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schelske 's review for:
The Black Christ
by Kelly Brown Douglas
I’ve grown up in a world, family, and church where I’ve been surrounded by the stories and images of Jesus. I was taught that Jesus was Immanuel, God with Us. Relating to Jesus has always been easy for me. But I’ve not ever had to contemplate how much of my ease with Jesus had to do with this simple, often overlooked, but now obvious fact: The images of Jesus that surrounded me looked like someone I could literally be related to, some extended member of my family. I could see God, but with skin and eyes and hair similar to mine.
If you asked me about this several years ago, I would have replied that it doesn’t really matter. Jesus came for all the people of the world. What he looked like shouldn’t matter. And while that may be true, I would have been saying that from the position of being someone who could look at those pictures and see myself. I never considered the implications of constantly looking at images of a Savior that you couldn’t see yourself in.
The Black Christ by Kelly Brown Douglas has been a challenging book for me on this front, presenting an academic analysis of how this experience has impacted the Black community since being brought to America. She traces the development of two parallel Christianities, that held by slave owners and majority white people, which allowed them to justify and bolster their position in society, their right to hold slaves, and to do violence to black bodies, and a different form of Christianity held by the newly Christianized enslaved people, which evolved to become a means of supporting their struggle, providing comfort and also motivating them toward liberation. These two parallel faiths saw Jesus differently. The author then connects this to the theological discussions that erupted during the 60’s and the Civil Rights Movement, where Black theologians began to propose new and different ways of relating to Christianity and Christ, including declaring that Christ, himself, was Black, and then traces the implications through later Feminist theological discussions, and ultimately Womanist theology, and how all of this has manifest practically in the American Black church.
I’m a theology geek, and I love theological history. That stuff just fascinates me. The history of theology is the history of how we have wrestled with scripture and our ideas about God in the context of real life circumstances and crisis. It is often the case that Western theology in its currently predominant form ignores this. Western systematic theology presents itself as if it is an objective and abstract discussion of absolute truth but this is a convenient distortion. All theology was (and is) done in a context by people living in a particular moment. This is crucial to remember as we study. The people doing the thinking (the theologians) were trying to solve a particular problem, and that problem shaped their articulation of the truth.
The Black Christ illustrates this clearly. The people who created a disembodied Christology where Jesus’ body wasn’t really relevant beyond being born, crucified and resurrected, were people who didn’t generally experience oppression and violence on account of nothing more than their bodies. On the other hand, the people who experienced oppression and violence based on nothing more than their bodies have spent a lot of time thinking and wondering about the body of Jesus. For those of us in the majority, who have never deeply considered the implication of loving a Savior who looks like us, this is worth contemplating. Thinking about Christ as Black, whether literally or symbolically as a means of solidarity with the oppressed, seems to me to be a very practical application of Matthew 25, where Jesus told us that when we actively enter into community and service with those who are in the margins and are oppressed, we would discover that he was there with them all along.
This is not an easy read. As a book, The Black Christ, is definitely academic. It’s prose is not always streamlined or smooth. There are a few places where it gets into the deep weeds, and I had to look up specific movements or writers to understand what was being referred to. And there were places where I felt uncomfortable and challenged in my own views of Jesus, Christianity, its impact, and how I live out my faith. But as uncomfortable as that can be, I’m not afraid of those moments. Thinking hard and even painful thoughts is part of how we test our current beliefs and grow as people.
If you asked me about this several years ago, I would have replied that it doesn’t really matter. Jesus came for all the people of the world. What he looked like shouldn’t matter. And while that may be true, I would have been saying that from the position of being someone who could look at those pictures and see myself. I never considered the implications of constantly looking at images of a Savior that you couldn’t see yourself in.
The Black Christ by Kelly Brown Douglas has been a challenging book for me on this front, presenting an academic analysis of how this experience has impacted the Black community since being brought to America. She traces the development of two parallel Christianities, that held by slave owners and majority white people, which allowed them to justify and bolster their position in society, their right to hold slaves, and to do violence to black bodies, and a different form of Christianity held by the newly Christianized enslaved people, which evolved to become a means of supporting their struggle, providing comfort and also motivating them toward liberation. These two parallel faiths saw Jesus differently. The author then connects this to the theological discussions that erupted during the 60’s and the Civil Rights Movement, where Black theologians began to propose new and different ways of relating to Christianity and Christ, including declaring that Christ, himself, was Black, and then traces the implications through later Feminist theological discussions, and ultimately Womanist theology, and how all of this has manifest practically in the American Black church.
I’m a theology geek, and I love theological history. That stuff just fascinates me. The history of theology is the history of how we have wrestled with scripture and our ideas about God in the context of real life circumstances and crisis. It is often the case that Western theology in its currently predominant form ignores this. Western systematic theology presents itself as if it is an objective and abstract discussion of absolute truth but this is a convenient distortion. All theology was (and is) done in a context by people living in a particular moment. This is crucial to remember as we study. The people doing the thinking (the theologians) were trying to solve a particular problem, and that problem shaped their articulation of the truth.
The Black Christ illustrates this clearly. The people who created a disembodied Christology where Jesus’ body wasn’t really relevant beyond being born, crucified and resurrected, were people who didn’t generally experience oppression and violence on account of nothing more than their bodies. On the other hand, the people who experienced oppression and violence based on nothing more than their bodies have spent a lot of time thinking and wondering about the body of Jesus. For those of us in the majority, who have never deeply considered the implication of loving a Savior who looks like us, this is worth contemplating. Thinking about Christ as Black, whether literally or symbolically as a means of solidarity with the oppressed, seems to me to be a very practical application of Matthew 25, where Jesus told us that when we actively enter into community and service with those who are in the margins and are oppressed, we would discover that he was there with them all along.
This is not an easy read. As a book, The Black Christ, is definitely academic. It’s prose is not always streamlined or smooth. There are a few places where it gets into the deep weeds, and I had to look up specific movements or writers to understand what was being referred to. And there were places where I felt uncomfortable and challenged in my own views of Jesus, Christianity, its impact, and how I live out my faith. But as uncomfortable as that can be, I’m not afraid of those moments. Thinking hard and even painful thoughts is part of how we test our current beliefs and grow as people.