Black Theology

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Albert Cleage

In 1953 Albert Cleage dedicated a church to the black Madonna, and said Jesus was black. He rejected integration for black people into American life as an acceptance by them of their "inferiority" and believed there should be a division between the races in America. He asked whether black people could accept their separation (but not their inferiority) within America. His idea was that they use this separation to gain economic power, in a similar manner to Stokely Carmichael.

In 1967 Cleage formed a black Christian nationalism, with the belief that the white Jesus was made for the convenience of white Christians - an idea which can also be found in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple". Cleage's theology was not in the context of academia, but of the church - he wrote sermons rather than lectures, and was intended for the whole community, not just the educated.

Cleage compared the condition of the Jews under the Roman empire to that of black people in the America of his day. The Jews were Semites - which Cleage identified as black - whereas the Romans were white. The Roman empire controlled, administered and oppressed the Jews in the same way as white people did black people in his time. Cleage reconceived Christianity, redefining the message of Jesus as a black leader of a black people struggling against a white oppressor. He saw Jesus as a revolutionary seeking to lead Israel from the Roman Empire, not a figure bringing hope in a life after death, which was a popular new idea in the '60's. Cleage believed God's hand could be seen in the black versus white revolutionary actions in Detroit, and that black people were the new chosen people. He believed the themes of revolution and a new covenant with black people had been dropped from mainstream (white) Christianity. Cleage was critical of the Apostle Paul, who, he said, had dropped these themes because he was representing the white Romans, as a Roman citizen. Paul, then, was an "Uncle Tom" figure for Cleage. Paul presented Christianity in "white" themes, and obliterated the "black" themes. In this Cleage followed the biblical scholar Rudolf Bultmann who said Christianity is a religion about Jesus, not of Jesus. This meant the black church could not and should not preach the white gospel of individual, petty sins rather than the gospel of nationhood and injustice. Cleage's gospel was one of liberation rather than salvation. Cleage compared the Exodus to the conquest of Canaan - the first is passive in accepting God's arrangements, whereas the latter is active in doing his will. Pauline ("white") Christianity is like Exodus whereas black Christianity ought to be like the conquest of Canaan. This naturally led Cleage to declare that the church should lead the revolution and provide guidance for it. When rioters stole and looted Cleage said they should be loved as part of the black nation, not condemned for their illegality.

Although Cleage seems as though he had an idealised picture of black people in general and ghettos in particular, as James Cone did, in reality he had not. He stressed that black people are not good because they are poor and black but because of God choosing them. Cleage saw a revolution as necessary because the ideology of inferiority was being internalised and making people's minds sick. The riots showed the minds of black people changing - they were making up their own minds. While they were not perfect, they were in a period of growth. Cleage also noted that there would be oppression of black people by black people - again in the mould of Paul oppressing his own people with his "white" Christianity.

In order to fit with his new theology, Cleage redefined the meaning of church ceremonies. So baptism becomes the joining of a person to the nation and a renunciation of "Uncle Tom", and the eucharist becomes a remembrance of a person who was willing to die for the nation.

Cleage was critical of the Nation of Islam for its belief that white people are the creation of the devil, saying that this belief came as a result of their having power, they had become "a little bestial". He criticised Malcolm X for holding this belief and for changing it - he said it is irrelevant how individuals treat each other, such as the white muslims Malcolm X met in Mecca. Cleage had a rather ambivalent attitude to Martin Luther King, he said Dr King had no analysis of the situation, but also that he created confrontations to unmask white oppression. He brushed aside the non-violent struggle of Dr King as irrelevant unless it led directly to power.

Although black theology began in churches such as Cleage's, it soon moved to seminaries and black theologians such as James Cone started to appear. Cleage was suspicious of these men as they had all been approved by and trained within the white environment of seminaries. James Cone, for example, was regarded as "acceptable" by the white community. They had also been trained in white Christianity, but in order to make themselves acceptable to black people, they became more extreme and more angry.

Rev. Cleage died Sunday Feb. 20, 2000