Churches are locally oriented and present to the concerns of everyday life in the community. As an institution it has been an organized center of everyday life for its membership.
For it is only through understanding black culture as worthy of attention that we can feel it as worthy of enjoyment.
In a white supremacist culture, one crucial precondition of any true and faithful theological speech is repentance. True theology is not light but fire.
When we understand that the Nixon campaign combined a call to law and order with the so-called Southern Strategy, it becomes clear that white sympathies were cultivated and that blacks were made to play the part of the enemy. Nixon’s presidency was a take-no-prisoners form of democracy mixed with demagoguery.
For the family of the late Trayvon Martin, Saturday’s ruling – that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of any wrongdoing in his shooting of Trayvon – is a terrible tragedy, and a miscarrying of justice, compounding an already vast sea of grief.
The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study hosted a conference at the beginning of this month on Theology and Black Politics. Opening with the question: “What is the Black Church?”, the conference addressed fundamental concerns regarding the nature of black politics and theology.