Dear Black Evangelicals, you do not need to try to make the black church acceptable to white Reformed evangelicals. Black Christianity does not need Reformed evangelical approval or justification. Stop defending black preaching, its theology of suffering, etc. The fact is...
the black church has always operated with a much more biblically robust theory of atonement than white conservative UK/American evangelicalism—one that includes both substitutionary atonement AND Christus victor. White American Evangelicalism hasn’t needed Christus victor....
and as a result, they reduce “the gospel” to substitutionary atonement alone & erroneously teach that issues derived from Christus victor are only “implications” of the gospel so they won’t get the black church, black preaching, why black Christians care so much about justice,
....why traditional black gospel music has a theology of suffering—so it covers a range of issues from personal salvation to God’s intervention against social sin—and so on. USA Reformed evangelicalism does not have this in their music. Reading black history won’t help either...
This is theological and I see so many black millennials who seem to be in captivity to Reformed evangelical-ish (SBC, PCA, TGC, etc.) acceptance/approval. The Triune God seems perfectly pleased with the black church’s Christus victor/substitutionary atonement(CV/SA) “BOTH/AND...”
White Reformed churches with a both/and in this way are often called “liberal” in the PCA. But y’all are wasting your lives trying to get the Apollos followers of Reformed evangelical power brokers to accept black church frameworks & traditions that are more Anglican in practice.
Because Reformed UK/American evangelicalism is largely revivalistic & pietistic, & w/the Anglicanish sentiment in the black church tradition, many whites taught both black & white people to show contempt for the black church & offer “racial reconciliation” models as a last hope.
The narrow atonement theory of revivalists, would even see things that Presbyterian churches like Redeemer NYC or ACNA churches promote as activities that “aren’t central to gospel.” If Tim Keller is “liberal” then explaining the black church is a fool’s errand.
Moral of the story: move on with your lives and stop arguing with these people about social justice, critical race theory, whether black preaching is expository, etc. The telos of the Resurrection was not for you to spend your life obsessed with white Reformed acceptance.
Believe it or not, there are more important things in life than posting blogs on certain websites, being on podcasts, and getting invited to speak at conferences. Those platforms are only tribally important—neither internationally nor eschatologically.
Those platforms do not mean you have arrived. In fact, with some you may be getting played, used, and are the token mascot for their tribal preferences.
For more on this substitutionary atonement/Christus victor both/and, read Michael Bird’s “Evangelical Theology.” The revivalist/pietist Reformed folks probably slammed it but its atonement section best explains what the black church has been: both/and. amazon.com/Evangelical-Th…
If you’re working with minorities, start with Bird and then stick with Bavinck, Hoekema, Kuyper, and Van Groningen and you’ll all be free from “useless quarrels” (Titus 3:9). Both/and also explains, in part, why Anglican/Presbys were so influential in America’s institutions.
I’ve been having these discussions for 31 years, & what I’ve seen is that fundamentalists became Reformed & tried to limit Calvinism to USA revivalism’s substitutionary atonement & have pushed away black graduates of RTS, Westminster, Southern, etc. in the process. A theory...🤷🏾♂️
PS Anyone who says there’s no such thing, historically, as “the black church” is an uneducated idiot. amazon.com/Black-Church-A…
Fact: If more black churches like that this, that have *always* been around, had not been kept from your field of vision, you never would have left the black church in the first place. This what the both/and looks like. Regular black, regular Reformed 👉🏾
Happy Black History Month! 👊🏾
