Black Theology and Holy Hip-hop in the Inner-city Dilemma

Blog post #2

 During the month of July, August, and September 2016, more “unarmed” black men have been murdered on the street in the face of the world through the eyes of social media.  Since Travon Martin, there has been an uninterrupted siege on black and Hispanic men in the inner-cities.  The consequences for those police officers who have committed these heinous acts goes unpunished, un-adjudicated, and unapologetic by the justice system.  The so-called “war on drugs” implemented in the early 1970s was the “gateway” policy which allows over policing in the inner-city communities; a ghost hunt for those “major drug dealers.” But drugs are not the true consequence of the inner-city dilemma, drugs are not what holds its citizens frozen in a time warp of oppression. The real sin is racism.

 Racism is America’s greatest and most egregious sin.  It has outlived people, protest, times of peace, and times of war.  It [racism] is found in the halls of religion, education, politics, and justice.  Racism is evil and deadly; it brings grief and despair to families, governments, and countries. If left unchecked, it will act as a cancerous decay that eats away at the very fiber to which this country was built.  Racism acts out of ignorance, that is, an ignorance of each other as people and as a nation under God.  Racism is antithetical to faith and love.  

 Racism and injustice have been the so much a part of the inner-city it has become a way of life like a neighbor that lives next door. Black theology is a means to keep the focus of oppression on the minds of those who are oppressed and to bring black radical faith in line with history and theology. Holy Hip-hop provides the communicative means to defuse the time-bomb that is ticking away in the inner-city. Traditional Christian rhetoric does not convey this freedom effectively; neither can it academically explain present day enslavement to the extent that black people experience it.

Black Theology and Holy Hip-hop in the Inner-city Dilemma

Blog post #3

 Different theologies teach us about different understandings about God, but that understanding has to be contextualized to the listening ear of the hearer.  As particular attention focuses on the inner-city, traditional Christianity that professes turning the other cheek is not effective or useful for spiritual formation. The reality of this “racialized society” infiltrates the structures of church.  It allows and disallows the activity of the church to be limited to the status quo, thereby allowing the sin of racism to invade the pews and pulpits. A challenge, therefore, is for theology to define and understand how any reality can be applied to the nature and character of God and continue to confess a faith as a substance of hope. 

 “The reality of God is presupposed in black theology. Black theology is an attempt to analyze the nature of that reality, asking what we can say about the nature of God in view of God’s self-disclosure in biblical history and the oppressed condition of black Americans.” Cone also points out, Black theology  is practically the only remaining radical perspective linking the liberating essence of biblical faith and Trinitarian theology to a cultural and political strategy for fundamental social change.

Hip-hop challenges and questions racism sanctified by religion. “Hip-hop addresses the crisis of urban America and begins to seek spiritual answers connected to Jesus, while challenging the institutionalized church and questioning the centralization of power in pastors to bring about a higher involvement with God.” The next generations of hip-hoppers are seeing the society, the church, and themselves through a different lens, and they seek spirituality that speaks directly to them. Their voice is not speaking through the theology of orthodox Christianity because they believe traditional Christianity has betrayed them with complacency and silence.  

 The next generation of worshippers who  are shouting with a loud voice, “No Justice, No Peace, No Justice, No Peace,” and this voice must speak in the rhetoric of Black theology. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness becomes a lie in the face of constitutional truths. Black religious thought, radical black faith, and black theology are three elements in understanding how to do theology in the inner-city. However, the language of communicating those three elements to a younger generation is best accomplished with Holy Hip-hop. 

Black Theology and Holy Hip-hop in the Inner-city Dilemma

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Black Theology and Holy Hip-hop in the Inner-city Dilemma

Blog post #1

Over the past several years of theological study, there are two areas of black youth culture that has generated both a conflict and challenge to Christian tradition: Hip-hop and Black Theology. Hip-hop has been both an empowering and undermining phenomenon for black and brown youth culture. It is undermining because society and the church picture deterioration of black and Hispanic youth solely through the images portrayed through commercialized gangsta rap. This Hip-hop generation faces social barriers that were not present in the Civil Rights movement. These barriers include economic recession, racist policing, high incarceration rates, limited employment options, and sub-standard academic preparedness. 

 The other area of black youth culture that has generated a conflict and challenge to Christian tradition: Black theology. Black religious thought and Black theology together share a simple reality: an indestructible belief in freedom, a freedom born in the African environment which includes aspects of black life and culture, which non-black scholars would call secular. Black theology speaks to a hip-hop generation because it lends its rhetoric to youth who do not have the patience for the standard method of theology.  There is a weakness and slave undercurrent in the “waiting for the promise-land” mindset.