What Color is Your Heresy?

In postmodern approaches to theology, context determines everything.  Since interpretations of reality are social constructs, and the subjective context from which one does theology determines the meaning of just about everything, postmodern theologies can be exceedingly relativistic, destructively creative, and aggressively subversive.

This Jesus Creed post from November 5, 2015 is titled "White Heresy, Black Heresy" was written by Austin Fischer, author of "Young Restless and no Longer Reformed" who blogs at Purple Theology.  The question Fischer frames is one of orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy as relates to race and justice, but the “context” of American race struggles takes the whole premise in a dangerous direction.   In short, it implicitly celebrates “contextualization” with a vengeance while hiding a great deal from unsuspecting readers about the source material.  More

The post begins by defining the contrast between “white heresy” and “black heresy”.  Whites, the claim is, define “heresy" according to doctrine.  If one agrees with the Nicene Creed in accord with “white” theology, one is not a heretic, and Fischer agrees that the Creed is itself a good thing.  But, as such, he says, it is a "from above" intellectual assent to doctrine, an intellectual matter.   And the emphasis on doctrine tacitly absolves white Christians from the need to live in a compassionate manner.

He then defines "black heresy" as a bottom up experience-based sense of injustice.  Fischer writes “From above, heresy looks like a breakdown in orthodoxy. From below, heresy looks like a breakdown in orthopraxy.”  For a black theologian, Fischer’s article suggests, the experience of oppression defines the legitimacy of being Christian vs being a heretic.  This approach is framed in the narrative of the Exodus where slaves were set free and brought to a promised land of milk and honey.  “Black” heresy is defined as indifference to injustice, specifically in the context of the American black experience.

Fischer writes, ‘Heresy, as defined by black theology, is about failure to do justice. Black heresy is about christening social, political, and economic structures that perpetuate systemic white supremacy and systematic black oppression, poverty, and humiliation.”

Fischer takes his cue from James Cone, the father of black liberation theology.  And that is where I have to wonder what theology is coming to in this country and particularly at Jesus Creed.

He quotes Cone:

“Heresy refers to any activity or teaching that contradicts the liberating truth of Jesus Christ…

What actions deny the Truth disclosed in Jesus Christ? Where should the line be drawn? Can the Church of Jesus Christ be racist and Christian at the same time? Can the Church of Jesus Christ be politically, socially, and economically identified with the structures of oppression and also be a servant of Christ? Can the Church of Jesus Christ fail to make the liberation of the poor the center of its message and work, and still remain faithful to its Lord?…

Any interpretation of the gospel in any historical period that fails to see Jesus as the Liberator of the oppressed is heretical. Any view of the gospel that fails to understand the Church as that community whose work and consciousness are defined by the community of the oppressed is not Christian and is thus heretical.”  (God of the Oppressed, p. 33-34)

From there Fischer quotes several biblical passages dealing with injustice and the poor.  Of course, scripture has much to say about the poor.  So what is my concern?

First, there is the matter of defining terms.  A typical definition of heresy is “opinion or doctrine at variance with the orthodox or accepted doctrine, especially of a church or religious system”.  (A generic example from Dictionary.com)  This is not new.  Heresy been about doctrine since Nicaea at least, which is not to say that morality and justice and oppression don’t matter to the Church, it is simply that this definition is not “white”, it predates slavery in America by more than a millennium.  The problem is not that Fischer or Cone call attention to a blind spot regarding justice or race in church thinking, it is that hijacking the word “heresy” for a political/religious cause is, shall we say, subversive.  

But that is a quibble.  The real problems begin by associating the Nicene Creed with “white theology”.  Just how is the Creed white?   The Nicene Creed is a universal statement that was born well over a thousand years before the black slave experience in America.   The Creed has been affirmed by many cultures, many races and considered an essential test of doctrine by every orthodox believer, including blacks.   Thomas Oden has stressed the important role Africa played in the very development of early Christianity.  How in the world is a longstanding definition of the word “heresy” as a departure from theological truth a "white" issue? 

Answer:  The Creed is an example of “white” theology only from the “context” of a “black” perspective in America and that specific context becomes the determinative factor.   Note that Cone wrote that the work of the church is “defined by the community of the oppressed”.   Not defined by the words of Christ or the Epistles or the Creeds, but defined by a community, an entirely postmodern approach.   The new context of black America as “oppressed” essentially erases centuries of a much larger “context” and warrants redefining the meaning of “heresy”.   The meaning of “heresy” is relativized, redefined.

I suspect the influence of the postmodern is just in the blood of academia so that it is just assumed to be obvious that words and language have meaning only when “contextualized”, so it is perfectly valid for James Cone to coopt the word “heresy” and define it in terms of race and for Fischer to think this is a good thing.  “Contextualization” has led to “black theology”, “feminist theology”, “queer theology” and more, selective pockets of experience-based interpretation where the meanings of words and texts are pretty much in the eye of the beholder and have no objective value.

For Cone, it seems, what defines the true faith is the identification one has with the oppressed and opposition to the oppressor, a “context” taken from the Exodus but applied with a vengeance to the black vs white history of slavery in the USA. 

Cone became visible in the political realm because of Barack Obama’s association with Rev Jeremiah Wright.  Conservative commentators took note of the rhetoric that emanated from Wright’s pulpit, the influence of black liberation theology and references to James Cone as one of Wright’s sources.  

In his more radical statements Cone portrays black and white in purely binary terms with no middle ground and no place for mutual understanding.  Examples:

"All white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, ‘Racism is not my fault,’ ... Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty."  (Black Theology and Black Power, p24)

Let me be clear before I go any further.  Certainly racism exists.  Certainly human beings can be indifferent to suffering of many kinds and in many places.   But Cone takes the Exodus story and inserts American blacks into the place of Israel and American whites into the place of Egypt and Pharaoh, so that in essence, blacks become the chosen race and whites, all whites, are the enemies of God.

“To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!”  (Black Theology and Black Power, p151)

Put simply, the black experience of slavery is the context that determines the meaning not only of Cone’s black theology, but of the Exodus and the gospel.   He does not take the Biblical text, seek an objective meaning and apply moral principles derived from that meaning to American culture, rather he replaces the meaning of the text with a new meaning based entirely in a particular context.   And that context is based on class struggle in which salvation means taking the side of the oppressed.  Instead of seeing Christianity as the extension and fulfillment of Jewish Old Testament history, (which includes the freedom from slavery motif) salvation for Cone is dependent on identification with oppressed blacks.

“For white people, God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people; and if they are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God’s presence on earth. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches. They want God without blackness, Christ without obedience, love without death. What they fail to realize is that in America, God’s revelation on earth has always been black, red, or some other shocking shade, but never white. Whiteness, as revealed in the history of America, is the expression of what is wrong with man. It is a symbol of man’s depravity. God cannot be white even though white churches have portrayed him as white. When we look at what whiteness has done to the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers. To speak of Satan and his powers becomes not just a way of speaking but a fact of reality. When we can see a people who are controlled by an ideology of whiteness, then we know what reconciliation must mean. The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us. Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto)."  (Black Theology and Black Power, p150)

Part of me does want to give some credence to a bit of what Cone is saying.   Racism has existed.  Slavery was wrong.  Walking in the shoes of the downtrodden is certainly something Christ would have done and something Christians can be encouraged or prodded to do.  But for Cone, evil is specifically defined as “whiteness”.   Oppression is defined as a race.  Even worse, God himself must be defined in the context of the black experience.

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the Black community. If God is not for us and against White people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of Black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the Black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of Black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love."  (Black Theology and Black Power, p125)

Sound a bit revolutionary?   What in the world is a website named “Jesus Creed” a “creed” supposedly based on Christ’s command to love God and love neighbor doing promoting a theologian who takes a view that says the only way to God is to destroy “whiteness” and overthrow the “white enemy”?

One of the many problems with this “contextualization” is that it ignores some obvious contradictions if one simply looks beyond the American context that Cone locates his entire premise in.  Such theology only has meaning within its own context and as such means nothing in any other context. 

If oppression is simply a matter of American “whiteness” then how does "black theology" handle oppression in other “contexts”, such as the burning of churches by black Muslims in Nigeria or beheadings of Christians by black Muslims elsewhere?  If oppression is just a matter of whiteness, specifically “American” whiteness, what about the black on black genocide in Rwanda?   What about black on black violence in Chicago for that matter?   What about black slave traders selling other blacks into slavery in Britain and the Americas prior to the acts of Wilberforce and Lincoln to end the practice in both parts of the world?

Fischer and Cone would say what I am doing here is precisely the problem – thinking about justice in abstract terms rather than identifying with the experience of the oppressed.  But what makes being oppressed a singularly black experience that whites can never understand?  What about the experience of the Irish in this country who faced their share of oppression in England and this country?  Does a Jew not understand oppression?  Or Russians in the Soviet Gulag?

The problem is that Cone defines “Christianity” in purely racial terms, entirely in the context of American blacks of a particular political bent.  “Christianity and whiteness are opposites."  Whiteness is the symbol of the antichrist. 

And inserting the American black experience into the story of the Exodus creates a bit of a problem for the Jewish community, does it not? 

If the Biblical Exodus is the starting point of black theology and identifying with the oppressed is the true test of orthodoxy, then explain the attitude of the left, including Barack Obama, toward Israel, giving billions to the number one state supporter of terrorism which insists on wiping Israel off the map.   How can the "black experience" be used to basically shove Israel out of its own Old Testament narrative in this way and appropriate the Exodus for a single racial experience in a relatively recent time in world history as if no other injustices are important?  And worse, does this contribute to abandoning the Hebrew race that experienced the holocaust to a repetition of that genocidal madness?  If Jews are killed in suicide bombings and Israel is wiped off the map, does “black” theology become heresy by failing to identify with that oppression?   Can black Americans know God without “knowing Jewishness?”

Similarly, if Christianity is eradicated by Islam in Iraq, has Cone’s theology proved useful to anyone outside of his particular context? Does any other context matter?

If it all has a bit of a revolutionary tone, there is a reason for that.  There is a “revolutionary” and Marxist side to Cone’s “theology”.

Cone wrote a paper in 1980 for The Institute for Democratic Socialism, titled “The Black Church and Marxism:  What Do They Have To Say To Each Other”, which encouraged dialogue between Marxists and Black church people.   A quote:

“Another aspect of the openness (toward Marxism) about which I speak is the willingness of black church people to think about the total reconstruction of society along the lines of Democratic Socialism. We must be willing to recognize that a social arrangement based on the maximization of profit with little regard to the welfare of the people cannot be supported. Even "if modern Marxism gives the wrong answers, at least it asks the right question.'' Marxism is at least right in its critique of capitalism and in its affirmation of the class struggle.  …If black churches do not take a stand against capitalism and for democratic Socialism, for Karl Marx and against Adam Smith, for the poor in all colors and against the rich of all colors, for the workers and against the corporations, how can we expect socialists, Marxists and other freedom fighters to believe us when we sing:

Oh Freedom! Oh Freedom!

Oh Freedom, I love thee!

And before I'll be a slave

I'll be buried in my grave.

And go home to my Lord and be free. 

So several things are clear, Cone has problems with capitalism, understands the black experience in terms of class struggle, prefers Karl Marx over Adam Smith, and urges the black church to consider Democratic Socialism.

Anthony Bradley published an article in 2008 titled “TheMarxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology” that discussed both Cone and Cornel West.  Both suggest Marx can be a legitimate “context” for viewing the unjust structures of society.

“Black Liberation theologians James Cone and Cornel West have worked diligently to embed Marxist thought into the black church since the 1970s. For Cone, Marxism best addressed remedies to the condition of blacks as victims of white oppression. In “For My People”, Cone explains that "the Christian faith does not possess in its nature the means for analyzing the structure of capitalism. Marxism as a tool of social analysis can disclose the gap between appearance and reality, and thereby help Christians to see how things really are." (The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology, Anthony Bradley)

  

Bradley says of Cornel West:

 “In his book Prophesy Deliverance, West believes that by working together, Marxists and black theologians can spearhead much-needed social change for those who are victims of oppression. He appreciates Marxism for its "notions of class struggle, social contradictions, historical specificity, and dialectical developments in history" that explain the role of power and wealth in bourgeois capitalist societies. A common perspective among Marxist thinkers is that bourgeois capitalism creates and perpetuates ruling-class domination -- which, for black theologians in America, means the domination and victimization of blacks by whites. America has been overrun by "White racism within mainstream establishment churches and religious agencies," writes West.  (The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology, Anthony Bradley

Cone willingly moves from “Marxist analysis” to revolutionary language.

Because the church is the community that participates in Jesus Christ’s liberating work in history, it can never endorse "law and order" that causes suffering. To do so is to say yes to structures of oppression. Because the church has received the gospel-hint and has accepted what that means for human existence, the church must be a revolutionary community, breaking laws that destroy persons.  (A Black Theology of Liberation p135)

It (the black church) is revolutionary in that it seeks to meet the needs of the neighbor amid crumbling structures of society. It is revolutionary because love may mean joining a violent rebellion.  (A Black Theology of Liberation p113)

Cone is hardly measured in speaking of revolution:

It is important not to confuse protest with revolution. "Revolution is more than protest. Protest merely calls attention to injustice….In contrast, "revolution sees every particular wrong as one more instance in a pattern which is itself beyond rectification. Revolution aims at the substitution of a new system for one adjudged to be corrupt, rather than corrective adjustments within the existing system. . . (A Black Theology of Liberation p136)

To be a disciple of the black Christ is to become black with him. Looting, burning, or the destruction of white property are not primary concerns. Such matters can only be decided by the oppressed themselves who are seeking to develop their images of the black Christ.  (A Black Theology of Liberation p123)

There is much wrapped in the  language of class warfare and revolution. 

The black experience is the feeling one has when attacking the enemy of black humanity by throwing a Molotov cocktail into a white-owned building and watching it go up in flames. We know, of course, that getting rid of evil takes something more than burning down buildings, but one must start somewhere.  (A Black Theology of Liberation P25)

And lest there be any doubt about the totality of the viewpoint:

The Constitution is white, the Emancipation Proclamation is white, the government is white, business is white, the unions are white. What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.   (A Black Theology of Liberation p107) 

Presumably destruction of whiteness then, must entail destruction of the Constitution, the government and private business?   Is that not the direct implication of his words?

For those theologians who want to soften Cone’s rhetoric, who wish to identify with the oppressed by ignoring the revolutionary rhetoric and speaking empathetically only of identifying with the feelings of oppression I would suggest a reality check.  All the talk about the problem of race relations from this radical perspective does absolutely nothing to resolve racial conflicts, rather the “all whites are racist” meme virtually guarantees that race relations will never improve.  Rather than seek out examples where improvements in race relations and in black economic status genuinely have occurred and try to emulate those scenarios, the left seems intent on fixating on a past that can never be changed and staying there.  The result is the “victim” perception that Cone says goes with “blackness” is virtually ingrained.

Quoting Bradley again:  
“…victimology keeps racism alive because many (individual) whites are constantly painted as racist with no evidence provided. Racism charges create a context for backlash and resentment fueling new attitudes among whites not previously held or articulated, and creates "separatism" -- a suspension of moral judgment in the name of racial solidarity. Does Jeremiah Wright foster separatism or racial unity and reconciliation?”  (The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology, Anthony Bradley)

Can we solve racism by fanning the flames of racism?  No.  Can one bring about a revolution by “rubbing raw the sores of discontent”?   (Alinsky)  Yes.   If one reasons from cause to effect, which would seem to be the goal of one who uses Marxist revolutionary rhetoric?

I have observed that it is a hallmark of leftists to use issues rather than care about solving issues.  (Alinsky again, who taught that “the issue is never the issue”.)  If poverty, violence, the destruction of the black family were issues that really mattered and required an actual solution, one would think that pursuing policies that actually help solve some of the problems might be a worthy goal.   But leftist policies do not produce much of anything but deeper poverty and dependence, if one simply looks at Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.   Since Marx has been brought into this picture we should also think about the results of Marxist policies on a larger scale, such as Stalinist Russia, Castro’s Cuba and Mao’s China for starters. 

As for the “theology”, Cone ties together the ideas of revolution and religion in ways that gut religion of the supernatural and baptize revolution as spiritual.  For Cone, salvation is not salvation from sin and a life to come after death, salvation is entirely earthly, the end of “oppression” symbolized by the end of white America.   And that means the death of white Christianity.

Just as the black revolution means the death of America as it has been, so it requires the death of the Church in its familiar patterns. (A Black Theology of Liberation p116)

So Cone, as is the norm for both the left and for post moderns, redefines words like salvation and “revelation”

Unfortunately, the post-Civil War black church fell into the white trick of interpreting salvation in terms similar to those of white oppressors. Salvation became white: an objective act of Christ in which God "washes" away our sins in order to prepare us for a new life in heaven. The resurgence of the black church in civil rights and the creation of a black theology represent an attempt of the black community to see salvation in the light of its own earthly liberation.  (A Black Theology of Liberation p127)

I shouldn’t need to point out that the idea that salvation has something to do with sin, forgiveness and heaven did not originate with the white church, but I guess I’ll mention it.   But note that Cone specifically criticizes an “objective act” of Christ in salvation.  Objectivity is an enemy of the postmodern mind.  Cone’s purpose is to create a new meaning for his particular purpose.  Postmodern thinking insists that language is a mask to power.  Controlling language matters.

To participate in God’s salvation is to cooperate with the black Christ as he liberates his people from bondage. Salvation, then, primarily has to do with earthly reality and the injustice inflicted on those who are helpless and poor. To see the salvation of God is to see this people rise up against its oppressors, demanding that justice become a reality now, not tomorrow. It is the oppressed serving warning that they "ain’t gonna take no more of this bullshit, but a new day is coming and it ain’t going to be like today." The new day is the presence of the black Christ as expressed in the liberation of the black community.  (A Black Theology of Liberation p128)

…the black revolution in America is the revelation of God. Revelation means black power-that is, the "complete emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary."  (P46)

So yes, I find it troubling that a guest post at “Jesus Creed” prominently and somewhat quietly features a sanitized version of a theological perspective that celebrates a figure who insists all whites are racist, blacks are the chosen race, whites are the antichrist, and paints theology in terms of Marxist class warfare and revolution.  What does Christ have to do with Marx?  What is constructive about defining oppression in purely racial terms?  I find it troubling that a purported evangelical blog can so easily embrace a theology that defines salvation in terms of earthly revolution according to Marxist categories of “have” and “have-not”.  

The rush to “contextualize” the gospel always leads to the context redefining the gospel, subsuming the biblical text and replacing eternal truths with contemporary agendas.  I am not surprised that Cone wrote an endorsement to a book on LGBT theology by Patrick Cheng, another salient point not noted in the post at the “evangelical” blog Jesus Creed.  LBGT theology is every bit as dependent on eradicating “objective” meaning in the text and replacing it with a creative contextual “interpretation”.  

The destructive nature of the postmodern influence on theology is that if there are no obtainable objective truths, only subjective interpretations, then on the one hand there really is nothing to debate – all theology is merely opinion.  But in the postmodern context, relativism is not individual – relativism is based in group identity, tribes and cultures shape the minds of individuals and those groups are all involved in power struggles.   Such a worldview pits cultures against each other in a battle for power, hence Cone’s theology must speak of revolution and overthrow of the white system and killing the white God.

This intellectual relativism and casting all human experience into the narrative of competing worldviews is the general direction of American academia and I suspect it will continue until some sort of catastrophic collapse forces common sense to rise from the ashes.    

But now it is clear to me why Scot McKnight spends so much time dealing with the pressing issue of battling the world threatening, nasty, hideous evil of complementarianism, or making the science establishment safe from the subversive influence of scientists who question Darwinian orthodoxy.  It explains why he treats most conservative Christians as unwanted distant relatives while maintaining his “evangelical” label.   Though not as crass and provocative and insulting as Tony Jones, both apparently approach truth from the same academic perspective where truth is contextual and any conservative not sold out to the epistemological “humility” of the postmodern project must be discredited, while Marxist revolutionaries who pit white and black against each other in absolute terms using theological language get a free pass.