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Are Wright's views mainstream among African Americans?

It depends on what you mean by "Wright's views." Do most African Americans feel like they've gotten a fair shake in the American experience? Certainly not. Do most African Americans think that racism is alive and well? Yes. Do most African Americans feel that there will be some judgment against America for its hypocrisy and duplicity along racial lines? I think so. But in that sense, most African Americans aren't much different from their white counterparts who decry abortion as a scourge deserving judgment.

But do most African Americans call down damnation on America? No, I don't think so. I don't think Wright's flourish represents even most of the people in his own church. If you keep in mind that historically black preaching aims at emotional effect, it's entirely possible to resonate with the emotion of a point while not at all holding to the particulars of the point. I don't think this is healthy. But it is typical and it may help to explain why 8,000 people could attend that church, hear such things, and continue to love their pastor, serve together, and go about their everyday lives without expressing that kind of sentiment. The preaching moment is primarily affective, not cognitive.

You write, "In the African American experience, the persons most likely 'doing' theology were preachers and civic leaders as opposed to the academically trained theologians of the 'white church.'" How does this distinction shape the resulting theology?

You get a grittier, earthier theology done in the vernacular. There is far less concern for the hypostatic union, for example, than there is for the application of justice in this or that concrete social or political situation. African American preachers look out on people with real hurts, and they are primarily concerned with bringing theology to bear on those hurts, not with precision in a particular doctrine. So, African American theology really tends toward social ethics, not theology proper. At least that's the trajectory it's taken over the last 150 years or so.

Earlier generations of African Americans held in tension both concern for biblical soundness and concern for social justice. In earlier generations the cause of freedom was fought with sound theological ammunition. The irony of African American theology is that as African Americans have gained wider freedoms they've lost biblical soundness. And I think that's part of what you see in Wright's comments.

You conclude in The Decline of African American Theology, "As a consequence of theological drift and erosion, the black church now stands in danger of losing its relevance and power to effectively address both the spiritual needs of its communicants and the social and political aspirations of its community." Does this current incident with Wright fit that conclusion?

I think so. In his effort to perhaps address American injustice from a black perspective, the clips make it appear as though he's left behind anything resembling biblical soundness. Trinity United boasts a statement of values and faith that make it clear that they intend to be "unashamedly black." Well, who would begrudge them that if what is meant is security in who God has made you to be? But if what that statement means, as black theology puts it, we're black before we're Christian, then it's easy to see that culture and ethnic identity have eclipsed the Cross and our identity in Christ.

It's easy to see how the thing most needed — the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ — is neglected, and in neglecting the gospel other important but secondary needs also go unmet, or are temporarily met in the most superficial and impermanent ways. If you lose the gospel, you lose everything. But if you have the gospel, even if everything else seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, you still gain everything. As Jesus says, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" I fear that many have sanded off the sharp points of the Lord's questions by assuming that gaining the world in an economic or political sense is the same as keeping your soul. And it's that basic confusion that ends up making the church irrelevant spiritually and temporally.

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March (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52