The Role of Experience in Black Theology
(In this paper I discuss the role that experience plays in the development of black theology. This paper is part of a series of papers I wrote for a seminary course I took fall of 2019 on James Cone and black theology.)
Since the beginning of the first followers of Jesus, Christians have wrestled with what ought to be the source of our theological inquiry. Shall it be scripture? Or perhaps tradition? What about reason? Or, like Josh Wesley proposed, it is a balance! However, black liberation and womanist theologians alike implode the idealism that theological inquiry could be sourced in anything but experience. In this essay I will argue for why sourcing theological exploration in experience is essential to black liberation and womanist theologies. In addition, I will explore how James Cone, Katie Cannon, and Kelly Brown Douglas define and use experience in their respective theological projects and I will argue for why sourcing experience in one’s theology is even essential for white people.
James Cone makes no qualms that experience not only ought to be but is the source of theological inquiry. While he does not strictly define what he means by black experience, he boldly declares that Truth for and about black people exclusively emerges from black experience. Therefore, truth is “disclosed in the history and culture of black people." In relationship to theology, then, Cone says this about the essentialness of experience: “[o]ur theology must emerge consciously from an investigation of the socioreligious experience of black people…” For Cone, it is not enough that our theology does emerge from experience but that we also must be conscious of it too. The liberating power of theology sourced in experience is in simply the recognition and deployment of it. He continues, “that experience is reflected in black stories of God’s dealings with black people in the struggle of freedom.” With the historical experience of black people’s struggle for freedom, black experience will always inform black theology to be a theology of liberation for black people. Black theology is a theology of and for black people, irrespective of white people. Being sourced in black experience, black liberation cannot be liberating for white people, albeit it can be illuminating for them. Therefore, grounding black experience as source of black theology, Cone draws upon his experience as a black Christian man in the section, “The Black Experience as Source of Theology” in God of the Oppressed. Throughout the section he injects old sermons from black preachers, prayers from slaves, and negro spirituals. Thus, his method of utilizing black experience to source black theology remains consistent. Where, then, does scripture fit into experience solely being the source of theological inquiry for Cone? Scripture is not independent of black experience; therefore, for Cone, scripture emerges from the black experience to be a source of black theology…