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Recently a friend told me about an experience he and his wife had as students at a flagship evangelical seminary in the early 1980s. "The black church," one of their professors explained, "is not really a church because it does not have its own theology. Rather it's a social organization." Presumably he was basing his judgment on the absence of systematic theology articles and books produced by historically African American denominations. My friend didn't say whether the professor, in a moment of notable self-reflection, went on to add " … and every day when I look in the mirror I ask myself how the tradition of which I am a part effectively guaranteed that this would be the case, especially in evangelicalism," or "of course, since our theological task is to winsomely deliver the faith once delivered across all contexts, I suppose having their 'own' theology is not the goal for a genuinely catholic church." I doubt that is how the conversation continued at that moment or in many other places where the same assumption has reigned as "a simple matter of historical fact."
While a search for tomes of Christian dogmatics written by African American theologians may yield little, Thabiti M. Anyabwile discovered that there is a much richer theology in the history of the African American church than one might expect. In The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity, Anyabwile introduces us to figures such as Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes, and Olaudah Equiano and makes us more aware of the theology of the poet Phyllis Wheatley and the theology which was woven throughout slave narratives. Turning the spotlight on these figures presents the opportunity to write African American theology into the story of Christian theology in the United States. This is important, as it is unlikely that most students of theology at evangelical colleges and seminaries will learn that Hammon and Haynes were contemporaries of figures such as George Whitefield and John Wesley. The theology we discover is neither novel nor distinctively African American—that is not the point. Anyabwile is a Baptist pastor who clearly indicates from the outset that he operates with a normative gaze of Reformed theological orthodoxy. When he examines the theological fruit which emerged from the pens of these early American Christians, he discovers continuity with the impulses of the Reformation, broadly speaking. Looking at the doctrines of revelation, God, humanity, Christology, soteriology, and pneumatology, Anyabwile is surprised and encouraged by the depth and theological sophistication to be found, especially given the context of oppression and resistance to anything which might possibly improve the lot of African Americans (starting with basic literacy and knowledge of the Bible). While acknowledging the significant influence of the Wesleyan and Arminian impulses in the 19th century and beyond, Anyabwile is mostly pleased with the state of theology in the African American church through the end of the era of Reconstruction.
Of course, the book's title is The Decline of African-American Theology, and the subtitle foretells a story of descent that culminates in a worrisome state of affairs for the African American church today: "From the earliest period of African American writing to the present, a clear and distinct theological decline could be traced. The rich God-centered treasure troves of Lemuel Haynes, Phyllis Wheatley and others were plundered, wasted, and forsaken until the fool's gold of contemporary African American theology and preaching was all that remained." As Anyabwile looks across the six doctrines covered in the book (a helpful structure, I think), he finds that the descent begins with William Seymour and the Azusa Street revival, followed by the New Thought and nationalism of Marcus Garvey, the mysticism of Howard Thurman, the Black Theology of James Cone, and the prosperity theology of Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes, and Fred Price. These are the main characters in the story of decline, though figures such as Benjamin Mays, Tony Evans, and Kelly Brown Douglas are also featured at certain points. Anyabwile concludes that the revisions and innovations made in the course of the 20th century led to a distorted theology more reflective of the surrounding culture than of the biblical witness.
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