Insights: The Faculty Journal of Austin Seminary, Fall 2011

Reflections and liberations ethics, between worship and social transformation, between the places of parish and public theology?

For historical black preaching traditions, even those debated between otherworldly and this-worldly preaching, the encounter between spiritual formation (or soul survival) and social crises (or liberation) is difficult to isolate because preachers often transport theological claims uncritically. This phenomenon remains prevalent today. We attempt to nurture faithful practices between spiritual discipleship and social engagement across forms of moral values, civil rights, public policy, economics, and global exigencies. In recent years we have struggled in sermons to address events like Hurricane Katrina, the unrelenting Middle East conflicts involving both desperate acts of violence and terrorism sponsored by both small cells and nation states, and the acts of terrorism in America with our own desperate deployment of terror in preemptive war. Occasions for the encounter of preaching to wrestle with the conflict between spiritual formation and social agency are not limited to these horrific events. Crises seldom emerge as a singular event. In fact, crises are hardly ever treated adequately as individual episodes. Political and economic systems affect and yet also respond to climates of moral values. The life of the church lives within such climates. How we clothe ourselves or move through life is not simply determined by the daily climate, but also by the theological worldviews, faith identities, and missions of the church. For the lives of hopeful witness within the church, preaching functions as a primary arbiter of the overwhelming threats upon personhood, personal thriving, and social engagement. We hear sermons formed directly from theologies of election, of triumphalism, of holding out for a raptured rescue, and even of conquest. Still, we also hear sermons formed in theologies of resistance, of engagement, of transformation, and even of reconciliation. What makes the diagnosis of our preaching difficult is that these strands are often confused in our sermons; we make incongruous claims upon God and divine sanction.

A tragic irony emerges when we take a close look at the theological worldviews undergirding espoused moral values in lives of faith and in public life. When black preaching enjoins divine judgment in wrestling with tragedies or suffering, or perceives illness as divine judgment on supposed sin, or charges servitude and poverty as evidence of unfaithfulness or the “wrong” faith, then black preaching employs the same ideological and theological worldviews that have historically defined the violent domination and marginalization of African-American and African peoples.

It is agonizing to decipher in that the judgment is directed both outwardly and inwardly. Whether by acts of nature or human agency, we preach the righteousness of violent reprisal as God’s judgment upon our own nation’s immoral culture. And yet, we also claim the call of election as the predominant Christian nation with the blessed inheritance and authority to represent or exact God’s judgment globally.

Lest we believe such sermons are limited to the occasional episodes of national crisis, we find the same kind of theology and ideology in those sermons against homosexuality or sustaining gender subjugation. We select disparate methods of interpreting scripture and employ biblical authority to fit our ideology and theo22