Preached · February 12, 2023
The default option
Anthony: A lot is communicated when we consider what is supposedly the default, the normal, or the expected. A couple examples: crash test dummies, when they were designed, were designed using the average male body. So when carmakers and federal regulators were figuring out what was a safe car or not, they were using male bodies, and that excluded half the population from the sample size of what is considered a safe car or not, because a male body was considered the default. The same thing happened with medicine—pharmaceutical testing, for years and years, would only use white male test subjects, not taking into consideration gender or race.
Think about what is the default size of clothes versus what's considered a specialty size, or of an airplane seat. Or what's the default for building construction—do you use stairs or do you use ramps? Do you take into consideration the different abilities of people, or do you have a default that doesn't take those into consideration? What's the default romantic show or movie plot? Who are the leads? Are they straight? What are the defaults when you're looking at things labeled "for men" or "for women"?
When you walk into a well-stocked theological bookstore, you'll see shelves and shelves of books, and you'll see these little placards on them. One of my favorite bookstore placards is "teen paranormal romance." You don't see that in a theological bookstore, but you'll see things like biblical studies, or systematic theology or biblical theology, Christian living, things like that. And then you have to go a little bit deeper into the store, and then you'll find these specialty studies, like Black theology or feminist theology or queer theology. So then it makes you think: okay, so if there's Black or Asian theology or feminist theology, and then there's just "theology," what defines the default? Who got to decide this is the default, normal option, and everything else is on the specialty bookshelf? So what is meant when we say "biblical studies"? Biblical studies by and for whom?
Introducing Theology Cafe
Anthony: So this year we're going to introduce something called Theology Cafe. Sorry, there's no coffee. But Theology Cafe, where we are going to sort of take a sampling over the year—and we probably will continue this past just this year—a sampling of all the different forms of theology or biblical studies that are out there that question the supposed default option, by looking at that wide, wide variety of other ways of constructing our theology, our way of talking about God.
Whenever I see, as a pastor—whenever I see panic about "those dang progressive Christians" or "those supposed liberals" or whatever, what it usually is communicating to me is: oh, your experience of what Christianity is and was and can be is this narrow, even though there's a wide other ocean of not-default options that's been happening for decades and centuries. And so part of what Tonetta and I want to do is just sort of introduce us all to that. Some of us know it. Some of us don't. And there's a wide mix in between. So we're going to look at this wide variety, because everyone does theology. Even the statement "I don't do theology" is a form of theology, okay? You can't opt out.
So our plan for 2023 is, every few months, to take a look at a different lens and experience of theology: feminist, Asian American, queer, Latinx, indigenous. And this month, in light of Black History Month, we're going to be taking a look at Black theology.
So every Theology Cafe, we're going to invite a practitioner or scholar of this Sunday's theme to share with us. And so today we have a pre-recorded video, and that is by Dr. Adam Clark of Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Not our Adam Clark—sorry, Adam. He currently serves as the co-chair of Black theology at the American Academy of Religion, and actively publishes in the area of Black theology and Black religion. He is committed to the idea that theological education in the 21st century must function as counter-story—a way of pushing back against the default—one that equips us to read against the grain of the dominant culture and inspires us to live into the saying of St. Ignatius, of going forth to set the world on fire. So we're going to watch this presentation by Dr. Clark, who prepared this just for us, and then we'll have some discussion time and move forward from there. So roll the tape.
Dr. Adam Clark's presentation (pre-recorded video)
Dr. Adam Clark: Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, depending on what part of the world you're from, and welcome to Black History Month. Black History Month was started in 1926 by a scholar named Carter G. Woodson. And he chose February as Black History Month because February was previously known as President's Month: you have the birthday of George Washington, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and the birthday of William Harrison, lesser known. But Carter G. Woodson wanted to place, at the time, Negro achievements alongside President's Day—presidents' history. He wanted the achievements of Black Americans to be acknowledged at the status of presidents. So in 1970, after much protest, Gerald Ford acknowledged Negro History Week and expanded it to Black History Month. And there we have Black History Month, a month to recognize the achievements of Black Americans.
This morning I want to talk to you a bit about Black theology. And before I do that, I just want to talk a bit about the history, or the mission, of the Christian church. The mission of the church is to be a vehicle for God's love. The gospel of John reminds us, Christians love God because God loved us first. But the question becomes: what is the love work of the church? Where should the flow of love be directed? When one examines the history of this country in regard to race, Christian love has been paralyzed in relationship to the color bar. Christian love has not pushed back sufficiently against slavery; it hasn't pushed back sufficiently against segregation, against colonialism, against mass incarceration. And Black theology emerges as a critique and a corrective, to hold Christian love accountable to the pain, to the suffering, and to the hurt of Black and oppressed people.
Black theology gets its Christian identity from the life and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. King modeled a prophetic conception of Christian faith—a model that transformed Christianity from a religion primarily concerned with the afterlife (i.e., Billy Graham) to a religion of this-worldliness. Christianity is not exclusively about the soul's relationship to God, but it's about the well-being of the entire person. Christianity is not exclusively about the world.
[The remainder of Dr. Clark's presentation was not captured—from this point the Whisper transcript degrades into the preceding sentence repeated on loop until the discussion time.]
Discussion questions
Anthony: All right, let's take a few moments. We're going to do some discussion with your neighbors. So, a few questions.
Number one: what has been your default theology? Was it ever named as particular to your intersection of race, culture, country, class, gender, et cetera? Or was it just assumed to be the default? So in your groups, name what your default was—if you grew up in the church, or if you came to the church later in life, has been that case for the past few years.
Number two: can you identify any particular characteristics or quirks of your theology, or the theology that was handed to you? Individualism, triumphalism, escapism, liberationist. So in other words, can you name: this seems to be specific to my church or my theology, and I know it was different from maybe my neighbors down the street or the church down the road?
Number three: what draws you in about Black theology, what you just heard? What makes you say, "Yes, that's it"?
And number four: what challenges you about Black theology? What makes you think, "Oh gosh, that stings a little"?
All right. So find three, four, five of the people nearest you. Move the chairs around. We'll give you about five, six minutes to talk, and then we'll wrap up with communion.
Communion and closing
Anthony: In Paul's letter to the Corinthians, chapter nine, he says:
To the Jews, I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.
By "win" he means bring them to knowledge of Jesus.
To those under the law, I became like one under the law, so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I became like one not having the law, so as to win those not having the law. To the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that by all possible means I might save some. I do this for the sake of the good news, that I may share in its blessings.
There is no one way to talk about God. And if we believe the lie that there is, then we lop off our ability to know God in all of their glory and splendor and goodness and pain and suffering. So we need a wide spectrum of voices and light to be shed, to shine on what reality is, what truth is, what the experience is of ourselves and those around us. That is what theology does.
And so this is an invitation. There is nothing resolved about tonight. We didn't solve anything. But we did invite ourselves, and were invited, into a broader conversation that has been happening. How do we speak about God? How do we speak about the experience of people in the midst of pain? And how do we measure our credibility not by intellectual completeness—as Dr. Clark said—but by our ability to bring forth justice?
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
