Black Religious Criticism and Representations of Homosexuality

Abstract

At the conclusion of chapter 1, I outlined the logic of both black liberation and womanist theology and African American cultural criticism. I analyzed the ways in which these two areas of critical thought construct racial identity and difference. While black theology is clear that the primary criterion for its theological analysis is race, black cultural criticism seeks to move beyond racial essentialism as a primary category for doing the work of exploring black existence. In the previous chapter, I sought the presence of black homosexuals in black religious criticism. I found that in the work of womanist scholars and contemporary black cultural critics, sexual difference is mentioned as a problem to be solved. As I noted in chapter 1, both black and womanist theologies and black cultural criticism fail to adequately explore the reality of sexual difference in black communities. In the previous chapter, I put forward a hypothesis that the black liberation theology and African American cultural criticism marginalize homosexuality in black communities because of a preoccupation with dismantling white supremacy.