In James Cone’s text, “The Social Context of Theology,” he makes an interesting point: unlike white theology, black theology doesn’t question God’s existence, but waits for his salvation. Black religious thought, he argues, is expressed in story and concerns mainly liberation—it upholds that Jesus is God’s Word made flesh. Cone goes on to discuss the importance of song and “the salvation story,” saying, therefore, that the relation between form and content of black thought is dialectical: the story is not only the medium through which truth is communicated, but also an element of truth itself.

I couldn’t help but think about Cone’s ideas last weekend when (with my group for the Field Analysis Project) I visited the church of Reverend Al Green, known as the Full Gospel Tabernacle. I had never been to an African-American church before, much less one with a celebrity minister, so it was quite the experience. The choir was wonderful and full of feeling (for lack of a better word)—as Cone says on page 59, sometimes the power of the story was embedded in the act of telling itself, so it didn’t matter if you couldn’t quite understand what was going on. I would say that a majority of the service was not spoken, but sung—I didn’t know any of the words, but everyone who did was singing and dancing and jumping. Coming from a Lutheran background, this was unusual for me, but it helped me realize just how different white and black theology are. Cone says that white social environments function as “mental grids,” not at all concerned with liberation but rather the history of Jesus (et cetera).

I would argue that black theology has evolved since Cone’s 1975 publication. Without a doubt, it still finds its roots in spirituals, in “the salvation stories”—but I think there has been a shift to (or a greater flux of) higher degrees of veneration. Admittedly, my experience is limited, but at the Full Gospel Tabernacle, I felt a great sense of thankfulness—“I was created to praise him,” read one litany. At one point, a woman stood in the back and yelled “Thank you, Jesus, thank you” over and over again. There was much discussion of being grateful for today, because you never know what tomorrow may bring. Women sang songs from the pews, and one even brought her own set of tambourines. As the obliteration of social differences between race and class and the subsequent eradication of racism is (hopefully) drawing closer, it was a reminder of black culture and theology—a culture which, with strong roots in liberation and freedom, is still flourishing and evolving.