Page 6

blindness."

For King, Black Powers negative values (rooted in bitterness) outweighed its

positive aspects, and opened the door for the pursuit of a "nihilistic philosophy."

Essential to this paper is the assertion that the mind-set that led to the call for Black

Power is nearly identical to the mind-set that sought the propagation of a unique Black
theology.

This mind-set did not gain the whole-hearted backing of the Negro church

(represented in the thinking of King as well as Joseph H. Jackson

and others). These

stewards of the Negro church, perhaps, were the keys to its maintaining its grounding in the
biblical faith of the colonial and pre-Civil War slaves and the post-Emancipation Negroes.

Responses to Black Power/Theology

Before academic theological responses to Black power in the late 60s and early 70s,

black clergymen, in black and white denominations, began to address the call for Black power.
Some also addressed its consistency or inconsistency with Christianity. The black clergy
responded in various ways to the call for Black Power. Some felt the call for equality and
dignity was consistent with the gospel that the church preached and the historic role the
church had always fulfilled in the black community, and while not willing to totally embrace
the call for separatism and violence, they at least affirmed Black Powers complaints as
legitimate. Others acknowledged the sinfulness of racism and understood the frustration and
disappointment associated with the call yet rejected the bitterness, militancy, and separatism
of Black Power (and then Black theology) as unchristian and un-American. A final group
wholeheartedly embraced the political ideology behind Black Power and sought to radically
alter the structure of Christianity, as practiced by blacks, or abandon Christianity as
insufficient to address the black call for justice, freedom, humanity, and dignity.

In 1968, Albert Cleage personified the wholehearted acceptance of the call for Black

Power and the attempt to theologize it and apply it to the local congregation. He sought to "fuse
black nationalism of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X to an African-American Christian
base...."

It is worth noting that Cleages "Christian base" was very accommodating to

syncretism. His United Church of Christ congregation would become the Shrine of the Black
Madonna and the base of the Black Christian Nationalist movement. Cleage would later even
break with mainline clergy that had initially embraced the call for Black Power. He called for a
rejection of the New Testament, a rejection of the institutional Black church, and distinguished
between a "real Jesus" and a spiritualized Jesus. He criticized the churchs "fanatical
adherence to the classical doctrine of the atonement... [and] insisted that the classical doctrine
of the atonement (an emphasis on the salvation of the individual believer by faith in Jesus
sacrifice on the cross) must be discarded altogether..."

While Cleages embrace of Black Power

Martin Luther King, Chaos or Community, 26.

Ibid., 44.

Note the similarity between Kings assessment of Black Power and a West African theologians

assessment of Black theology after spending a year at Union Theological Seminary with Cone and others. Cone and
Wilmore, Black Theology: 1966-1979, 379-384.

History has often cited Martin Luther King and Joseph Jackson as opponents in their philosophies

concerning the role of the church in political protest. However, King and Jackson disagreed over politics within the
National Baptist Convention but their responses to Black Power were similar. See Edward Gilbreath, "The Forgotten
Founder." Christianity Today (March 11, 2002), 66-68.

Vincent Harding noted that there was a "tendency among Black Power advocates to repress any

reference to the earlier Afro-American religious expressions..." Cone and Wilmore, Black Theology: 1966-1979,
41. While Black theologians didnt reject such language, they did often introduce vague pluralistic language instead
of distinct Christian language.

Mark Chapman, Christianity on Trial, 95.

Ibid., 92.