Thoughts on Daniel White Hodge's "Homeland Insecurity"

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Thoughts on Daniel White Hodge's "Homeland Insecurity"

Daniel White Hodge’s Homeland InsecurityL A Hip Hop Missiology for the Post-Civil Right’s Context (IVP 2018) is a vital work on race, mission, Hip Hop, and finding Jesus in a post-soul, post-civil rights context. I was excited to write down some thoughts.

“Western evangelism has run its course. There is not much we can salvage from it. Hip Hop theology creates space for multiethnic voices to imagine God and heaven while filled with doubt. It allows us to live in ambiguity while still seeking the face of God. Hip Hop theology gives credence to love, unity, peace, and fellowship with God from the context of a multiethnic and intercultural perspective. This is where missiology needs to go, and together we can begin to reconstruct what Christianity looks like in the wild for a generation seeking new and fresh symbols of Jesus.” (232)

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Thoughts on Karl Barth's Romans Commentary

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Thoughts on Karl Barth's Romans Commentary

It is a wonderful experience to come to a book so beloved and lauded (and also criticised and dismissed) and to find it an absolutely thrilling, joyful, and thought-changing!

Here are some thoughts on why I loved the book and some things I'm taking from it.

tattoo chapters 5 through 8 on my ribcage!

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Some Thoughts on Elizabeth A. Johnson's "Creation & the Cross"

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Some Thoughts on Elizabeth A. Johnson's "Creation & the Cross"

Elizabeth Johnson has written a superb, constructive, and accessible work of Christian Dogmatics. In Creation and the Cross she develops a theology of accompaniment, demonstrating the depth of God’s mercy and the consistency of God’s redemptive work, marked by solidarity and grace. God’s creating, accompanying, and redeeming work reaches wider and deeper than humankind. The whole of creation in its life and death, suffering and joy, is swept up by/in God.

I offer some thoughts on why it might be the best book of 2018.

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The failing & hope of the Church: thoughts on and from James H Cone's Black Theology & Black Power, ch 3 The White Church & Black Power

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The failing & hope of the Church: thoughts on and from James H Cone's Black Theology & Black Power, ch 3 The White Church & Black Power

My series on James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power continues. This post comments on chapter 3 "The White Church and Black Power".

From the chapter:

If the real church is the people of God, whose primary task is that of being Christ to the world by proclaiming the message of the gospel (kerygma), by rendering services of liberation (diakonia), and by being itself a manifestation of the nature of the new society (koinonia), then the empirical institutionalized white church has failed on all accounts.
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The Gospel and Black Power: thoughts on and from James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power: "The Gospel of Jesus, Black People, & Black Power"

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The Gospel and Black Power: thoughts on and from James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power: "The Gospel of Jesus, Black People, & Black Power"

The 4th post in the series on the writings of James Cone. Here I reflect on Cone's response to questions such as what is the gospel of Jesus Christ, what is the righteousness/justice of God, and whether Christian love is compatible with Black Power.

Therefore violence may be the only way to express Christian love to the white oppressor, as it is the only way to confront the white oppressor as a thou, to remain a thou in the face of the threat of nonbeing, to remain true to the worth, value, and humanity that God has bestowed through the initiating agape love, the only way to embody love as righting the wrongs of humanity because they are inconsistent with God’s purpose.

 

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Asserting Black Humanity: thoughts on and from James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power "Toward a Constructive Definition of Black Power"

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Asserting Black Humanity: thoughts on and from James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power "Toward a Constructive Definition of Black Power"

The 3rd post in a series on the work of James Cone. Here I reflect on Cone's definition of Black Power, the affirmation and assertion of black humanity in the face of white racism, how I am a racist, and the risk of liberalism.

To borrow a phrase from Paul, we live and move and have our being in a racist society, a racist climate. I cannot deny that which I have inherited, racialised narratives that shape the way I see the world and the gut reactions I have to stimuli and the way it shapes how I turn observation into meaning.
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Emotional Theology: thoughts on and from James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power, Introduction

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Emotional Theology: thoughts on and from James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power, Introduction

The second post in the series on the work of James Cone. Here I talk about Cone's criticism on objectivity and the need for our emotional response to injustice to shape the writing and performing of our theology. A prescient point in light of the current refugee debate and proliferation of inhumane treatment of those seeking safety.

Calls to ‘remain rational and objective’ are more often than not a ploy of those with power to dismiss the objections of those without (this is obviously not a new insight). It is easy to stay ‘rational’, ‘objective’, ‘cool, calm, collected’ when your body isn’t on the line – when your life, and the lives of your people are not at risk
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Thoughts on and from James H Cone's Black Theology and Black Power, Preface to the 1989 Ed.

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Thoughts on and from James H Cone's Black Theology and Black Power, Preface to the 1989 Ed.

New Series: In this, the final year of my Masters, I'm writing a thesis based around the theology of James H. Cone, the father of Black Theology in the US - and one of my favourite theologians. Because of that I'm going to have to read a bunch of his books. This made me think, why not get a little synergystic and blog through the books of his that I'm reading. Cone is an undervalued theologian, and it is a shame how few people know him or his work. So if I happen, through this, to encourage people to check him out, then that's a win. Today is the first in this new series, beginning with the 1989 Preface to the 1969 work Black Theology and Black Power (Harper & Row, San Francisco). I'm also going to include companions (in forms of songs, readings, films, etc. along the way). This post also leads to some offshoot thoughts about Australia Day, the "Alt-Right", and X-Men. 

As Cone writes, “amnesia is the enemy of justice. We must never forget what we once were lest we repeat our evil deeds in new forms” (xi). Cone is applying this to himself and his silence on the oppression of women, and it needs to be something I apply to myself, to my own past (and present) misdeeds, shortcomings, mistakes, silence, and perpetuation of oppressive systems and structures against all those who are striving for justice (Indigenous Australians, women, the LGBTIQ community, migrants and refugees). It also needs to be something we remember as a community, about our past… and this makes me think about Australia Day…
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3 Takeaways from Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder's WHEN MOMMA SPEAKS

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3 Takeaways from Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder's WHEN MOMMA SPEAKS

Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder's insightful exploration of six Biblical mothers through the lens of womanist maternal thought is a book that I encourage everyone to dive into. It is accessible, yet rigorous; efficient, yet impactful. In this post I explore the three main takeaways I felt the book offered. I also interviewed the author recently, see it here.

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James Cone and #BlackLivesMatter

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James Cone and #BlackLivesMatter

How James Cone's ground-breaking, earth-shaking, woke-inducing, God of the Oppressed connects with the #BlackLivesMatter movement and speaks into (or against) the unfortunately too common response of 'all lives matter'.

Image of James Cone speaking at the Rall Lectures in 1969 in the Chapel of the Unnamed Faithful.

"Cone’s work grants a new perspective on those who criticise “Black Lives Matter”, insisting on the adoption of the ‘universal’, “All Lives Matter”. Cone (dealing with this before we had #’s) counters, that yes, all lives do matter, just as all are oppressed, but when the person contending that is not a member of the oppressed it becomes another way to silence those crying for liberation."
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Tripp Fuller's Guide to Jesus as a movie

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Tripp Fuller's Guide to Jesus as a movie

What if Tripp Fuller's excellent guide to Jesus was reimagined as a movie about a competitive home brewer who reflects on his relationship with beer as he travels across the country to a prestigious competition? 

You'd see that right? Well, read all about a movie that will never be made about a book that can easily be read, right here!

"Finally, as the road trip ends we catch up with the present, arriving at the great brew-off. Our young man, drawing on his journey, the wealth of experience he has pillaged and plundered, presents his beer."
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