African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Martyrs for Hope

There are no African-American Christian martyrs. There are many ancient Christian martyrs (who knows, some may have been African), a large number of martyrs among Christian missionaries to European colonies (certainly almost all white folk), a few dozen Protestant and Catholic martyrs of the Reformation (black folk missed that one altogether), somewhat fewer recognised as the martyrs of various totalitarian regimes in the 20th century (others too get murdered for being identifiably different from the dominant group). There is even a basilica in Africa in honour of the twenty-two African Christians killed for their faith in the 19th century.

Yet despite the thousands of (known) deaths among African-Americans by lynching, mob and police brutality, judicial prejudice, or pure social neglect by the dominant white culture, there are none who are recognised as dying for their faith - even those killed in churches while they prayed. Why? I think Glaude offers a clue when he cites the 20th century black theologian, Howard Thurman:

“… the slave dared to redeem the religion profaned in his midst, he offered a particular understanding of black Christianity: this expression of Christianity was not the idolatrous embrace of Christian doctrine that justified the superiority of white people and the subordination of black people. Instead, black Christianity embraced the liberating power of Jesus’s example.”

At the risk of offending a very large segment of African-American Christians, not to mention Christians in general, I suggest that what Thurman is saying is that African American religion is something different than that derived from the Pauline tradition of professed dedication to a text, either biblical or dogmatic. This is a Christianity of practice, not belief in the sense of credal assertion of a set of orthodox opinions. Glaude confirms this explicitly: “I view African American religion as a practice of freedom.”

This non-doctrinal character of African-American religion is at least a partial explanation of why there are no African-American martyrs. Those black Americans who lost there lives didn’t do so proclaiming a belief in propositions of faith. They died in the name of hope not faith. This, I think, might be what Glaude calls “the specific inflection of Christianity in the hands of those who lived as slaves.”

Hope does not reside in propositions or credal statements. Hope, like Love and unlike Faith, is a practice. Hope is un-dogmatic about its intentions. It will accept ‘deliverance,’ or ‘salvation,’ or ‘rescue,’ or simply ‘comfort’ as its end without trying to make a distinction among them. That is, Hope is a confidence that there will be a change in the world but it has no particular object.

This is the example of Jesus. Even when he feels forsaken, he doesn’t despair but maintains Hope: simple undogmatic, perhaps even content-free confidence that the future is worthwhile even in his misery. Glaude puts it this way: “… my approach to African American religion insists on its open-ended orientation… that ‘all is not settled.’” Exactly. What ‘settlement’ might look like is completely “open-ended.” This is a religion of undisclosed, hidden promise. In this sense, it is pre-Pauline, that is to say, Judaic (also a genetically based religion of Hope and physical difference).

Faith is ritualistic; it is a matter of words and submission to words. Hope is an entirely different kind of religious practice. Glaud quotes the black sociologist W. E. B. DuBois about the three things that characterise African-American religious practice: “the preacher, the music, and the frenzy.” Each of these is distinctive, the last most dramatically: “The frenzy (the shouting), for Du Bois, captures that delicate balance between joy and terror that shadows black life in the United States. It is the eruption of the spirit in ordinary time that assures the presence of God amid the absurdity of white supremacy.”

Hope is, I think, what Glaude means by “the sign of difference” in African American religion. Hope is an antidote to absurdity (and therefore even an antidote to faith according to Tertullian). It nullifies or cancels the existence of a hostile and oppressive current world-order. Hope trusts nothing except itself. Not institutions, not people, and, in the midst of the eruption of the spirit, not even words of prayer. This is what Glaude calls “the site for self-creation and for communal advancement with political implication.”

Faith is something one can inquire about and use as a sign of membership or political affiliation. Sometimes people are killed for this affiliation. Hope is a different expression altogether - non-verbal, unpolitical, transcendent one might say. But Hope is apparent in behaviour - an attitude of independence, a willingness to engage, an acceptance of compromise, and a demonstrated tolerance for change and uncertainty. This behaviour makes some people outside what might be called the Community of Hope, (which is much larger than a church congregation) annoyed, resentful, and even homicidally hateful. Unlike faith, it can neither be questioned nor argued against. It persists in silence rather than proclaiming itself. And those who die in Hope do so unrecognised.

Thus, no African-American martyrs. We can only hope the killing stops.

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