What you did not learn in Sunday School part 3 

In this installment of the series “What You Did Not Learn in Sunday School,” I want to examine the subject of Theology.

We hear a lot about theology and theological perspectives. Webster defines theology as “the study of religious faith, practice and experience: the study of God and of God’s relation to the world.”

In short Theology is “God talk.”

Theology also deals with another academic term called “epistemology” or “religious epistemology.” Epistemology, according to Webster, “is a branch of philosophy that examines origin, and the limits of knowledge.”  

Theology and epistemology help shape what we believe about God, ourselves, life, and other people.

The late Pastor and theologian Dr. William Augustus Jones of the Bethany Baptist Church of New York framed it like this, “Your Theology will shape your anthropology and your theology and anthropology will ultimately shape your sociology.” This means that what you believe about God (theology) will shape your anthropology (what you believe about yourself), and both of those ultimately shape how you see other people and then order your society (sociology).

If you believe that God is an old white male, then you will believe that you are closer to a white male, and that then will cause you to believe that everybody else who is not white and male is inferior to you.

Theology and a theological perspective do not necessarily align with a biblical understanding of God, Jesus, angels, or the Holy Spirit.

For instance, in the bible, there is no such thing as “race” because race was invented during settler colonialism by wealthy white men in the late 1800s to divide people by skin color in order to keep poor white people (in particular white men) from aligning with poor Black people and overturning the structures of oppression that rob both groups of equity in this nation.

Racism is a theological perspective that draws heavily on patriarchy, which is another belief system that seeks to rank hierarchically maleness above femaleness. 

Again, a theological perspective that ranks men as “heads of households” is a divisive design by men to control people. More on that later.

Rene Descartes, a 17th-century French philosopher, postulated in Latin these words: “cogito ergo sum,” which translates as “I Think, therefore I am.” Descartes’ words are instructive epistemically and theologically because they negate any belief in God‘s sovereignty and dismiss the human connection to other people, which has a profound effect on any person’s ability to navigate this life.

It is an arrogant, individualistic, self-centered, and self-absorbed belief system that a person is the sole factor in their life. 

Black South Africans, however, do not ascribe to the arrogance and individualism of a Cartesian epistemology. They developed an epistemology and theology that says in Zulu, “I am because we are, and because we are, I am.” In other words, it takes a community of people to shape, nurture, and develop each of us into a person.

The South Africans further explain this in these Xhosa words Umntu ngumntu ngabantu, which mean “A person is a person only through other people.” 

When you examine the three words in Xhosa further, you will see the letters “ntu,” at the end of each word. The “NTU” means God. In other words, “A person can only be a person because of other people, and without God, no person would not exist.”

This is a theology of the interconnectedness of all people, and it centers on God as the ground of all beings.

If you believe that God is an old white male with a long white beard, that will then shape what you think about other people, and you will then cause your society to diminish other people who are not white and male, and you will create laws that discriminate against melanated people. That is why Judge Roger Taney wrote in the Dred Scot case of 1857 “that no Black man has any rights that any white man has to respect.” 

If you believe that God is a male, then you will believe that women are inferior to men, and you will order your society to control women rather than see them as the crown of God’s creation who are capable of making their own decisions about their bodies and their lives. 

If you believe that God is white, male, and American, then you will believe that brown people who are migrants, undocumented, and persons who are fleeing oppression are coming to the southern borders to take resources and jobs from you. You will then turn away while governors like Greg Abbott set up barbed wire in the water to severely injure and even kill women and children at the border. You will justify the Trumpian policy of separating children from their parents, never to be rejoined. You will, at the same time, set up financial incentives and give those European immigrants the promise of land stolen from the native people for those same European immigrants to come to America to become the majority population as was done in America. A warped theology always has to step on other people or send them to Hell to lift itself up.

Theology shapes what we believe about God, ourselves, and other people and ultimately develops into either healing, redemptive, and restoring systems, or it creates policies that disproportionately disinherit, dispossess, and disallow basic human rights to people. 

Examine what you believe about God because your belief system might just be your hate masquerading as religion.

The late Black Liberation Theologian James Cone stated, “Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology.”

Uhuru Sassa! 

Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by email at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.