Untitled Slide

What encounter have you have in your church community about the perception of #BlackLivesMatter, its meaning and it's purpose in our current political and social climate?

But why does the Church not Live this out?

Black Lives Matter/the Theology of the Cross

• Why are violated Black Bodies the ones who are placed on trial, instead of the offenders/those who abuse both the legitimacy and the power of the law, which is to protect and serve all citizens?
• Therefore, in order to understand the impact on other communities, we have to engage theological and faith voices beyond the norm.

Dr. James Cone, Father of Black Liberation Theology

Wrote: God of the Oppressed, A Black Theology of Liberation
The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Black Lives Matter/Theology of the Cross

• "Any theology, especially the theology of the cross, that does not address this ever-present communal Black suffering reveals the bankrupcy and false claims of the cross for all persons.

Theology of the Cross

Black Lives Matter/Theology of the Cross

• For in the Cross, God is revealed.
• God is ostensibly and definitely known in suffering
• Luther's definition

Black Lives Matter/Theology of the Cross

• "God encounters us in the human condition as the liberator of the poor and weak, empowering them to fight for freedom because they were made for it" Cone

"Womanist is to Feminist as purple is to lavender." Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

Womanist Theology, is the theology of Women who have

Womanist Theologian Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas

Black Lives Matter/The Theology of the Cross

• Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas "Stand Your Ground"
• The reason why this text is important in this the systemic issues and social ills are both a theological and sociological issue
• Identifies the social-cultural conceptions that coalesce to deem the black body, especially the black male body as not inferior, but a threat to the dominant culture

"What we need to be free is right here in this religion. It just hasn’t been unleashed, and that’s our job as liberating liberation theologians- to get the good news of the Gospel – to set the captives free.” Rev. Dr. Katie G. Cannon

Womanist theology engages the macro-structural and micro-structural issues that affect Black Women's lives and therefore since it is a theology of complete inclusivity...." Rev. Dr. Linda Thomas

“What must Christian belief and practice become in order to respond to the crisis of our time?”

Black Lives Matter/Theology of the Cross

• "A still white supremacist system in the United States disseminates a domestic terror that reinforces corporate power and threatens us all, but predominantly and most brutally those in black and brown and other and communities of color." The Executed God.

“Isn’t it odd that Christendom, that huge body of humankind that claims spiritual descent from the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth-claims to pray to and adore a being who was prisoner of Roman power, an inmate of the empire’s death row?”

Black Lives Matter/Theology of the Cross

• To participate in the way of the cross, is a national struggled, but one nestled within a world struggle against U.S. global power’s violation of the fundamental dignity, human rights and collective liberation of others nations and peoples.”

Black Lives Matter/Theology of the Cross

• The way of the cross and its resistance is no mere liberal enhancement of the political and economic system we have.
• It does not just tinker with what is in place, but dreams and works for its fundamental transformation