Toward a Black Cosmopolitan Christianity

Preface: This is a weekly reflection that we have to do for a course I am taking this semester. I came into this class with hopeful expectations, and it has not disappointed. My perspective is beginning to be formed, and I am finding myself offering tentative answers to some of the questions I began this journey with. Today was another big step in a good direction. Enjoy...

This week’s reading is crucial for one of my central research inquiries, both for this class and most likely my eventual dissertation. I have been seeking a postmodern discourse that can allow the “Black Church” to maintain its sense of self in a racist country, while calling it beyond its self to a global vision. I have sensed that a version of Cosmopolitanism could possibly offer fruit for this discussion, and this week has given me a few seeds toward this end.

The concept of “solidarity-in-singularity” offers a way of uniting people in a way that does not subsume their particularity; a way of promoting solidarity without requiring alterity to get lost in the collective. My interest in this concept comes from my view of the Black Church as being a significant center that still speaks and acts on behalf of Black people in the U.S. The Black Church has occupied a unique position in the U.S., and has used that position to fight for racial justice on behalf of Black people. Yet, the Black Church as an institution is not without problems. It has often promoted Black essentialism, denying much of the Black experience within (LGBTQ, women, etc). It is my contention that the Black Church is stuck in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement, and is still defined by such activity. I also have understood Black Christian identity to be a unique phenomenon that is colored by faith, race, and has taken on a culturally defensive posture that often manifests itself in forms of religious conservatism.

One of the internal conversations that has been happening at least since the mid-90s is the debate between ontological Blackness (essential) and “postmodern blackness” (positional), in which there is an increasing awareness of the simultaneous expressions of gender, sexuality and class (this list could go on) within the racial category of Blackness. That is to say, there is not just one way of being Black, nor is there some defining attribute to one’s qualification as “Black.” Yet, “postmodern blackness” has come under scrutiny by some scholars because of its focus on individuality. This is particularly relevant to the scholarly critique because many have argued that thinking of Blackness this way threatens the ability for collective solidarity among Black people; a solidarity that is still necessary for the survival of a still oppressed people in the U.S. I have tried to understand the implications of this debate as it bears directly on Black Christian identity; on what it means to be a Black Christian in the U.S.

I have suspected that troubling the waters of Christian identity in the Black experience specifically, and religious identity in general, could provide a helpful broadening/particularizing scope for the Black Church for the sake of attending to pressing needs in a changing world. It is here that I find resonance with Namsoon Kang’s idea of what it means to be “religious,” and the very real “accident” that is many of our religious identities. Thus, I argue that problematizing religious identity, in the same way that Black identity has been complexified, can liberate the Black Church’s adherents – and the Church itself – to better attend to the particularities within and for Black communities, as well as expanding its scope to become a force for justice on a global scale.

Cosmopolitan Theology (a must read), by: Dr. Namsoon Kang