The Black church, historically, is the most significant institution in the Black community.

I. History and Development of the Black Church

A. There were differences of opinion with respect to whether slaves should be Christianized.

B. The Christian religion was accepted by the slaves because it offered hope and salvation.

C. Although at first religious instruction was given the slaves, this was later discontinued, then renewed after the Revolutionary War.

D. Three major denominations split over the question of slavery.

E. Independent churches were established by free Negroes in the North.

The Holy Bible represents the literary deposit of the Hebrew people's faith in God's intervention within human history to liberate them and mankind from physical and spiritual bondage. Even though this divine revelation was given to a specific people at a specific time within history, its power and hoped-for fulfillment continues to be the basis of religious faith for Jew and Christian alike. Consequently, the most potent aspect of the Scriptures for the Black community in Africa and the Americas is its present meaning and revelation for us in our struggle today for physical and spiritual liberation. The particularity of the mode of biblical revelation — the witness of a specific people at a particular point in history — suggests that the medium is also the message, namely, that God's word is intended for identifiable situations rather than to be taken as amorphous, generalized truth having little to do with the specifics of the human condition. The American Association of Theological Schools' journal, Theology Today, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring, 1970) plus Supplement, turns its attention to this question of the divine revelation and a specific human situation under the title of “The Black Religious Experience and Theological Education.” James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Lippincott, 1970), offers a forceful argument for the biblical basis of the present black social and spiritual revolution. See also, J. Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971). However, while the hermeneutical task of proclaiming God's word to contemporary ears is of the greater importance — it is ontologically prior, there is also the necessity — chronologically prior — of adequately describing the Biblical word on the basis of its own setting. Dean Krister Stendahl has given classic statement to the fundamental role of the descriptive process, of what the Bible “meant,” before we take up what it “means,” in his article on “Contemporary Biblical Theology,” Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I (New York: Abingdon, 1962). Black consciousness is ultimately informed and inspired by the biblical message, but it also has some questions which it would address to Holy Scripture. Among these questions are those concerning the African presence in the Bible and the role of Africa in the period of biblical revelation.

W. E. B. DuBois was right when he said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” That is to say, regardless of your own definition of your own being, you fall into one of four racial groups, namely, yellow, black, white, and red. But you cannot stand in or belong to more than one racial group. But history shows us that some racial groups have been victimized by another or other groups. But I am not interested in what happened in history in human relations — of all racial groups. I am particularly interested in the conditions of my Black existence under the most barbaric and inhuman system of man's inhumanity to man. That is to say, I would like to examine the conditions of my being which is oppressed by another kind of racial group — called “white.” The nature of my oppression is also shared by my brother, Ho Chi Minh, when he said, “It is well known that the black race is the most exploited and most oppressed of the human family.”

The major thrust of this paper is that changing historical configurations are not without their effect on the attempts to articulate and interpret the faith principles of a religion which claims allegiance to the Lord of History. If one starts, not with God but with man and his predicament, as does John Macquarrie, how does one ignore some of the most significant changes that have occurred in recent history which have helped to contribute to the precariousness of “Western man”?

Our study criticizes the respective theodicies and methodologies of Joseph Washington, James Cone, and Albert Cleage. Our argument is reducible to the following propositions. (1) On the basis of their own presuppositions, the point of departure for black theology must be the question: Is God a white racist? (2) Accordingly, a viable theodicy, one which refutes the charge of divine racism, must be the foundation for the edifice of black theology. (3) The theodicies of the above theologians leave the issue of God's racism essentially unresolved. Consequently, the remainder of the theological system lacks adequate support.

For some decades blacks have been taking a new look at themselves. In the language of black preachers, leaders, and educators, they are discovering what Martin L. King, Jr., calls their “some-bodiness.” This is not to say the phenomenon is entirely new. There have always been brave and hardy spirits who transcended their existential situation. Racism, colonialism, imperialism, and every machination of man's inhumanity to man could not crush their spirit. They dared, they dreamed, they acted.