Abstract
In chapter 1, I tried to expose the problem of black conversion to a Eurocentric form of Christianity, specifically, the requirement of converts to realize and accept their own utter human depravity. My point was to show that given the racialized context in America at the time of conversion, black Christians’ acceptance of ontological sin meant accepting a denigrating view of Africa as the land of heathen idolatry, the land of no religion, and laid the foundation for black Christian anti-African sentiment. The doctrine that bolsters this sentiment, however, is that of Jesus Christ as exclusive savior, specifically, the notion that Jesus Christ alone saves the sinner from an eternity in hell. Acceptance of this doctrine bolsters anti-African sentiment among black Christians, because it suggests, indeed, that Africans had no knowledge of God or ultimate truth in their homeland and were destined for hell prior to European capture and enslavement in the Americas. It is a doctrine that delegitimizes non-Christocentric truth, thus dismissing outright the possibility that traditional African religious systems possess legitimate knowledge and have truth to share, especially for people of African descent. Thus, Christological exclusivity emerges as a concern because of the way it disavows nonWestern religious knowledge, further exacerbating black Christian alienation from traditional Africa.
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Notes
Phyllis Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” in Black Writers of America: A Comprehensive Anthology, ed. Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1972, p. 41.
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Cited in Richard A. Norris, Jr., ed. and trans., The Christological Controversies, Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980, p. 155.
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Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1973, chapter 3.
Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There with You. New York: The Free Press. 2000.
Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenges of Womanist God-Talk, New York: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 61.
For an investigation of each of these religions see: Wande Abimbola, Ifa Will Mend Our Broken World. Roxbury: Aim, 1997;
Kenneth Bilby and Eliot Leib, “Kumina: A Kongo-Based Tradition in the New World, Brussels: Les Cahiers du Cedaf, vol. 8 (1983): 1–114;
and Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living God of Haiti, 1953, reprint, Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1991.
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© 2012 Jawanza Eric Clark
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Clark, J.E. (2012). The Only Way to Salvation: A Christological Critique. In: Indigenous Black Theology. Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002839_3
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