‘Mis-religion of the Negro and Oppression’ William R. Jones, Theodicy, and Black Theology

Abstract

In thinking about a Post-Cone Black theology, I think it essential that we consider one of James Cones contemporaries who not only pushed him but the entire Black theology enterprise on the issue of Black oppression and suffering. The problem of Black oppression was raised by William R. Jones in his monumental work, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology (IGWR) in which he problematized Black liberation theology’s assertion that Black suffering possessed redemptive ends. The title of this paper comes from a never published work attributed to William R. Jones, a philosophical theologian.

This paper seeks to build on the work of John H. McClendon III’s analysis in Philosophy of Religion and the African American Experience, (2017) of William R. Jones as a philosophical theologian, by explicating Jones conception of mis-religion as a form of oppression that exist as a part of religious traditions intersection with anti-Black racist systems. Finally, I set out to offer some prescriptions for a Black theology that is not rooted in theological colonialism or what I will refer to throughout this essay as “mis-religion.”

The concept of mis-religion was William R. Jones’ distinction between non-oppressive religious thought and his identification of oppressive features of religious thought that infiltrated the consciousness of oppressed peoples. However, Jones critique was not singularly targeted at Black liberation theology or the Christian tradition. I argue that Jones’ concept of mis-religion can be expanded to other constellations in the Black religious cosmos to uncover oppressive features of cosmologies and theologies that purport themselves to be liberation discourses. In this paper I concentrate my analysis on what I have termed the Black Abrahamic religious tradition (BART), meaning the collection of African American Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious traditions and communities. Understanding these religious traditions possess immense diversity it is still possible to discuss underlaying traits common across religious boundaries. I am arguing that these religious communities are bound together by beliefs, values, and attitudes that are rooted in an attachment to the Abrahamic tradition and cosmology but essentially possess oppressive features that conceal anti-Black beliefs, values and attitudes. By considering a wider swath of African American religiosity outside of the Christian tradition I believe I am keeping with the spirit of Jones who argued that there are only two types of religions “those that undergird oppression and those that undermine it.”