Black Church, White Theology: How White Evangelicalism Controls the Black Church Paperback – March 29, 2024

The late Walter Wink, brilliant scholar, theologian, and social activist, revealed the troubling truth about our world: that humans negotiate life, mostly unconsciously, within hierarchical power arrangements, which he labeled the Domination System. Since humans organized themselves into societies, this system has invisibly defined their interactions. He described this system as an evil social hierarchy with the privileged class occupying the top, and as it descends, the less privileged the rungs become until the bottom is reached, where the most vulnerable reside. Various ranking metrics have characterized systems of domination throughout human history, such as gender, age, caste, race, class, skin complexion, and countless others.In the United States, race has been the most obvious ranking metric for the Domination System, with the white race at the top of the hierarchy and the black race constrained at the bottom. Beneath the shell of this system of domination are other hierarchical power arrangements, leaving the poor, disabled, women, and the LGBTQ community pinned to the margins of society. In such social constructions, white, heterosexual, Judeo-Christian men enjoyed the pinnacle privilege.Within this social matrix, all theologies emerge from its various rungs. For example, some theological constructs emerge from communities occupying the lowest rungs on the hierarchy, such as black theology from Black people, liberation theology from poor people and their advocates, womanist theology from women, and queer theology from the LGBTQ community. Central to these theologies is the struggle for liberation on behalf and, along with those stuck at the bottom as they speak prophetically in abrasive criticism and then energize strategies to collapse this demonic system.On the other hand, white evangelical theology also emanates within this social matrix but from the highest rungs. Rather than advocating for its deconstruction, its salient feature is providing biblical, moral, and theological justification for keeping hierarchical systems sound and in place so that oppression and domination may flourish. Therein lies the contradiction between the Black church and white theology. When the Black church embraces white evangelical theology to inform and shape its ministry, message, and morality, it becomes complicit in its own oppression. Out of love, this book confronts the Black church, pleading for its purging of the toxic influence of white evangelicalism to embrace a theology consistent with its experience as Christian American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS). Read more