African American Theological Ethics

A Reader

Peter J. Paris, Julius Crump

• Editorial: Westminster John Knox Press
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781611646405
• Categoría: Teología y religión
• Categoría: Teología cristiana

This volume in the Library of Theological Ethics series draws on writings from the early nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries to explore the intersection of black experience and Christian faith throughout the history of the United States. The first sections follow the many dimensions of the African American struggle with racism in this country: struggles against theories of white supremacy, against chattel slavery, and against racial segregation and discrimination. The latter sections turn to the black Christian vision of human flourishing, drawing on perspectives from the arts, religion, philosophy, ethics, and theology. It introduces students to major voices from African American Christianity, including Frederick Douglass, Richard Allen, W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Barbara Jordan, James H. Cone, and Jacqueline Grant. This is the essential resource for anyone who wishes to understand the role that Christian faith has played in the African American struggle for a more just society.

PART 1

OPPOSING THE DOCTRINE OF WHITE SUPREMACY

Chapter 1

The Origin of Races and Color

Martin R. Delany

Editor’s Introduction: One of the greatest threats to the humanity of Africans was the European Christian view that God created Europeans superior in nature to Africans. They based this anthropological understanding on the biblical story of Noah and the curse God placed on his sons. In 1879 the renowned black physician, abolitionist, and advocate for African repatriation, Martin R. Delany (1812–1885), published a small book titled The Origin of Races and Color that meticulously provided his reasons for rejecting the doctrine of European supremacy. By integrating the biblical, scientific, and archaeological knowledge of his day, he argued that the diverse races of humankind originated from one common source as told in the Genesis creation story, and after the flood humankind dispersed geographically throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia. While acknowledging the superior status of European cultural progress in the eighteenth century, Delany took great care to demonstrate Africa’s high level of civilization in antiquity as evidenced in the abundance of archaeological findings. Most important, he argued that science demonstrates that no amount of racial mixing could ever completely destroy any one of the races. Rather, an infinite regress of racial mixing would result in a reversion to one of the three original races and never the creation of a third race, since the latter would thwart the whole notion of divine creation. Further, Delany sets forth a composite of biblical arguments that people of African descent have embraced as their basic anthropological understanding that the races were created by God: that they originated from a common ancestral source, were intended for community, and that none was either superior or inferior to any of the others. In short, Delany’s interpretation of the Biblical sources constituted an alternative anthropology that differed from the anthropology that many Christians of his day were using to support the doctrine of racial supremacy. His argument also repudiated the racial theories that many social Darwinists were advancing in his day. Clearly, Delany’s argument set forth the basic structure for all subsequent arguments by African Americans concerning the natural equality and dignity of African peoples. Even a casual reading of the book soon reveals an astounding similarity between many of Delany’s arguments and those of modern day African scholars. The latter owe a great debt of gratitude to Martin Delany’s genius.

Delany’s book contains eighteen chapters in total, dealing with such subjects as the origin of races and color, the progress of races, the progress of the black race, builders of the pyramids, progress in literature, religious polity, a discussion of the gods, wisdom of Ethiopia and Egypt, Garden of Hesperides, serpent of the Garden, modern and ancient Ethiopia, and comparative elements of civilization.

We have selected four chapters for presentation below.

The following excerpts comprise chapters two through five (pp. 11–19) of Martin R. Delany, The Origin of Races and Color, (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press,1991)—first published in 1879 as Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color, with an Archeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization from Years of Careful Examination and Enquiry (Philadelphia: Harper and Brother Publishers, 1879).

CHAPTER II
THE CREATION OF MAN

Man, according to Biblical history, commenced his existence in the Creation of Adam. This narration is acceptable to us. The descendants of Adam must have been very numerous, as we read of peoples which we cannot comprehend as having had an existence, as “ in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden, whither Cain went from the presence of the Lord and dwelt,” where we are told his wife bore Enoch, his first born, though until this circumstance, had we known of the existence of but one woman, Eve the first and mother of Cain, who did not even have a daughter, so far as Moses has informed us in Genesis.

The history of Man from Adam to Noah is very short, as given by Moses in the first chapter in the Bible, and though we learn of the existence of communities and cities, as the first city Enoch built by Cain in the land of Nod, called after his first born; for all we know, there were no legally established general regulations, but each head of a family ruled his own household according to traditional customs, his own desires or notions of propriety, or as circumstances or necessity required.

This view requires a division into periods of the historical events, from the Creation of Man, till after the confusion of tongues, and the dispersion of the people from the Tower of Babel. During the abode of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise, we shall call the period of the “Original Law;” from going out of the Garden till the dispersion from the Tower, the period of the “Law of Necessity;” and after the dispersion on the Plains of Shinar, the period of “Municipal Law.”

CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN OF MAN

Until the Dispersion, Races as such were unknown, but must have become recognized at that time, doubtless at the period of that event, which brings us to the enquiry, What was the Original Man?

There is no doubt that, until the entry into the Ark of the Family of Noah, the people were all of the One Race and Complexion; which leads us to the further enquiry, What was that Complexion?

It is, we believe, generally admitted among linguists, that the Hebrew word Adam (ahdam) signifies red-dark-red as some scholars have it. And it is, we believe, a well-settled admission, that the name of the Original Man was taken from his complexion. On this hypothesis, we accept and believe that the original man was Adam, and his complexion to have been clay color or yellow, more resembling that of the lightest of the pure-blooded North American Indians. And that the peoples from Adam to Noah, including his wife and sons’ wives, were all of one and the same color, there is to our mind no doubt.

There are those of the highest intelligence and deepest thoughts, in spite of their orthodox training and Christian predilections, who cannot but doubt the account of the Deluge, touching its universality. On this subject says the Duke of Argyll in his “Primeval Man:” “That the Deluge affected only a small portion of the globe which is now habitable is almost certain. But this is quite a different thing from supposing that the Flood affected only a small portion of the world which was then inhabited. The wide if not universal prevalence among the heathen nations of a tradition preserving the memory of some such great catastrophe, has always been considered to indicate recollections carried by descent by the surviving few.”

Believing as we do in the story of the Deluge, after the subsidence of the waters, there was but one family of eight persons who came forth from the Ark, to re-people the earth—Noah and his wife; their three sons and their wives. And according to Biblical chronology, from the birth of Cain, the first-born of Adam and Eve, to the subsiding of the waters of the Flood, the time was one thousand, six hundred and fifty-five years (1655) the Flood lasting but forty days and forty nights.

“And it came to pass, in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth and Noah removing the covering of the Ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.” Gen. C. viii, V. 23. Now, what this six hundredth year means, we do not pretend to know; whether or not it alludes to the age of Noah, is inexplicable. For while chronology curiously enough would seem to make Noah only to have lived about one year after the Flood, the history tells us: “And Noah lived after the flood, three hundred and fifty years.” Gen. C. ix, V. 28.

From the abatement of the waters to the building of the Tower, chronology makes it but one hundred and two years. This computation of time would seem to agree very well with the number of people who must have accumulated as the offspring of the Four Families who came out of the Ark, the males of which were engaged on the Tower, at the time of the confusion of tongues and dispersion abroad.

CHAPTER IV
THE FAMILY OF NOAH

Noah and family were Adamites, himself and wife being undoubtedly of the same color as that of their progenitors, Adam and Eve. And from the Garden of Eden to the Building of the Tower, there certainly was but one race of people known as such, or no classification of different peoples: “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they began to do and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.” Gen. C. xi, V. 6.

Here we have inspired testimony of the unity of the people, speaking one language, in consequence of which, they imagined themselves all-powerful, setting all things at defiance. Finally to check this presumption, something had to be done, fully adequate to the end to be accomplished, which was the design of the Divine will. God has a purpose in all that he does, and his purpose in the creation of man, was the promotion of his own glory by the works of man here on earth, as the means of the Creator. And to this end man could best contribute by development and improvement in a higher civilization.

Could this be done by confining himself to a limited space in one quarter of the earth, rearing up a building “whose top may reach unto heaven”? Certainly not, because as the people were all one, and as “like begets like” the acquired manners, habits, customs, and desires of these Tower builders would have been taught and schooled into their descendants, to the neglect of all other employment and industries, confining themselves to comparatively limited spaces, caring nothing for the requirements of community, desiring nothing but to “make brick and burn them thoroughly,” and “build a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven,” and “make for themselves a habitation and a name,” lest they be “scattered abroad, upon the face of the whole earth.” Here, just what God designed in the Creation of man, these descendants of Noah desired to prevent.

The Progress of Civilization was God’s requirement at the hands of man. How could this be brought about, seeing that the people were all one, “speaking one tongue,” gathered together and settled in one place? Says his Grace, the Duke of Argyll: “The whole face of nature has been changed, not once, but frequently; not suddenly for the most part, perhaps not suddenly in any case, but slowly and gradually, and yet completely. When once this fact is clearly apprehended whenever we become familiar with the idea that Creation has had a history, we are inevitably led to the conclusion that Creation has also had a method. And then the further question arises—What has this method been? It is perfectly natural that men who have any hopes of solving this question should take that supposition which seems the readiest; and the readiest supposition is, that the agency by which new species are created is the same agency by which new individuals are born.”

How applicable is the above extract, to the subject under consideration. Civilization is promoted by three agencies, Revolution, Conquest, and Emigration; the last the most effective, because voluntary, and thereby the more select and choice of the promoters.

The first may come in two ways—morally and peacefully as the Coming of the Messiah; or physically and violently, as a civil war or conquest by military invasion, the worst agencies of civilization; but which do not fail to carry with them much that is useful into the country invaded. A moral revolution is always desirable as an agency in the promotion of civilization.

What then was the “method” of the Creator in effecting this desirable separation and scattering abroad of the people? Why simply the confusion of their tongues, by imparting to, or at least inspiring two divisions of them with a new tongue or dialect comprehended by all of those to whom it was imparted. Though on this subject the Bible is silent, it is reasonable to believe and safe to conclude, that one of the three divisions retained the old original Adamic tongue, so to speak, or that which they spoke when they commenced building; and that one was that which followed after Shem, the progenitor of the Mongolian Race, and eldest of the sons.

By this “method” then, of an All-wise Creator, the people lost interest as communities in each other, and were thereby compelled to separate. And it will certainly be conceded by the intelligent enquirer, that there was a “method” in the manner, if allowed a paradox? But there were other changes said to be necessary to the final separation, in addition to that of the languages: the basis of race distinction, establishing the grand divisions. Is it to be supposed that God wrought a special miracle, by changing for the occasion the external physical characteristics of at least two divisions of the people? He did not. This was not His method; He has a better and even wiser method than a miracle.

Again his lordship the Duke, in combating the Darwinian development theory—and for this we thank his Grace, as a most valuable endorsement of our humble position on the subject of the “Origin of Races and Color”—where his lordship had written his valuable “Primeval Man”: “It is not in itself inconsistent with the Theistic argument, or with belief in the ultimate agency and directing power of a Creative Mind. This is clear since we never think of any difficulty in reconciling that belief with our knowledge of the ordinary laws of animal and vegetable production. Those laws may be correctly, and can only be adequately described in the language of religion and theology. ‘He who is alone the Author and Creator of all things,’ says the present Bishop of Salisbury, ‘does not by separate acts of creation give being and life to those creatures which are to be brought forth, but employs His living creatures thus to give effect to His will and pleasure, and as His agents to be the means of communicating life.’ “The same language,” continues his Grace; “might be applied without the alteration of a word, to the origin of species, if it were indeed true, that new kinds as well as new individuals were created by being born.”

CHAPTER V
THE ORIGIN OF RACES

We have shown the “method” of the Creator, in effecting his design for man to “scatter abroad upon the face of the whole earth to “multiply and replenish it.” But we have not yet seen how the division was brought about by the confusion of tongues, so as to settle and harmonize the people, instead of distracting and discouraging them. What mark of distinction could there have been given to the multitudes of this “one people” previous to separation, to enable them to recognize any individual of a separate division, without speaking? It must be seen, th...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Library of Theological Ethics
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Permissions
• General Editors’ Introduction
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1. Opposing the Doctrine of White Supremacy
• Part 2. Opposing Slavery
• Part 3. Opposing Racial Segregation
• Part 4. Opposing Racial Discrimination
• Part 5. African American Religious Creativity
• Part 6. African American Themes and Perspectives
• Index