9/25/2005

Being Black and Reformed--Another Great Model on the Rise

A couple years ago, Anthony J. Carter wrote On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African-American Christian Experience. Christians of all races need to hear the incredible insights of Carter--to hear the voice of this African-American about his experience and his ideas about how Reformed Theology can provide substantive answers to the questions surounding the history of slavery in the United States.

Another great model of a being "black and Reformed" is my old friend Vince Bacote, who now teaches theology at Wheaton College. A Neo-Calvinist, he is seeking to build on the ideas of Abraham Kuyper as he engages in the theological issues of the 21st Century (I have his paper, "A Neo-Kuyperian Assist to the Emergent Church" published here at VanguardChurch).

His latest article, "What is to be done in Theology?" is found at the Comment online magazine website. In it, he offers four items for an emerging 21st Century theological agenda:

  1. The further development of what it means to live as God's people in God's world--focusing on the Cultural Mandate of Genesis 1 as the "first Great Commission."
  2. The challenge of the commodification of our church experience--where people are discipled more by a mall-mentality than by the Christian understanding of "church."
  3. A rediscovery of the importance of the Holy Spirit--transforming a church that is functionally "binitarian" into a truly Trinitarian church.
  4. The rectification of deficiencies related to race and ethnicity in our theology--where Vince spells out some of his plans to engage with "liberation theology" as an acceptable theological category, and to employ Kuyperian sensibilities to the task.

Good stuff; check it out.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've enjoyed Carter and I really like John Perkins. I haven't heard of Bacote until now. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

The only modification I would make is to that my
advocacy of the category of "liberation" doesn't mean an engagement with
liberation theology in the sense that I feel a need to do what Cone et al
have done, but instead to make a claim on liberation as a vital category
for the way that we think of the way salvation plays out in the here and
now. To put it differently, I think we can use the term without having to
carry the baggage of baptized Marxism or socialism that often goes with
other liberation theologies.

Bob Robinson said...

great clarification, Vince.
It sounds more like Christus Victor than 20th Century Liberation Theology.