Liberation Theology: Saving People of Color from Oppression

1913 Words4 Pages

Theology is widely accepted as the study of God and religious beliefs. Liberation theology applies the study of God and religious beliefs, to the study and experience of racial, gender and class oppression. As such, liberation theology is a theology of, by, and for those doing (as in praxis) the theology and those in solidarity with them. Such reasoning has led to formations of various liberation theologies (Yellow, Red, and Black) that speak to various oppressed groups. From this line comes, the philosophy of Black liberation theology, which seeks to liberate people of color from multiple forms of political, social, economic, and religious subjugation by interpreting Christian theology as a theology of liberation. As Black Liberation Theology aligns itself with the oppressed, this paper recalls the subversive memory of slavery to ask whether there could be a White Liberation Theology; which would look at White privilege (oppressor).
Black Liberation Theology is the systematic analysis of the historical Black experience in the United States, which in affirms slave/African American humanity in the world. It is, according to one of the original advocates of the philosophy, James H. Cone, “A rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ.” Black liberation theology is systematic in that it has evolved over four hundred years, dating back to the first Africans that were stolen and brought to this country. This theology originated with the slaves as they incorporated their spiritual and holistic understandings of the universe into the distorted Christianity of passivity and repr...

... middle of paper ...

...demy of Religious 44. 3 (1976) 517-534. Print
Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation. 20th Anniversary Edition. Originally published
1970. New York: Orbis Books, 1990. Print
Harris, Paula and Doug Schaupp. Being White: Finding Our Place in a Multiethnic World.
Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004. Print.
Herzog, Frederick. “The Liberation of White Theology.” Christian Century
(1974): 316-319. The Christian Century Foundation. Web. 22 November 2013.
Hopkins, Dwight N. Introducing Black Theology of Liberation. New York:
Orbis Books,1999. Print.
Jensen, Robert. "White Privilege Shapes the U.S.,” Baltimore Sun 19 July 1998: C-1.
Web 15 Nov. 2013
Perkinson, James W. White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004. Amazon.Web. 19 Nov 2013
Reist, Benjamin. Theology in Red, White and Black. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975. Print

More about Liberation Theology: Saving People of Color from Oppression

Open Document