Welcome. As we settle in to the coming autumn, and possibly the resumption of serious work, an attempt to explore some serious theology. As ever, please, comment, criticise and supplement. Hopefully, too, you may be able to commend subscribing to the blog to friends and contacts who may be interested.
Contextual Theology amidst Ethnic Diversity.
1. What is a Context?
In the Introduction to his classic study on ‘Contextual Theologies’ (Orbis 2002) Stephen Bevans reflects on his experience in the Philippines: “What began to be clear was that there was no one way to construct a Filipino theology” (p xx). Different situations required different types of responses. Any contextual theology has to identify the context it represents and is at risk of simplifying complex and fragmented situations. This is especially true of complex, ‘superdiverse’ multi-ethnic Britain, where minority ethnic communities have such sufficiently distinct cultural roots and diverging economic roles that it is a serious over-simplification to lump all the groups together. Writing about the emergence of ‘new ethnicities’ Tariq Modood reports: “(T)here is considerable qualitative research evidence for the view that many ethnic minority people today do not understand themselves as having singular group identities” (in ‘Multiculturalism’, 2013, p 96). Similarly, Robert Beckford has noted ‘The shift . . . from a nostalgic notion of a fixed stable black community to black experience as heterogeneous’ since the early 80s (in an essay ‘House Negro with a Field Negro Mentality’ in Gordon Lynch [ed] ‘Between Sacred and Profane’ I B Taurus, 2007), though elsewhere he still leans to a more normative black essentialism.
The result is that there are a variety of uncodified ‘ordinary’ theologies in Britain’s minority ethnic churches (Pakistani, Tamil, West African and so on) representing different histories and social contexts, but it will be unlikely that they will produce clearly idetifiable schools of theology.
The pace setter in this respect has been American Black Theology but differences with the USA are so substantial that to treat American experience as normative can be highly misleading (see blog # 35 22/06/2021, ‘Not the USA). A black American population of 38.4 million (2010 Census), which is largely Christian, is substantial enough to produce a strong theological tradition, especially given that it has long-standing churches, black universities and theological institutions. But the British population of recent Caribbean origin is only around one million, and black majority churches are still developing their own training bodies. Alistair Kee (‘The Rise and Demise of Black Theology’ SCM 2008, p 168) is brutal – but not without cause – about the weakness of the material from the British-based ‘Black Theology: an international journal’ and the related reader ‘Postcolonial Black British Theology’ (Michael N Jagessar and Anthony G Reddie eds, Epworth 2007) but the smallness of its originating constituency ought to be a mitigating factor.
Further the word ’black’ itself is increasingly losing focus. As regards the USA, the black Stanford legal academic, Ralph Richard Banks, has written: “Black America has bifurcated into two communities: one moving ahead, one lagging behind. . .Nearly four in ten African Americans thought that they should no longer be viewed as members of a single race (‘Is Marriage for White People’, 2011, p 43). From a very different perspective Franz Fanon wrote “My black skin is not the wrapping of specific values” (in ‘Black Skin, White Masks’, p 12). Colour is less and less precise as an indicator of the sort of clearly defined context which enables a ‘contextual’ theology to emerge.
One response to this is to accept that whilst Contextual Theologies are formed from an increasing diversity of contexts they share a common protest against the hegemonic dominance of European derived models, which are often subservient to neo-colonial or capitalist power. In contrast Contextual Theology is inclined to set itself as emanating from neglected, indeed oppressed sources, and giving a voice to the voiceless who belong to various cultures but share a common experience.
But the extent of such commonality needs interrogating. We have seen that ‘Prosperity Theology’ (Blog # 85, 26/07/2022) has such a specific identity that it falls well outside the authoritative aspiration of mainstream ‘black theology’ to speak for all those seen as ‘other’.
In an article in ‘Black Theology (Vol 8, 2010) William Ackah raises the apt question of ‘Back to Black, or Diversity in the Diaspora?’, where one senses that, despite his starting Garveyite perspective of black unity, Ackah has come to recognize the powerful pulls of diversity between ‘black’ groups.
Two further complexities are, firstly, the intermingling of ethnic cultures in urban societies, marked by the growth of ‘fusions’ in food, fashion and especially music. Whilst earlier riots in Britain had been largely ‘black’ the 2011 riots were more accurately characterized as ‘urban’, involving young people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds (though with a notable under-representation of South Asians.)
Additionally, this mixing is also biological, with the growth of an increasing number of children born to ethnically mixed partnerships. Comparisons between the 2001 and 2011 Censuses show them to be, unsurprisingly, the most fluid respondents as regards their ethnic identity - 43% of those who identified themselves as ‘Mixed White and Black African’ in 2001 changed their ascription in the following ten year period. (Dynamics of Diversity series, March 2014 on ‘How People’s Ethnic Identities changed in England and Wales’. See also Modood’s ‘Multiculturalism, pp 98-101). Philip Jenkins notes the theological salience in an increasingly fragmented world: “while mixed race people were traditionally marginalized and despised, newer theologians (Virgilio Elizondo) see this status as uniquely privileged” (Jenkins ‘The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity’, 2002, p 116).
Thus as the Christian faith proliferates in the complex ethnic patchwork of Britain’s big cities, a variety of informal theologies may well emerge, especially through the growth of large, ethnically mixed charismatic churches such as Kensington Temple or Hillsong. It will be intriguing to see if this ethnically superdiverse, ‘urban’ context, which, as I suggested in last week’s blog may come to be regarded as the cauldron of a new ethnicity, will produce a distinctive, specifically ‘urban’ theology, more contextually orientated than that of international (or American?) popular Pentecostalism.
2. How do you characterize a Context?
Contextual theologies often argue for a theology whilst assuming too easily that they have the correct understanding of their context. Latin American Liberation Theology was the original contextual theology to be formally recognized as such within the guild of academic theology. It based itself on a Marxist analysis of Latin America’s problems. It is possible they were right, but history has not been kind to them. The intellectual clarity and moral power of Marxist analysis has made it attractive to Christians; so attractive that at times it has come to be seen as the only form of economic analysis worthy of moral and spiritual attention. Kee’s attack on both Liberation and Black Theologies is based on a Marxist and anti-capitalist understanding of the world economic order and he berates Cone for his admission in 2004 that ‘Black suffering is getting worse, not better, and we are more confused than ever about the reasons for it’ (Kee p 215). But it may be that whether still certain on the one hand or now confused on the other both Kee and Cone have bought into an over-simple polarity of capitalism v the poor, of white v black that whilst ethically attractive actually fails as a description of the multi-facetted competing forces in the present world, and therefore doesn’t make things better. In fact, contra Cone, black economists such as Glenn Loury or Thomas Sowell, offer evidence that the overall conditions of black Americans have continued to improve, though at a slower rate than in the pre-Civil Rights era.
It is not down-playing the manifest racially based injustices both within western societies and between the West and many other parts of the world, which very often correlate with differences of skin colour and ethnicity, to nonetheless acknowledge that an effective righteous response to these injustices is by no means obvious. For Liberation Theology the response was obvious – the implementation of a Marxist economic order, and in its train theologians in the USA, South Africa and Britain followed on. The battle for such a clearly socialist order has not been completely lost, but the absence of any successful examples and the weight of a great many failures means their case is very far from compelling.
Further such theologies have made a priori assumptions about what it is that changes the world. After the quotation from Stephen Bevans that began this article, he goes on to speak of the different possible starting points for contextual theologies: his list is cultural, politicaland philosophical. Contextual theologians risk being imperialistic in assuming that by right politics and economics should provide the normative framework for understanding the Christian faith. This, of course, is not the only or indeed most widely held view. Nor is it gaining ground. Notoriously in Latin America it is the Pentecostal churches which are winning the hearts and minds of the very common people on whose behalf liberation theologies claimed to speak. As regards their respective impacts, Paul Freston wrote of the socialist revolution in Nicaragua: “Whereas Liberation Theology’s relationship to the revolution was primarily ideological, evangelicalism’s was primarily sociological. It radically reordered and regulated the lives of the very poor. It has combatted the culture of despair by causing the poor to lead more exemplary lives” (in ‘Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America’, CUP 2001, p 256).
3. Who Theologizes for the Context?
It is in line with the above point that Stephen Bevans observes the importance of theology genuinely emerging ‘from below”: “If theology is to take culture and cultural change seriously, it must be understood as being done most fully by the subjects and agents of culture and cultural change” (op. cit., p 18). Yet, certainly for the British context, evidence-based studies of what minority ethnic Christians in Britain actually believe and do, such as Albert Jebanesan’s ‘Changing of the Gods’ on Tamil Pentecostals (ISPCK 2004) or Chigor Chike’s ‘African Christianity in Britain (Author House 2007), are rare, not widely circulated nor easy to get hold of. Despite the claims of contextual theologians to be writing theology ‘from below’ this is too rarely the case. It is still theology that claims to speak for ordinary people, but which nonetheless emanates from the academy and often finds little reception at street level. Such theologians are more likely to be heard on the circuits of theological events rather than communicating with ordinary people. (An exception might be Vincent Donovan whose ministry had extraordinary traction first in Tanzania and then back in the USA, but Donovan’s originality lay more in his pastoral and evangelizing policies than in any new theological understanding of the faith).
By comparison it is worth looking at other approaches made by black ministers in communicating with black people. As an example, Tottenham’s main library (named – ironically as will appear below - after Marcus Garvey, the pioneering black political theoretician) has ten books by the popular American preacher T D Jakes, but only one by Robert Beckford, and none by American black theologians. (Consulted in 2018; with cuts there are now five by Jakes, none by Beckford, but it does have Cone’s ‘The Spirituals and the Blues’). Whilst Jakes can be criticized both for his Trinitarian views, and his ‘prosperity’ teaching, nonetheless he is an adept entrepreneur, and it is especially pertinent that several of Jakes’s books are gender specific – directly addressing issues specific either to women or to men. Gender relationships and constructive ways of dealing with them are exceptionally significant issues for the post-slavery black communities in both Britain and the United States. The Guyanese-born psychotherapist Barbara Fletchman Smith writes: “There are of course powerful social and economic legacies of slavery. But the legacy that overwhelms all others is the disturbance of couple formation (coupling between adults and between mother and child). Its consequence is fragility in the area of family formation and maintenance.” (‘Transcending the Legacies of Slavery’ p 106, Karnac, 2011). In similar vein, Ralph Richard Banks writes of black Americans that ‘We remain unmarried, at odds with one another, our relationships crippled by a distrust that can only be described as extraordinary” (Banks, op, cit., p 180). Not for nothing has the disturbance to these relationships been an enduringly important theme in black American popular music. In his superb ‘Just my Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, black consciousness and race relations’ ( UCL Press 1998) Brian Ward writes: “While Tin Pan Alley pop was hardly without its own sexism, the blues lyrical tradition to which the [blues] shouters were heirs had by sheer repetition helped to make a peculiarly intense, aggressive and often violent form of sexism seem entirely banal. In the blues and much early r&b, a fatalistic resignation to the improbability of stable, mutually respectful domestic relationships was commonplace’. (Ward, B p 78). Much lyrical content of recent rap and hip-hop has reverted to this misogyny after the more reciprocal relationships envisaged in the Motown era.
Jakes’ popularity then rests upon him addressing an issue of central concern on both sides of the ’Black Atlantic’: the need for ‘stable, mutually respectful domestic relationships’. It is by no means necessary to commend all Jakes’ prescriptions; what is important is that he is seeking to bring to the fore healing gospel qualities of respect, self-worth and restraint in a way that is widely responded to. In this sense he contextualizes his theology more adeptly than self-styled ‘contextual’ theologians.
To argue that his approach is theologically inferior to addressing issues of racism and politics is, to use Thomas Sowell’s terminology, to allow the ‘external’ issue of racism to over-ride ‘internal’ issues of cultural formation. Contextual theologies, above all others, should be listening to the voices from below. The Marcus Garvey library users seem to be suggesting that Jakes does that more effectively than overtly political black theologians. At times political theologians need warnings about the dangers of being imperialistic. When the Church of England’s ‘From Lament to Action’ report recommends incorporating ‘black theology’ into clergy training, it is in danger of naively and wrongly assuming that such theology is the authentic voice of black British Christianity
The gap between ‘contextual’ academics and the ordinary theology which is believed in the churches is indicated by Matthew Michael’s comments on a study of trainee pastors in northern Nigeria: “The majority of these students vehemently reject the understanding of Christ in terms of the ancestor as suggested by African theological academia” (‘Christian Theology and African Tradition’, James Clarke, 2013, p 139). Philip Jenkins in ‘The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity’ notes a further disjoint between those regarded as theologians for the Majority World and the churches they are taken to speak for: ‘Frequently the liberationist voices emanating from the Third World proved to derive from clerics trained in Europe and North America, and their ideas won only limited local appeal. Southern Hemisphere Christians would not avoid political activism, but they would become involved strictly on their own terms.’ Similarly Craig Keener in ‘Spirit Hermeneutics’ (Eerdmans, 2016) writes that ‘the published, educated minority within the Majority World who often have Western-related education and a hearing in the West may differ from grassroots Christian voices’ (p 49).
But nor should we be idealistic about the merits of ‘popular’ indigenous theology. In fact, such growing activism can be in need of responsible theological scrutiny. Paul Freston’s book paints a rather depressing picture of what happens when grassroots Christians get involved in politics; indicating on the one hand institutional opportunism so that as Freston drily comments “Rather than religion being used for political ends, we have more often seen politics being used for religious ends” (p 292) (such as getting elected in order to allow denominational access to national television); and on the other sheer vulnerability to corruption: “the susceptibility of the evangelical political class [to corruption] has often been above average” (p 318). Thus recognizing the appeal of popular evangelicalism needs to be counterbalanced with the recognition that it is the traditional international denominations, who have the deeper theological roots and from which most liberationist contextual theologians come, who have been more theologically principled and less easily seduced by politicians than have been the newer charismatic churches. Kenya has just elected an evangelical President, so the issue is highly relevant.
In conclusion, it is noteworthy that Richard Burgess speaks of the increasing attention that scholars are paying to the ‘ordinary theologies’ of African churches, especially Pentecostals, in contrast to academic attempts to either develop continuities with Africa’s primal religious heritage, or to focus on liberation from class domination and neo-colonialism (p146, in ‘Intercultural Theology’, edited by Mark Cartledge and David Cheetham, SCM, 2011). One suspects that the ‘ordinary theologies’ may be less ‘exciting’ for those in theological academies than the more original works of contextual or liberationist theologians, but of more effect in generating the sort of everyday godliness that has transformative possibilities.
The extraordinarily complex patchwork of superdiverse, multi-ethnic Britain, alongside the encouraging spread of diasporic churches, means that there are a wide variety of ‘ordinary theologies’ in play in our society. How these might form into any ‘contextual theology’ that has both traction amongst the grassroots and that is also theologically thoughtful and self-aware will be a fascinating area of attention.
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Queen Elizabeth II – Rest in Peace.
She was the Queen. And she was Elizabeth. The representation of the Institution of Monarchy; and a person.
The Monarchy, like any institution has its flaws. The first Elizabeth presided over the beginning of England’s trading in slaves. Her long serving predecessor, Victoria, saw the Empire at its height, including the brutal suppression of the Indian mutiny and the Morant Bay rebellion. The Empire that British monarchs have ruled over has a highly disputed legacy, leading to Barbados, and now possibly Jamaica choosing to become republics.
Yet monarchs are also human beings, and the past week has given voice to what has become increasingly clear, that Elizabeth was a monarch of outstanding graciousness, humanity, humility and goodness; abstract qualities which the majority of commentators have still been too coy to ground in her personal faith in Jesus Christ. (Will nothing make Alistair Campbell ‘do God’?).
‘Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save’ says Psalm 146:3. The paradoxical value of a hereditary constitutional monarchy is that it draws our focus to a monarch we have not chosen, and so diminishes the hold of popularly chosen politicians, who universally and persistently (though perhaps especially recently) seem to disappoint the trust put in them. Rightly we are thanking God for a monarch, albeit with a now diminished role, who did more than meet our trust. We pray that her successor will be similar.