Black liberation theology was created by black theologians and preachers who rejected this white teaching about the meek, long-suffering Jesus. We called it hypocritical and racist. Our christology focused on the revolutionary Black Christ who “preached good news to the poor,” “proclaimed release to the captives,” and “let the oppressed go free”

Throughout black history Scripture was used for a definition of God and Jesus that was consistent with the black struggle for liberation.

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see. Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; ’Tis grace hath bro't me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.

It is impossible to interpret the Scripture correctly and thus understand Jesus aright unless the interpretation is done in the light of the consciousness of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

Who found me when I was lost?

evaluate past interpreters of the faith. Since oppression of the weak by the powerful is one of those elements, we can put the critical question to Athanasius, Augustine, or Luther: What has the gospel of Jesus, as witnessed in Scripture, to do with the humiliated and the abused? If they failed to ask that question or only made it secondary in

White people did everything within their power to define black reality, to tell us who we were—and their definition, of course, extended no further than their social, political, and economic interests. They tried to make us believe that God created black people to be white people's servants. We blacks, therefore, were expected to enjoy plowing

“I had much rather starve in England, a free woman than be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent.”

by the truth, we are accountable to black people. What does it mean to speak the truth from a black theological perspective, that is, what are the sources and the content of theology? To explore this question we must begin by exploring the theological function of the black experience.