William L. Van Deburg (New
York: New York University Press, 1997), p. 3.
2. The most notable artist articulation of that ideology was soul singer, James
Brown’s chart-breaking single, “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud,”
a number one hit. It was Brown’s decision to follow through with his
appearance in Boston the day after King’s assassination that many attribute
to saving the city.
3. Albert Cleage, The Black Messiah (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968),
p. 4.
HE IS BLACK AND WE ARE QUEER: THE LEGACY OF THE BLACK MESSIAH... 267
Josiah Ulysses Young
The present crisis in America, involving as it does the Black man’s struggle
for survival in America, demands the resurrection of a Black church with its
own Black Messiah. Only this kind of a Black Christian Church can serve as
the unifying center for the totality of the Black man's life and struggle. Only
this kind of a Black Christian Church can force each individual Black man to
decide where he will stand—united with his own people and laboring and
sacrificing in the spirit of the Black Messiah, or individualistically seeking his
own advancement and maintaining his slave identification with the white
oppressor.3
discuss have not emphasized the skin color of the historical Jesus (though
none seem to hold that he was white in the modern sense of the word);
they, rather, assume the Johannine principle of the Incarnation as system-
ized by fourth-century CE Alexandrians (Hellenized Egyptians) such as
Athanasius and Cyril. Their African messiah is, therefore, based on John
1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (“Kai ho logos
egeneto sarx kai eskēnōsen en hēmin”). Their premise is that the Christ
(Messiah)7 is the Creator’s eternal image (Word). What matters most for
them is their understanding of “God’s” humanity rather than the shade of
his flesh, which, one is to understand, is epiphenomenal to the universal
symbol of the Word. One might say that the Word here is as rooted in the
Hebrew notion of Wisdom, hokmah, as it is the Greek notion of the Logos
(ὁ λόγος). We are to understand that “God’s” Word has given all people
who set stock in the biblical narratives the freedom to symbolize God’s
image as their own both conceptually and iconographically. In discussing
their perspectives, I intend to demonstrate the diversity of the Pan-African
Messiah of liberation. In my view, Pan-Africanism, such as that cham-
pioned by Cleage, can never be reduced to any one of its proponents.
Its overriding trans-contextual purpose is to facilitate socio-economic and
political projects that improve the quality of life of African-descended peo-
ple all over the world.
I
The 1957 groundbreaking text, Des prêtres noirs interrogent (DPN), pres-
ents the views of West and Central African and Haitian Roman Catholic
priests who wonder how the salvific meaning of Christ can be conveyed
in the thought forms indigenous to African-descended people. They
thus wrestle with the problematic fact that outside of Ethiopia and the
Christian traditions of Nubia,8 Christianity came to Black Africa through
European missionaries. In service to the colonial project, most white mis-
sionaries devalued African traditional values. The African independent
churches—grassroots movements more beholden to African Traditional
Religions than Western interpretations of Christianity—rejected such
colonial missiology. For many, however, including a number of European-
trained African clergy, such as those who penned the DPN essays, the
independent churches were heterodox (sectes pagano-chrétiennes, as one
priest put it).9 Still, the DPN priests, trained by Europeans, began to won-
der how they could Africanize the Christian faith. Not unlike the leaders
272 J.U. YOUNG
African theologians of the period spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Mulago’s “Nécessité de l’adaptation missionnaire chez les Bantu du Congo”
(“The Necessity of Inculturation among the Congolese Bantu”) argues
that Black Congolese priests must employ the thought forms and ritual
sensibilities of the Congolese people if their faith is to be more than a shal-
low assimilation of Euro-Christian symbols foreign to them. One calls this
missiology inculturation (i.e., adaptation) in the sense that the Christian
faith must be adapted to (i.e., sown deeply into the souls of) African peo-
ple if it is to become indigenous to the Continent over time (as it has in
Ethiopia, one might add).17 The Messiah must become Congolese on the
model of the Incarnation (as in John 1:14).
For Mulago, therefore, inculturation (i.e., l’adaptation) is the extension
(prolongement) of the Incarnation of the Word, “the adaptation of God
to humankind.”18 Mulago writes further, “The Logos, in assuming our
poor human nature, has not first stripped it of its properties; in bending
down to us, the [Messiah] lost nothing of who he was: perfect God, per-
fect Man, in a perfect unity; such is the mystery of the Incarnation, which
the Church has never ceased to reproduce in its missionary élan.”19 For
Mulago, the Incarnation undergirds Black people’s “right” to see “God”
in their own image. Mulago’s “Le Pacte du sang et la communion alimen-
taire: Pierres d’attente de la communion eucharistique” (“The Blood Pact
and the Communal Meal: Preparation for the Eucharist”) exemplifies how.
He writes of how Rwandans were often able to resolve precolonial
conflict in reminding one another of their commonality—a single lan-
guage, one king, and a common national ancestor cult (le génie cultuel)
Lyangombe. They drank an herbal, red-colored mixture from the same
vessel and then shared a meal, eating from the same plate. They shared,
as it were, the same blood.20 Mulago argues that the blood pact and the
common meal would be a fitting way to Rwanda-ize the Lord’s Supper
because the pact had already instilled in Rwandans the sense that they
were one people. The Christianization of le pacte du sang—a ritual that
was part of the culture before the coming of the Germans during the
colonial period—would thus fortify the pacific values within the culture.21
The generation of African theologians Vincent Mulago represented,
however, wrote little about neocolonialism and the millions of lives it has
consumed.22 They failed to address the ramifications of colonial rule, rami-
fications that made “independence” impossible. Europe’s imposition of
colonial borders, arrogant disregard for ethnic differences among African
people and brutal administration of European interests did not evaporate
274 J.U. YOUNG
when one African nation after the other became “independent” in the late
1950s and throughout the 1960s. (To borrow a line from Nigerian writer
Wole Soyinka, neocolonialism stems from the “tainted” seeds “sown at
the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884.” Now those seeds have devel-
oped into deadly conflicts.)23
In Rwanda, for instance, the German and the Belgian colonists exac-
erbated existing tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu. The Germans
encouraged the Tutsi to think of themselves as racially superior to the
Hutu. Later, after the First World War, the Belgians—to whom the League
of Nations gave the former German colony of Rwanda—“made this polar-
ization the cornerstone of their colonial policy.”24 The 1994 Rwandan
genocide in which the Hutu majority killed nearly a million Tutsi—an
event that many Westerners view as the outcome of tribalism unchecked
by European governance—was the tragic outcome of decades of colonial
rule. The apartheid-like system the Belgian colonialists set up and nur-
tured in large measure through the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda
is partly responsible for the genocide.25 One wonders, in the spirit of the
inquisitive Black priests: Rwanda would have hacked itself apart so sav-
agely if it had remained true to the upward path of its own indigenous cul-
ture—held fast to a Rwandan Messiah, as it were, who helped the people
see the folly of shedding, as opposed to sharing, their blood? Although
most of the essays in DPN seem unaware of the impending neocolonial
disasters, their Christologies bring out the integrity of African traditional
values. These values alone are not sufficient for the upbuilding of a devas-
tated Africa, but they are necessary for that task.
II
One of the outstanding African theologians to take on neocolonialism was
Cameroonian Jesuit Engelbert Mveng, whom I have mentioned above.
He wrote compellingly of the inextricableness of the themes of incultura-
tion and liberation in Black African theology and was a central figure in
the l’Association Œcuménique des Théologiens Africains (AOTA)26 and
the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT).
He writes in Théologie libération et cultures africaines: Dialogue sur
l’anthropologie négro-africaine (Liberation Theology and African Cultures:
Dialogue on Black African Anthropology) that the first task of the Church
faced with neocolonialism and its aftermath (néocolonialisme et à séquelles)
is to be true to its call to salvation and truth. For Mveng, then, the Church
THE “BLACK MESSIAH” AND AFRICAN CHRISTOLOGIES: PAN-AFRICAN... 275
must denounce “the system of injustice and the structural domination that
weighs down (“pèsent sur”) humankind today.” Liberation theology in
Africa must radically denounce the world’s sin (has as its task la denuncia-
tion la plus radicale du péché du monde) qua neocolonialism.27
One of my favorite books of his is L’art d’Afrique noire: liturgies cos-
mique and langage religieux (Black African Art: Cosmic Liturgy and
Religious Language.)28 The book is a moving survey of Black African
art as gleaned from traditional Bantu cultures. The Bantu are a diverse
people—Zulu, !Xhosa, Shona, Kikuyu, BaKongo—who are dispersed
throughout Central, Southern, and East Africa. For Mveng, traditional
Bantu art—prayers, drumming, sculpture, masks, textiles—reveals that the
human being is divided. In the innermost being of himself or herself, one
is both free and determined by the world (Il est liberté créatrice assumant
le déterminisme du monde.). The African thus wages a constant struggle
within his or her soul to assert his or her freedom over what seems to
be fixed in the world. A fruit of this struggle is art, through which one
realizes “the triumph of Life over Death” (Le triomphe de la VIE sur la
MORT).29 A fortiori, life’s victory over death is for Mveng the meaning
of the Gospels’ Messiah, who took on the anti-life forces that spread cor-
ruption and death—“the problem of Evil” (du Mal)—and defeated them
in his Resurrection.
It bears repeating that for Mveng, the forces that spread death through-
out Black Africa are political and socio-economic. He thus writes in one of
his essays that I find to be seminal, “Récents développements de la théologie
africaine” (“Recent Developments of African Theology”), that the entire
continent has been struggling for liberation in ways that are devastatingly
acute—liberation from the Western powers and, at that time, the Soviets,
all of whom were using Africa to advance their geopolitical agendas. This
struggle over African resources and coastal areas of the Atlantic and the
Indian Oceans pulled Africa apart and promoted the death pangs (l’agonie)
of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). When Mveng penned this
essay apartheid was rampant in South Africa, tribalism (narrow nation-
alism, cronyism) undermined fair play and despots perpetrated crimes
against humanity in places such as Zaire, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea and
Uganda.
Mveng’s African Christology is summed up for me by his drawing of
the African Messiah depicted in his book L’art d’Afrique noire: liturgies
cosmique and langage religieux. His Black Messiah symbolizes the struggle
for the rights and dignity of African-descended people who have yet to
276 J.U. YOUNG
enjoy the fruits of political independence from their colonial and neoco-
lonial masters. Painted in shades of red and Black and surrounded by red
and Black patterns suggestive of a textile, Mveng’s Messiah’s hands are
raised, showing the nail marks. A halo featuring three cone-like shades
of red suggestive of light surround his mask-like face. His robe draped
around his body in the form of a chalice is awash with chevron patterns
and covers his body, except for his upraised hands and feet positioned in
what ballet dancers call “first.”30
According to Mveng, the Messiah symbolizes African theologians’
struggles with six critical issues. The first issue is the liberation from the
influence of the white West, which has complicity in Africa’s dysfunction.
The liberation from the hegemony of Western philosophical traditions
rooted in Aristotelian–Thomistic deduction or Hegelian dialectic (i.e., la
logique aristotélicothomiste ou la dialectique hégélienne) is the second issue;
and the third has to do with the struggle to explore the continuity between
YHWH-Elohim and the Father of Jesus Christ without privileging the
oppressive Western theologies and Christologies, which have undermined
the kerygma (la Bonne Nouvelle du Salut) for oppressed people.31
The fourth critical issue Mveng identifies is the one for which he is most
well-known—namely the problem of anthropological wretchedness (pau-
vreté anthropologique).32 (I translate pauvreté as wretchedness to allude
to Franz Fanon’s classic text, The Wretched of the Earth.) Pan-African in
implication, such wretchedness is linked to the exploitation of Black labor.
One thinks about the misery of Congolese workers whose back-breaking
labor supplies the world with the coltan indispensable to digital technol-
ogy (computers, iPhone, etc.). Inseparable from such wretchedness, more-
over, is spiritual deprivation that signifies anthropological wretchedness
proper. It is found among African-descended people all over the world and
is stoked by the principalities and powers with economic and geopolitical
interest in Africa. The diabolicalness of la pauvreté anthropologique is that
it has made Black people think that they are worthless.33
According to Mveng, this wretchedness must be countered by his
fifth critical concern—the development of liberating praxis that takes its
bearings from the Beatitudes. Finally, sixth, Mveng asserts that Africa,
especially the African churches, must counter the oppressive systems of
depersonalization and pauperization by taking its stand with the poor and
oppressed and thus embodying in every way it conceivably can hope for
the people. To quote him,
THE “BLACK MESSIAH” AND AFRICAN CHRISTOLOGIES: PAN-AFRICAN... 277
The Spirit of the Lord [i.e., the (Pan) African Messiah] works visibly through
the vitality of African Christian communities. Those of us moved by his
Spirit do not theorize but live out our African Christian experience in art,
liturgies, catechesis, the emergence of new societies and families, ecumenical
dialogue in Africa and outside of Africa and a more evangelical ecclesiology.
That is the true meaning of what one calls indigenization (inculturation).34
Mveng, who was savagely murdered in his home on April 23, 1995, has
left a great legacy of Pan-African Christology. His oeuvre is indispensable
for those who see the African Messiah as a symbol for Black liberation all
over the world.
Next, I would like to discuss Congolese Protestant theologian Kä
Mana. Of all the theologians I have read, Mana is the most critical; and I
would like briefly to discuss three of his books, beginning with L’Afrique:
va-t-elle mourir? Bousculer l’imaginaire africaine (Is Africa Going to Die?
Shaking up Africa’s Imagination). For Mana, the Black continent lan-
guishes at the very bottom of the world order and finds itself bereft of any
technological advancement to speak of. According to Mana, Africa, for
the most part, has not equipped itself with the inventiveness necessary for
scientific innovation.35 He discusses many reasons for this weakness: the
history of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, the cold war and corrupt
African leadership. He also thinks African intellectuals, theologians and
philosophers must stimulate Africans’ imagination in ways that promote
creativity and inventiveness for the sake of the future. For Mana, a number
of African scholars have focused on notions of the African past. He cites
as examples Senghor’s negritude and Cheik Anta Diop’s Pharaonic Egypt.
Mana is even critical of his teacher, Congolese priest and celebrated pro-
fessor Oscar Bimwenyi-Kweshi. While Mana thinks Bimwenyi-Kweshi’s
book, Discours théologique négro-africain, problèmes des fondements
(African Theological Discourse: Foundational Problems),36 is an indispens-
able discussion of African Christology, the text, according to Mana, will
not in itself equip Africans to forge a creative path to the future.
According to Mana, African intellectuals who focus on African tradi-
tions, especially their religious dimensions, make a great deal of myths
that are integral to African identities.37 For Mana, myths, “in the positive
sense of the word,” indicate the “pre-reflective” values “we confer on
things.”38 Without such spirituality (cette dimension d’intériorité), reality
itself would be opaque.39 Myths, however, should not chain people to
the past, for if they do they box them up in yesterday while today passes
278 J.U. YOUNG
them by. In the negative sense, myths can render them powerless to affect
the future constructively. In his book Christians and Churches of Africa:
Salvation in Christ and Building A New African Society, Mana elaborates
on the positive dimensions of myths in explaining that myth signifies a
“superabundance of meaning” that is an “important point of departure
for new possibilities of being and new prospects of self-creation in new contexts
of life.”40 Mana provides an example of what he means in his discussion of
the ancient Egyptian tale of Isis and Osiris.
Isis’s ingenuity in bringing forth life from the privates of the patched-
together corpse of her brother Osiris symbolizes that “Africa has in itself
the powers of rebirth, revitalization and resumption of its historical ini-
tiative.”41 Accordingly, “Isis appears as the one who gathers, integrates,
‘panafricanizes’ and, above all, gives new creative power through the sex
organ she herself makes.”42 In impregnating herself, she brings forth new
life (Horus). “Horus,” Mana writes, is “the symbol of a new Africa, one
which opens up a new destiny and wages a merciless, ruthless fight against
the forces of destruction and demolition.”43 The Isis and Osiris myth con-
veys the traditional African sense that life will triumph over death due to
Africa’s latent resourcefulness. The accent is on the future. Africa will not
die but forge new life from death. The Isis and Osiris myth confronts the
anthropological wretchedness (la pauvreté anthropologique), which Mana,
alluding to Mveng, describes as Africans’ sense “of how insignificant [they]
seem to be in today’s world,” a feeling that leads them to “debase [them-
selves] in [their] own eyes as individuals, as a culture and as a society.”44
As an African Christian theologian, Mana discusses the ancient Egyptian
myth in relation to Christ. He raises the question, How “does Christ’s
personality become important, useful, necessary and fruitful, in problems
related to the sense of worthlessness of our being, the inconsistency of
our action and the devaluation of our vital powers?”45 In answering those
questions, Mana reconceives the risen Messiah in terms of Isis symbols
of rebirth and renewal deeply rooted in African spirituality. More spe-
cifically, Mana argues that the Cross signifies “that unknown perspective”
that “opens new possibilities of understanding of the Isis-Osiris myth in
its manifold semantic senses.”46 When, therefore, the Messiah is Pan-
Africanized in terms of the ancient goddess, he “represents a revitalizing
power of our divided and dislocated Africa.” Mana’s Messiah thus symbol-
izes the continent’s “capacity to create a new life, out of all the sarcopha-
guses that suffocate and kill us.”47 Mana argues, furthermore, that when
the (Pan-African) Messiah is placed “at the mythological heart of African
THE “BLACK MESSIAH” AND AFRICAN CHRISTOLOGIES: PAN-AFRICAN... 279
existence, [he] acts as a force springing from the depths of our own African
cultural powers, to enrich creative intellect.” The African Messiah is “also
a force from the transcendent realm, as well as the historical trajectory of
the western world, that penetrates our minds and increases our resource-
fulness to liberate the future.”48
In his book on the Messiah, Christ d’ Afrique: Enjeux éthiques de la foi
africaine en Jésus-Christ (Africa’s Christ: Ethical Issues of Africa’s Faith in
Jesus Christ), the cover of which features Mveng’s African Messiah that I
have described above, Mana provides added insight into what he means by
the Messiah. He lifts up, as many African theologians do, John 1: 14. For
Mana, the enfleshed Word (le principe d’incarnation) signifies that “God”
is one with humankind—especially the anthropologically wretched.49 For
Mana, therefore, John 1:14 essentially means that the African churches
and African Christians must take the true measure of the Continent’s
dysfunctions and rise to the task of correcting them.50 The Word made
flesh thus empowers Africans to free themselves from “everything that
would chain them up and crush them: the gravity of evil, the exploit-
ative structures, the oppressive powers, the unbridled egoism (la pesanteur
du mal, les structures d’exploitation, les puissances d’oppression, les pouvoirs
d’égoïsme.) For Mana, the Word (le Verb) comes from “God” but does not
signify “an invisible exterior force”; instead, the Word signifies Africans
liberating self-transformation through the Spirit within them, who puts
them together and enables them to stand for a new destiny (Le principe de
libération est la transformation de nous-mêmes par l’Esprit qui est en nous et
qui nous met debout, nous met ensemble pour un nouveau destin.)51
Mana makes that same point in his book L’Afrique: va-t-elle mourir?
He argues that the enfleshed Word has nothing to do, really, with dogma.
The enfleshed Word has to do with humane projects that will bring about
livable lives for the masses of African people who have been reduced to
nothing.52 For Mana, moreover, the praxis of Jesus is not mythic. It fur-
nishes, rather, the ethics, the technique, that can help Africa live rather
than die.53 According to Mana, those who understand the Messiah’s mis-
sion create a salvific space in the world. Without this redemptive space
(i.e., brèche), the ethical life would be vaporous, dissipate into the intan-
gible (l’invisible) and imprison us in its psychedelic haze rather than help
us liberate ourselves from injustice.54 In his book, Christians and Churches
of Africa: Salvation in Christ and Building a New African Society, Mana
thus argues that the Messiah helps Africans see that “the issue of salva-
tion [is] the problem of the very meaning of life in Africa.”55 He writes,
280 J.U. YOUNG
moreover, that dogmatic quibbles are “inessential battles and often futile
conflicts in which nothing of the ‘essential of the essential’ of the Christian
faith … is involved.”56 For Mana, “the African Christ” symbolizes “a new
Christological norm, born of the dialogue of Christ with the depths of
Africa where we and our history meet as the home … of our creative force
and our understanding of the human.”57 Mana’s work powerfully exem-
plifies his view of how the Messiah is a Pan-African symbol of liberation.
CONCLUSION
The DPN Christology, the Christological insights of Engelbert Mveng
and Kä Mana and Cleage’s Black Messiah demonstrate the diversity of
Pan-Africanism. Cleage’s Black Messiah was a Jewish nationalist and nem-
esis of the Roman imperialists. The DPN’s Christ is the incarnate Word
who empowers Africans to indigenize Church traditions; and Mveng’s
and Mana’s Christ symbolizes both the indigenization of Christianity and
Africa’s struggle against neocolonialism. Although their Pan-African views
on the Messiah differ, each seeks to facilitate cultural, socio-economic,
and political projects that improve the quality of life of African-descended
people all over the world.
The ways in which African-descended people confront these problems
differ because the problems, though linked, are not the same. They stem,
however, from the same historic source, white supremacist ideology in
the world order. Albert Cleage challenges African American theologians
to confront racial injustice—police brutality, substandard housing, inad-
equate healthcare, inferior public education, the racist penal system and
more—passionately and relentlessly in the name of the Black Messiah.
Cleage suggests that resistance to such injustice should be the very voca-
tion of the Black church if it is to overcome the legacy of slavery. Dosseh’s
and Sastre’s DPN essay, “Propagande et Vérité,” alerts us to the racist pro-
paganda that has legitimized the abuse of African-descended people from
the time of the Middle Passage to the colonial eras. Those priests, and all
the DPN clergy, argue that the enfleshed Word is the antithesis of racist
propaganda. Mveng, in addition, has shown us that the Messiah opposes
both the premature death that lies in wait for African-descended people—
like slave catchers in the bush—and the pauvreté anthropologique (anthro-
pological wretchedness) that would make us surrender to death. Mana,
in addition, has helped us see that we have the wherewithal to rise above
our oppression in the name of the Messiah, who symbolizes la libération
THE “BLACK MESSIAH” AND AFRICAN CHRISTOLOGIES: PAN-AFRICAN... 281
NOTES
1. Albert B. Cleage, “The Black Messiah,” in Black theology a Documentary
History, Vol. I, eds., James Cone and Gayraud Wilmore (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books), p. 102.
2. Cleage, 101.
3. Cleage, 105.
4. Cleage, 104.
5. A. Abble et al., Des prêtres noirs s’ interrogent (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf,
1957).
6. R. Sastre, “Liturgie romaine négritude,” in Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent,
154–155.
7. Although some scholars distinguish the word “Messiah” from the word
“Christ” in order to emphasize the Hebraic and Aramaic implications of
“Messiah” instead of the Hellenistic-metaphysical implications of “Christ,”
I am using the two terms interchangeably, thus setting stock in the well-
known view that “Christ” (Christós) translates the Hebrew HaMashiach
(the Messiah). Both words signify a person who has been anointed in
assuming a royal or priestly or prophetic office. Both words, moreover,
signify the historical Jesus, without whom Christology of any sort is
impossible.
8. See my book, African Theology: A Critical Examination with Annotated
Bibliography (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993), 7–8.
9. Marcel Lefebvre, “Lettre-Préface,” in Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent, 12.
10. Engelbert Mveng and B.L. Lipawing, Théologie, libération et cultures afric-
aine: Dialogue sur l’anthropologie négro-africaine (Paris: Présence
Africaine, 1996), p. 30.
11. R. Dosseh and R. Sastre, “Propagande et vérité,” in Des prêtres noirs
s’interrogent, 137.
282 J.U. YOUNG
12. R. Dosseh and R. Sastre, 152: “Dieu ne demande pas la conversion à ce
prix; c’est pécher contre ce que saint Paul appellee ‘la Philanthropie’ de Dieu
notre Sauveur.’”
13. R. Dosseh and R. Sastre, 152 (my translation).
14. R. Dosseh and R. Sastre, 152 (i.e., “une sorte de kénose du reste métaphy-
siquement impossible”).
15. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away;
behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ rec-
onciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
16. R. Dosseh and R. Sastre, 148 (my translation).
17. See Ephraim Isaac, The Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahïdo Church (Trenton:
The Red Sea Press, 2013).
18. Vincent Mulago, Nécessité de l’adaptation missionnaire chez les Bantu du
Congo, in Des prêtres noirs s’interrogent, 33.
19. Mulago, 33, my translation.
20. Mulago, “Le Pacte Du Sang et la communion alimentaire: Pierres d’attente
de la communion eucharistique,” 176–177.
21. Mulago, 184.
22. See my book, African Theology: A Critical Analysis and Annotated
Bibliography (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993).
23. Wole Soyinka, Of Africa (New Haven: Yale University, 2012), p. 10.
24. Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed
with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar Straus and
Giroux, 1998), p. 54.
25. See Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995); Gourevitch; and Alain Destexhe,
Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York
University, 1996).
26. That is, the Ecumenical Association of African Theologians (EAAT).
27. Engelbert Mveng and B.L. Lipawing, 69.
28. Engelbert Mveng, L’art d’Afrique noire: liturgies cosmique and langage
religieux (Paris: Mame, 1964).
29. Mveng, 7.
30. Mveng, 123.
31. Mveng, “Récents développements de la théologie africaine,” in Bulletin de
théologie africaine 5, 9 (janvier-jiun 1983), 141.
32. Mveng, 141.
33. Mveng, 141.
34. Mveng, 143. My translation.
35. Kä Mana. L’Afrique: va-t-elle mourir? Bousculer l’imaginaire africaine
(Paris: Les éditions du cerf, 1991, 22.
THE “BLACK MESSIAH” AND AFRICAN CHRISTOLOGIES: PAN-AFRICAN... 283
Anthony G. Reddie
The quest for a radical black Jesus has been an ongoing one but it has
never taken place in a vacuum. Since the epoch of slavery, segregation,
colonialism, and neo-colonisation, Christian people of African descent
have sought to find ways of connecting their existential struggles for self-
hood with the person of Jesus. Jesus, who is in conventional, normative
Christianity, believed to be the Christ, God’s anointed one, has provided
for many black people,1 a means of conferring personhood in terms of
their association with Godself.
This chapter seeks to argue for the apologetical case for a radical black
Jesus as a counter to the wholesale negation of blackness that was concom-
itant with the expansionist explosion of Imperial Mission Christianity and
its impact on ‘native subjects’ across the contours of the British Empire.
One cannot understand the theological force of this work without under-
standing the nature of the intellectual discipline and contextual praxis, that
Christianity. The latter term will be unpacked shortly, but for now, I want
to illustrate how this facet of Christianity in Britain, born of the British
Empire, has helped to create an anti-materialistic, abstract form of faith
that has taught black people to ignore the existential concerns that impact
on their embodied sense of self.
the ways in which black people in Britain have internalised the colonised
legacy of Christianity. The comparative lack of anti-colonial work by black
British theologians is testament to the fact that the blandishments of
empire remain wedded in the black psyche, thereby, leading to a dearth of
scholarship that seeks to explore the continuing impact of colonisation on
black Christian minds in Britain. In all the truth, for example, the dearth
of anti-colonial work by black scholars in the UK has only operated mainly
in the theological and religious fields, which have lagged far behind black
British cultural studies.
In effect, black theology has enabled black people in Britain and in
other contexts to name the ‘Whiteness’ of Mission Christianity. I know
that African Americans can and have said the same thing regarding their
own experiences in the USA, regarding the corrosive power of Whiteness
and the dangers of imbibing the indoctrination of Colonial Christianity
and the way in which non-White people are othered, even in the midst of
the so-called promised notions of equality in Christ.
In using the term ‘Imperial Mission Christianity’, I am speaking of a
historical phenomenon in which there existed (and continues to this day)
an interpenetrating relationship between European expansionism, notions
of White superiority, and the material artefact of the apparatus of Empire.
In terms of the latter, one must note the relationship between external
and internal forms of economically informed socio-politio-cultural impo-
sition upon client states, who exhibit limited agency within these forms
of geopolitical arrangements. When speaking of external imposition, I am
referring to externalised control of territory from European metropolitan
centres (London, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Berlin, Lisbon, etc.), usually
via colonial apparatchiks, such as Viceroys, Governors, and more faceless
bureaucrats in the civil service.
In terms of internal imposition, I am referring to the axiomatic episte-
mological superiority of Eurocentric sociocultural norms, manners, aes-
thetics, and morality, which affected the social arrangements between the
colonised and the coloniser, within the body politic of those nations ruled
under the aegis of empire. Within the context of all of the aforementioned
operated the Imperial mission church. It was, undoubtedly, informed by
and was nourished by existence of Christendom and both reflected and
benefited from the overarching frameworks of empire and colonialism.
Hence, my use of the term ‘Imperial Mission Church’.
The relationship between empire and colonialism, in many respects,
remains the ‘elephant in the room’. Empire and colonialism found
THE QUEST FOR A RADICAL BLACK JESUS: AN ANTIDOTE TO IMPERIAL... 289
I would say that theology is the last bastion of White supremacy in Britain.
Most disciplines have woken up to the need to engage with critical the-
ory. They’ve engaged with diversity at the core, thinking more critically
and constructively about how they shape things. Sociology students here at
Goldsmith’s take courses in “critical Whiteness”. In theology circles they’d
think you were dealing with table cloths they have at different times of the
year!11
The importance facet of a black Jesus can be found in the way in which
his actions and example of heroic sacrifice offer an important theological
norm for the ‘Christian’ articulation of black theology. In making this
claim, I am arguing that Jesus’ life and death should be understood as the
basic grounding for the thrust for black liberation, in terms of the praxis
that should guide black Christian belief in its ongoing thirst for full life
and the transformation of all peoples.
Given that the generative theme for book is the often unheralded leg-
acy of Albert Cleage, it is incumbent on me, at this juncture, to acknowl-
edge the importance of his thinking in developing a thematic thrust for
a radical black Jesus. It can be argued that Cleage’s proposal for a radical
black Jesus unlike Cone’s is not anchored to the mainland of Christian
orthodoxy. Cleage does not deify Jesus.19 The efficacy of engaging with a
radical black Jesus is not predicated on any theological norm that asserts
the divinity of Jesus as the Christ. Rather, Cleage asserts that Jesus was
literally a black person of African descent and that his life and death serves
as the quintessential paradigm for evincing the praxiological realities of
heroic, sacrificial action.20
The failure of black theologians (myself included in all truth) to
make greater use of Cleage may be a product of two differing perspec-
tives.21 First, the Black Christian Nationalism he espouses forces scholars,
Diasporan African scholars, to wrestle with their relationship with Africa
and the literal identification of the Godhead in African, cultural national-
istic terms. I submit that this form of identification represents an ongoing
existential challenge for all of us schooled in the norms and procedural
niceties of a White, Western intellectual canon. Second, Cleage was not
a career academic and so his work, fused within the demands of pasto-
ral ministry and church leadership, has been under-regarded, given the
intellectual hierarchy that still exists within the scholarly arena, vis-à-vis
those who occupy teaching positions juxtaposed with those who operating
within the church.
Cleage’s premise that Jesus was a radical black man of African descent
seeking to liberate and redeem a black nation is undoubtedly an arresting
polemic challenge to conventional, Christian thought. I do not propose to
interrogate the epistemological weight of this contention. Rather, I simply
want to acknowledge the importance of Cleage’s proposal and affirm his
importance to this project. As Cleage would affirm, the aforementioned
importance of Jesus’ praxis can be seen in his life that affirmed those on
the margins, culminating in his death on the cross, a martyr’s death; a
292 A.G. REDDIE
man who identified with and stood alongside the poor in their struggle
for justice and liberation.
Jesus’ actions reminds us of one of the central tenets of black theology,
namely, that of orthopraxis. Black theology, like all theologies of libera-
tion, is governed by the necessity of orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy. In
using this statement, what I mean to suggest is that one’s starting point in
talking about God is governed by the necessity to find a basis for acting in
response to the existential struggles and vicissitudes of life, which impinge
upon one’s daily operations in the attempt to be a human being. The need
to respond to the realities of life, as it is in postcolonial Britain, is one that
has challenged many black British Christians to seek in God, a means of
making sense of the often constructed absurdities of postmodern life in
this island nation.
That unlike much of the tradition of Christian doctrine where Jesus’
death is solely for the purposes of achieving our salvation and atoning for
human sin, black theology rejects this belief and argues for a robust under-
standing of Jesus’ death being linked to the struggle for the liberation of
all oppressed peoples. To quote black British theologian, David Isiorho,
Jesus died because of our sins, not for them or on behalf of them. God did
not demand that his Son be offered as a blood sacrifice but rather that Jesus
gave his life as a ransom for many, as a soldier would die for his country.
In Jesus as an individual, the universal consequences of sin were annulled
through this determination of his human and his divine will combined. His
humanity hurt, the wounds were real, and he still bears the scars today. But
his divinity was enough to stop the chain of cause and effect, the chain of sin
and death, as the new humanity living and embodying the decision to turn
to God and to live in love for all, whatever happened. And so our proclama-
tion of his death and our faith in his Resurrection tells us that our powers
and our decisions do not have the last word.22
This identification with Jesus’ death is one that has challenged many black
Christian people to see their contemporary struggles for justice and equity
as bound up in partnership with God, who not only knows their own
travails, but also participates in them. Jesus is, in effect, the Divine co-
sufferer with them in the midst of their ongoing struggle to fight for their
freedom. The notable Womanist Theologian, Jacquelyn Grant, states
In the experiences of black people, Jesus was all things. Chief among these
however, was the belief in Jesus as the divine co-sufferer, who empowers
them in situations of oppression. For Christian Black women in the past,
Jesus was their central frame of reference. They identified with Jesus because
THE QUEST FOR A RADICAL BLACK JESUS: AN ANTIDOTE TO IMPERIAL... 293
they believed that Jesus identified with them. As Jesus was persecuted and
made to suffer undeservedly, so were they. His suffering culminated in the
crucifixion. Their crucifixion included rape, and babies being sold. But
Jesus’ suffering was not the suffering of a mere human, for Jesus was under-
stood to be God incarnate.23
The inspiration of the Resurrection story is one that has propelled myriad
people to fight for the freedom in the belief that almost certain death
does not mean the end and that in the economy of God, oppression and
evil will never have the final word. For many ordinary black people, the
more comparative, contemporary examples of Martin Luther King in
the USA or Nelson Mandela in South Africa, serve as paradigms for the
larger struggles for human rights through the more specific fight for black
liberation. These individuals not only exemplify the inspiring presence of
indefatigable black sacrificial struggle born of love and solidarity for oth-
ers, but also show the emotive power of partnership and communitarian-
ism, between peoples committed to a common goal.
Historical experience has shown the power of collective action as a
force for transformative change. While evangelical Christianity has offered
the deep temptation for people to believe that their desire to be free neces-
sitates a kind of individual, spiritualised response to existential realities, in
terms of being saved by the blood of Jesus, the truth is, and has always
remained, that it is the socially located, collective, practical thrust for free-
dom that proves the most effective conduit for change. It is in this regard
that the resurrection holds it central power for black liberation struggles.
The hope that is imbued in the human spirit as a result of the cross and
ultimately the resurrection is one that can give rise to prophetic, faith-
based struggles for liberation, as the inspiration of Jesus’ actions becomes
the basis for more contemporary battles for justice and equity. The resur-
rection demonstrates that evil will not have the last word. The emotive
power of Jesus’ actions, in solidarity with black suffering, arises from the
belief that God’s victory over evil gives expression to the inevitability of
the ultimate victory of black liberation movements. Martin Luther King
Jr. in his last speech in Memphis, on 3 April 1968, declared, ‘I may not get
there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will
get to the Promised Land. And I’m so happy tonight! I’m not fearing any
man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!’24
It can be argued that such certainties in the final resolution of God’s
purposes can lead to a level of passivity. If one believes the inevitability of
God’s victory over evil, as symbolised in the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
then it can become the basis for a withdrawal from all forms of politicised,
294 A.G. REDDIE
social activism on the basis that God ‘will do the work for us’. Robert
Beckford has noted aspects of this tendency in the actions of some black
churches in Britain.25
The actions of a radical black Jesus in his praxiological actions for
justice reminds us there is the ongoing necessity of human activity and
participation in the struggle for liberation. While the faith-based claims
concerning God’s presence in the risen black Christ are undoubtedly at
the heart of and indeed underpin the black liberation struggle to which
black theology bears witness; this struggle will ultimately be of little value
unless it is imbued with the commitment of ordinary people to participate
within it. And as the death of countless people of faith has shown, whether
in the figures of such luminaries as Nanny of the Maroons and Marcus
Garvey in Jamaica, Malcolm X and Fannie Lou Hamer in the USA, and
Steve Biko in South Africa, plus many more, there is always a cost to the
struggle for liberation. James Cone reminds us that cost of liberation is
measured in the cross and the contemporary forms of lynching and the
monstrous death that has faced all those who have asserted a fierce ‘yes’ to
life.26 There is no quick fix to liberation—no short cut to full redemption.
As Cone reminds us,
But we cannot find liberating joy in the cross by spiritualizing it, by tak-
ing away its message of justice in the midst of powerlessness, suffering and
death.27
It is my belief that a radical black Jesus who identifies with black suffering
and oppression has not simply been invoked by black theologians because
it is de rigueur for ‘proper’ theologians to undertake Christological work.
Rather, I believe the focus on a black Jesus has arisen because many black
theologians have realised the potent force that this figure has for reimag-
ining the black self as an embodied human person of worth and value.
Conversely, the White Christ of Imperial Mission Christianity that was
enforced on many people of African descent often has the stultifying effect
of denigrating the black self.28
I believe that the presence of a black Jesus who is the Christ, God who is
with us, remains vital as it provides a means by which ordinary people can be
enabled to see and experience another reality and to see beyond the limitations
of the material world in which they presently live, move, and have their being.
When black Christologies of the likes of Kelly Brown Douglas29 and
James Cone30 are invoked, in terms of black theology, I believe their
THE QUEST FOR A RADICAL BLACK JESUS: AN ANTIDOTE TO IMPERIAL... 295
CONCLUSION
A radical black Jesus, who is for us and with us, is one who identifies with
the mass of suffering humanity, that is, the ordinary commonplace experi-
ences of many, if not most, black people. He is a figure who in his very
identification with us, places us right at the centre of God’s concern for
296 A.G. REDDIE
NOTES
1. I will use the term simply to denote people of African descent whether on
the African continent or in the African Diaspora.
2. See Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Andre Deutsch,
1983).
3. See Dwight N. Hopkins, Heart and Head: Black theology, Past, Present and
Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 127–154.
4. Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), pp. 11–15.
5. This term ‘Windrush Generation’ emanates from a pivotal event on the
22nd June 1948, when 492 people from the Caribbean arrived at Tilbury
docks on the SS. Empire Windrush. These postwar pioneers ushered in a
wave of black migration to Britain from the Caribbean (approximately
500,000 people across the period 1948–1961), which (for the most part)
forms the basis for African Caribbean communities in Britain. For further
information see Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The irresist-
ible rise of multi-racial Britain (London: Harpercollins, 1999).
6. Michael Jagessar has critiqued Nathaniel Gilbert’s importance and give
agency to the two enslaved African women in an important essay. See
Michael N. Jagessar ‘Early Methodism in the Caribbean: Through the
imaginary Optics of Gilbert’s slave women—Another Reading’. Black
theology: An International Journal 5, no. 2 (2007): 11153–11170.
7. In using this term I am referring to those established denominations of the
Protestant tradition, plus The Roman Catholic church, which account for
the greater majority of the population that can be described and identified
as attendees and practising Christians. The churches in question are the
Anglican church (The Church of England), The Methodist Church, The
Baptist Church, The Reformed Church (The United Reformed Church in
the UK) and the Roman Catholic Church. See entries marked ‘Christianity’
and ‘Churches’ in David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, eds.,
The Oxford Companion to Black British History (Oxford: Oxford University
press), pp. 99–104.
8. See Richard Reddie, Abolition: The Struggle to Abolish Slavery in the British
Colonies (Oxford: Lion, 2007).
9. See Robert Beckford, Dread and Pentecostalism: A Political Theology for the
Black Church in Britain (London: SPCK, 2000). See also Anthony
G. Reddie, Black theology in Transatlantic Dialogue (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006), Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie, eds.,
Postcolonial Black British Theology (Peterborough: Epworth press, 2007)
and Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie, eds., Black theology in
Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007).
THE QUEST FOR A RADICAL BLACK JESUS: AN ANTIDOTE TO IMPERIAL... 299
26. See James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll,
New York: Orbis, 2011).
27. James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 156.
28. See Josiah Young, “Envisioning The Son of Man,” Black theology: An
International Journal 2, no. 1 (2004): 11–17.
29. See Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis,
1994/2003).
30. See James Cone, A Black theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
1970/1990).
31. See Dianne M. Stewart, Three Eyes For The Journey: African Dimensions of
the Jamaican Religious Experience (New York and London: 2005),
pp. 189–198.
32. See Michael Jagessar, “Is Jesus The Only Way?: Doing Black Christian
God-Talk in a Multi-religious City (Birmingham, UK),” Black Theology:
An International Journal 7, no. 2 (2009): 200–225.
33. See Emmanuel C. Eze, ed., Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
INDEX1
1
Note: Page number followed by ‘n’ refers to endnotes
C F
Capra, Fritjof, 54 Finch, Charles, 234
Carter, J. Kameron, 45, 46 Foucault, Michel, 7, 8
Chapman, Mark, 7, 10 Freedom Now Party, 100, 101
Citizen-wide Citizen Action
Committee (CCAC), 101, 102,
141 G
Cleage, Albert B. (Jaramogi Abebe Garvey, Marcus, UNIA, 5, 15, 70,
Agyeman) 100, 143, 153n30, 167, 174,
biography, 21–38 217, 219, 252, 270, 294
theology, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 22–4, Giroux, Henry, 179, 187n17
31, 34, 36, 40, 41, 44, 47–51, Glaude, Eddie, 32, 43, 44, 48, 49, 51,
53, 60, 81, 86, 87, 149, 164, 64, 65
191–200, 251, 253, 255–7 Grant, Jacquelyn, 42, 174, 197, 198,
Clement of Alexandria, 240 216, 259, 260, 289, 292
Collins, Patricia Hills, 118, 119
Cone, Cecil, 42
Cone, James, 6, 16, 24, 41, 42, 45, H
46, 49, 52, 60, 61, 68, 69, 110, Heteronormativity, 16, 263
149, 173, 182, 196, 260, 290, Hippolytus, 238–41
294 Hopkins, Dwight, 6, 7, 49
Copeland, M. Shawn, 25
Cosmic energy/creative intelligence,
7, 12, 28, 29, 35, 53–5, 83, 89 I
Crummell, Alexander, 80 The Illustrated News, 13, 24, 100, 111
Isiorho, David, 292
D
Des prêtres noirs interrogent (DPN), J
270–4, 280 Jones, Major J., 165
Detroit Free Press, 101, 140, 143, 145, Jones, William, 13, 52, 54, 86, 88–90
146, 212–14, 224n10
Detroit Rebellion, 15, 24, 101,
222 K
Douglas, Kelly Brown, 42, 174, Kä Mana, 16, 270, 277, 280
185n3, 197, 198, 289, 294 Kee, Alstair, 43
Dowdell, Glanton, 135–55 King, Martin Luther, 293
Dubois, W.E.B, 145, 168 KUA, the Science of, 12, 27, 28, 33–5
E L
Ellis, Raymond, 166 Lomax, Louis, 71
Evans, James, 6 Long, Charles, 42, 46–7, 92, 162
INDEX 303
N T
National Committee of Black Theodicy, 13, 77–80, 86–93
Churchmen, 13, 25 Tilley, Terrence, 77, 93
Nelson, D. Kimathi (Jaramogi Turner, Henry McNeal, 80, 153n30,
Kimathi), 12, 105, 108, 110, 209, 255, 256
113n32
V
O Vaughn, Edward, 138, 139, 146, 149
O’Murchu, Diarmuid, 97
Ontological blackness, 12, 40–6, 49, 52
W
Walker, Theodore, 91, 92
P Washington, James Melvin, 79
Pan African Orthodox Christian Church Wilmore, Gayraud, 42, 43, 49, 50, 71,
(PAOCC), 13, 22, 29, 34, 73, 77, 73, 111, 167
84, 86–92, 98, 117, 138, 151n4
Peck, Fannie, 15, 216–21
Pinn, Anthony, 13, 43, 74, 79, 80, Y
91, 289 Young, Coleman, 105, 223