Black theology in the United States is both a global and cultural discourse. Although it shares with Latin American liberation theology and South African black theology the conviction that there is a relation between Christian faith and political praxis, black theologians also recognize the rich resources of black religion and black culture. Although black theologians share with Asian theology the conviction that there are tremendous resources for survival present in indigenous culture and religion, black theologians also recognize that culture is not synonymous with God’s revelation. At times, God acts in history to redeem and transform culture as well as society. In sum, black theology embodies within itself the dimensions of cultural discourse and global discourse. It is truly an African American theology in the sense that it struggles with the dilemma described by DuBois: participating in two communities with its identity fully grasped by neither.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century black theologians face difficult and complex tasks. They must still grapple with the issues of race that dominated the twentieth century. DuBois was correct when he noted that the twentieth century would be defined by the issue of “the color line.” Racism at the beginning of the twentieth century was not only the “Negro problem” of the American south. The outbreak of World War I in Europe with its attendant racial sub-themes, meant that it was a world problem. In the twenty-first century racism is still a problem. Its contours and subtleties have been shaped and sometimes hidden by the massive social and technological changes that have swept over the West and throughout the world. While these social and technological advances threaten to widen the gap between the black poor and the remainder of American society, the events of September 11, 2001 point to racism and ethnocentricity as, again, a world problem. The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. are linked to, among other things, the persistent power of race and ethnicity, especially when combined with religion, to resist what is perceived as oppressive power. The external terrorism of 2001 may indeed mark the symbolic beginning of the twenty-first century. However, one cannot forget that it was preceded by the internal terrorism of the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
This means that black theologians will work in a context in which many of the rules have changed, and yet, many of the problems are the same. While working on an understanding of what the Christian faith has to say in this kind of world, black theologians will need to move beyond narrow academic concerns to seek the truth wherever it may be found. They will need to move beyond narrow ecclesiastical concerns to seek faith wherever it may be practiced. While the issues of competing notions of civilization are debated on the world stage, black theologians must be concerned about the poor and especially the black poor and disenfranchised who may be simply caught up in the maelstrom of global events. They must continue to study and discuss the connections between domestic policy and international policy, between events at home and events abroad.
The twenty-first century will require that black theologians focus on the ways that the significance of race and the apparatus of racism have shifted. The meaning of racial identity and its relationship to culture should be at the top of the theological agenda. This work will require dialogue with scholars in other disciplines, workers in other professions and occupations, and, most important, with the black church, that community of Christians to whom the safeguarding of liberating faith has been bequeathed.
JAMES H. EVANS, JR.
Bibliography
James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation.
James H. Evans, Jr., We Have Been Believers: An African American Systematic Theology.
Gayraud S. Wilmore and James H. Cone, Black Theology: A Documentary History.
Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism.
Cross-Reference: Diversity, Freedom, Justice, Liberation Theology–Latin American, Political Theology, Praxis, Suffering, Womanist Theology.
BODY (See EMBODIMENT, SOUL/BODY.)
CANON
“Canon” comes from Greek kanon and Hebrew qaneh: “stalk” or “reed.” Since this plant was uncommonly straight, the term acquired a derived meaning of “standard/rule” (cf. Ezek. 40:5). In early Christian times, canon denoted the church’s “rule of faith” or accepted doctrinal teaching. By the fourth century, canon referred to writings the church viewed as congruent with its rule of faith. Eventually, canon meant that corpus the church recognized as sacred Scripture. Although it is a specialized concept in systematic and biblical theology, canon also signifies any requisite body of written materials, even in a secular setting.
Canon is closely associated with Christian tradition, but in reality Judaism was fundamentally responsible for developing the idea that a body of authoritative texts is central to the faith and life of a religious community. Expressed negatively, “external books” (separim hisonim) were noncanonical; expressed positively, documents that “rendered the hands unclean” (mettame’t ha-yadayim) were holy and canonical. The refinement of this idea over time eventuated in Judaism’s seeing itself as “people of the book.”
Early Christianity shared Judaism’s understanding of canon (more implied than articulated). However, Christians believed that the teaching and apostolic interpretation of Jesus were key to appropriating these Scriptures that were held in common. Though as adamant as their Jewish counterparts about biblical authority, the early Christians read the Jewish Scriptures to justify their claims about Jesus. Finally, Christianity accommodated its view of Judaism’s Bible to the documents that were to become the New Testament (thus, “Old Testament” is distinctly Christian terminology).
Few would disagree that Judaism and Christianity are biblical religions in the sense that certain writings played a crucial role in their development. Still, it was centuries before the two communities viewed canon as a more or less hermetically sealed group of inspired texts. Before this, canon was conceived in more fluid and dynamic terms. This is why subsets of Judaism and Christianity saw no difficulty in treating as authoritative to some degree an array of religious writings. Even today, strictly speaking, Christianity has yet to agree completely on what materials are canonical. For example, the books in the Protestant canon differ from those in the Roman Catholic canon.
Nonetheless, one may legitimately regard canon as a property of Judaism and Christianity as long as the term is properly defined and the canonical process carefully described. Elements in a consensus on the topic of canon are roughly as follows: (1) “canon” and “Scripture” should probably be distinguished; the former refers to a fixed corpus of authoritative books, the latter to any text of which a community made religious use; (2) “canon” in the strict sense was a relatively late development in both Judaism and Christianity; (3) no understanding of canon in either Judaism or Christianity precluded the parallel growth of influential interpretive traditions (e.g., the Talmud for Judaism; ecumenical creeds for Christianity); (4) while various elite groups undoubtedly played disproportionate roles in the canonization process, the willing acceptance of the common folk in the community was almost surely requisite; (5) the criteria for canonization were certainly varied and complex—antiquity, authorship, perceived inspiration, socio-political factors, and others—but in the final analysis the writings that the community perceived as most expressive of its deepest religious and theological convictions were deemed canonical; (6) neither Judaism nor Christianity should be seen exclusively as a function of their respective canons; both were and remain complex social communities that cannot be completely defined by any single factor.
As rich as the idea of canon and processes of canonization can be from one perspective, from another scholars have viewed them as unfortunate. To the extent