Black Theology: The Notion of Culture Revisited‪.‬

The notion of culture has been and remains one of the prominent emphases in black theology as it has emerged and continues to develop in South Africa, the United States, and various forms in different regions of the world. A basic claim of black theology historically and today is that there is a positive and affirming relationship between people of African descent, or the darker peoples of the world, and the liberating message of Jesus Christ as a manifestation of God's justice and attention to the "little ones" of society. The divine presence amid the brokenness of injustice reveals itself in the particularity of oppressed peoples' culture. Thus, though there are varieties of black theology, they all presuppose the reality of culture, the centrality of culture, and the necessity of culture being a location for revelation. One has to have only a cursory acquaintance with the emergence of black theology in South Africa, the United States, Zimbabwe, Ghana, England, Cuba, Brazil, Jamaica, India, and other global regions to see the taken-for-grantedness of the notion of culture. In these theological movements (which are basically attempts to discern the role of culture in developing a theological anthropology) we notice profound grappling with how God relates to or encounters locked-out voices in their Christian and indigenous faith claims. Debates unfold around the nature of black culture, black Christian culture, African indigenous culture, and the mixture or intertwining of cultures. Questions arise such as: How does God liberate in the midst of contemporary postmodern culture? In the struggle to become full human beings who can live out the authenticity of cultural identities as black people or people of African descent, what is the relation between politics and culture or economics and culture? Other concerns relate to the culture of globalization and its impact on the movement of black theology as a global phenomenon. Also, what are the spiritual dimensions of culture?