Abstract
The anti-black problematic of Christianity in Britain,1 and also across the contours of the African Diaspora, arises from the realization that this phenomenon has had a long and interpenetrating relationship with colonialism and empire. I write this chapter as a child of Caribbean migrants, who themselves were the children of the British Empire, growing up as they did in Jamaica. My assessment vis-à-vis the colonial context in which Christianity in Britain is located can be witnessed, in part, in two dialogically marching responses to this phenomenon. The very fact that I write this chapter as a black, African Caribbean male whose parents come from the Caribbean island of Jamaica, tells you a great deal about the positionality of Britain with a part of the world several thousand miles from these shores. In the words of a poster beloved of the antiracist movements of the 1970s and 1980s, “We Are Here Because You Were There.”2 It should be axiomatic, therefore, that one cannot talk about Christianity in Britain without engaging with the broader thematic hinterland that is Empire and Colonialism. The overarching framework that incorporated the bulk of Black Diasporan Christianity has been that of “Imperial Mission Christianity.” In using this term, I am speaking of a historical phenomenon in which there has existed an interpenetrating relationship between European expansionism, notions of white superiority, and the material artifact of the apparatus of empire.
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Notes
See Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in The Union Jack (London: Hutchinson, 1987).
See Bob Carter, Clive Harris, and Shirley Joshi, “The 1951–1955 Conservative Government and Racialization of Black Immigration,” in Kwesi Owusu (ed.), Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 21–36.
Some of the key texts in this emerging discourse are: See James W. Perkinson, White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
See also James W. Perkinson, Shamanism, Racism and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005);
Laurie M. Cassidy and Alex Mikulich (eds.), Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007);
Jennifer Harvey, Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice Through Reparations and Sovereignty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
One of the best critiques of the homogeneous construct of whiteness as privilege and superiority can be found in Chris Shannahan, Voices from the Borderland: Re-imaging Cross-Cultural Urban Theology in the Twenty-first Century (London: Equinox, 2010), pp. 140–142.
This chapter has offered a rather generalized critique of “whiteness.” It should be added that gender concerns can and should be noted in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of this phenomenon. While there are, undoubtedly, some very powerful and privileged white women who have undoubtedly enjoyed the advantages of “ white privilege” the bulk of white people who experience the material and symbolic advantages of which I speak are most often white, Oxbridge men. See Ann M. Clifford, Introducing Feminist Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001) for an excellent introduction to feminist theology and its accompanying critique of male privilege.
The challenge that confronts of all forms of liberative, contextual theologies is the leviathan that is the “Global Economy.” The Global economy was one of the hallmarks of the age modernity, although there is no doubting that in our present postmodern epoch, the characteristics of this phenomenon have been refined and indeed, extended. It is now, in many respects, an archetypal postmodern phenomenon. As the boundaries of so-called sovereign nations have been traversed by the entrepreneurial ingenuity of those firmly committed to the process of profit maximization we are now witnessing the demise of fixed identities predicated on the parameters of national identity. This global economy often works hand in hand with neoliberal models of political ideology, which assert the inviolate nature of the market, the necessity of free and unfettered trade, minimal governmental intervention and a basic revulsion to centralized planning or the collectivist control of the means of production. There is no doubting that poor, disenfranchised white people have been as severely impacted and reduced to consumerist objects as have black, Asian and people from other ethnic and cultural groups. See Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: Andre Deutsch, 1983) and Sri Lankan Liberation theologian Tissa Balasuriya. See Tissa Balasuriya, “Liberation of the Affluent,” Black Theology: An International Journal 1, 1, (2001): 83–113.
See David Isiorho, “Black Theology, Englishness and the Church of England,” in Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds.), Postcolonial Black British Theology: New Textures and Themes (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2007), pp. 62–72.
See Anthony G. Reddie, Faith, Stories and the Experience of Black Elders: Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2001).
This term emanates from a pivotal event on June 22, 1948, when 492 people from the Caribbean arrived at Tilbury docks on the SS. Empire Windrush. These postwar pioneers ushered in a wave of black migration to Britain from the Caribbean, which (for the most part) forms the basis for black African and Caribbean communities in Britain. For further information, see Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: Harpercollins, 1999).
Selective literature includes R. B. Davidson, Black British (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966);
R. A. Easterlin Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
Paul Hartman and Charles Hubbard Charles, Immigration and the Mass Media (London: Davis-Poynter, 1974);
Edward Scobie, Black Britannia: a History of Blacks in Britain (Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1972);
Ken Pryce, Endless Pressure (Bristol: Classical Press, 1979);
Winston James and Clive Harris Migration, Racism and Identity (London: Verso, 1993).
See Gretchin Gerzina, Black England: Life before Emancipation (London: John Murray 1995).
See James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis. 1986).
Dwight N. Hopkins, Down, Up and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000).
See Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1993).
See Jacqueline Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus (Atlanta: Scholar’s press, 1989).
See Robert Beckford, Dread and Pentecostal (London: SPCK, 2000).
See Anthony G. Reddie, Working against the Grain (London: Equinox, 2008).
See William David Spencer, Dread Jesus (London: SPCK, 1999).
Michael N. Jagessar, “Liberating Cricket: Through the Optic of Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan,” in Black Theology: An International Journal, 2, (July 2004): 239–249
Kampta Karran “Changing Kali: From India to Guyana to Britain,” in Black Theology in Britain: A Journal of Contextual Praxis, 1, (November 2001): 90–102.
For further details see Joe Aldred, Respect: A Caribbean British Contextual Theology (Peterborough: Epworth Press, 2006).
For further information, see John L. Wilkinson, Church in Black and White: The Black Christian Tradition in “Mainstream” Churches in England: A White Response and Testimony (Edinburgh: St. Andrews press, 1993).
See C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham & London: Duke University press, 1990)
and Peter J. Paris, The Social Teaching of the Black Churches (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985).
See also Anne H. Pinn and Anthony B. Pinn, Black Church History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002) for a brief selection of an extensive literature in this area of Black theological work.
William Ackah, “Back to Black Or Diversity in the Diaspora?: Re-imagining Pan-African Christian Identity in the Twenty-First Century,” Black Theology: An International Journal 8, 3, (2010): 341–356.
See Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez, Caribbean Religious History: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2010).
This emerging model of ecclesiology is one that is providing new modes of religiously inspired collective black identity in Britain. For further analysis on this growing phenomenon, see Israel Olofinjana, Reverse in Ministry and Mission: Africans in the Dark Continent of Europe—A Historical Study of African Churches in Europe (Milton Keynes: Authorhouse, 2010).
See Joe D. Aldred, Respect: A Caribbean British Theology (Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Biblical Studies, The University of Sheffield, 2004).
See Joe D. Aldred, Respect: A Caribbean British Theology (Peterborough: Epworth press, 2006)
and Mark Sturge, Look What the Lord Has Done!: An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain (London: Scripture Union, 2005).
See, for example, Anthony Reddie, Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 67–70.
See M. Byron, Post War Caribbean Migration to Britain: The Unfinished Cycle (Aldershot: Averbury, 1994).
See also R. B. Davidson, West Indian Migrants (London: Oxford University Press. 1962),
and R. Glass, Newcomers: The West Indians in London (Assisted by Harold Pollins) (London: George Allen and Unwin. 1960) for a historical analysis for the presence of disproportionate numbers of black people living in inner urban conurbations in Britain.
Peter Brierley, The Tide Is Running Out: What the English Church Attendance Survey Reveals (London: Christian Research, 2000), pp. 136.
See Mukti Barton, Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection (London: DLT, 2005).
See Anthony Reddie, Nobodies to Somebodies (Peterborough: Epworth press, 2003).
See Robert Beckford, Jesus Dub (London: Routledge, 2006) for an excellent theo-cultural treatment of the black Pentecostalism as a conduit for the aesthetics of black Caribbean religious resistance in Britain.
See Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins (eds.), Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (New York: Palgrave, 2005).
See Kelly Brown Douglas, What’s Faith Got To Do with It? (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 2005).
James A . Banks (ed.), Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), p. 9.
See Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1971).
James A . Banks, Race, Culture and Education: The Selected Works of James A. Banks (London & New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 148.
See Emmanuel C. Eze, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
Gayraud S. Wilmore, Pragmatic Spirituality: The Christian Faith through an Africentric Lens (New York: New York University Press, 2004), pp. 142–143.
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 93–128.
“Passive Radicalism” can be understood as an anti-oppressive mode of struggle, which is based on a form of a pneumatologically inspired connection with the Divine. Oppressed black Christians come to believe that God has created them to be free, through the power of the spirit and spirit-filled forms of religio-cultural practices. This form of assertion is an expression of an innate belief that it is a fundamental right on behalf of those who are being oppressed to seek to claim their freedom with God in and through the power of their religious association with the Supreme Being. For information on this mode of anti-hegemonic struggle by black people of Christian faith, see Valentina Alexander, “Passive and Active Radicalism in Black Led Churches,” in Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds.), Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007), pp. 52–69.
The best collective articulation of Black Theology in Britain can be found in Michael N. Jagessar and Anthony G. Reddie (eds.), Black Theology in Britain: A Reader (London: Equinox, 2007).
See James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989).
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© 2014 R. Drew Smith, William Ackah, and Anthony G. Reddie
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Reddie, A.G. (2014). Anti-Black Problematics in Imperial and Contemporary British Christianity. In: Smith, R.D., Ackah, W., Reddie, A.G. (eds) Churches, Blackness, and Contested Multiculturalism. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137386380_2
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