INTRODUCTION

I write about black theology in a country where the universities, theological seminaries, and churches do not get involved with the black population and its ethnic-racial questions, nor do they get involved with how this black population originally lived and interpreted their experiences with God.

I start with the question of how the black population lived and understood its experiences of God. However, to start with such a question presents itself as a paradox, because while the black community is full of faith, rejects atheism, and is represented in significantly large numbers in the various Christian denominations whose structures are exclusive, racist, and Eurocentric, they don't understand that the racism practiced in these denominations and in which they participate is the complete negation of the message of Yahoshua and the absolute negation of the sovereignty of YHWH.

THEOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY

Brazil has the third largest population of blacks in the world, India being the first, because of its great contingent of Dalits, followed by Nigeria. Brazil is also, indisputably, the country with the largest number of Catholics in the world. Thus, it is worrisome that a black Christian population of such importance has not developed, in its theological thinking, ways of effectively resisting centuries of oppression and racism. Brazil is a country with a great Latin-rite Catholic influence.