Black Christianity

Abstract Black Christianity is a complex and diverse phenomenon, depending on multifarious historical experiences, linked to the enforced exile of Africans to the “New World,” to western missions to Africa 350 years later, and more recently to voluntary migration of African and Caribbean people to the northern hemisphere. Theirs is a theology, or better theologies, which derive from the experience of being black in Africa, the Americas, and Europe in past and present, i.e. within the transatlantic cycle between the African, Latin American, and North American continents and the Caribbean islands, that demonstrate a different kind of a “globalization” process not guided by Eurocentric views but by blending the Christian message with their own unique cultural and religious roots in specific geographical‐political contexts. As such they address themselves to issues of spiritual, social, and political freedom, theological independence, liberation and social justice — challenging misleading notions of white Christian missions. “In all history, Christian and otherwise, being black has never been a neutral, merely racial characteristic. It has usually been a predicament carrying with it concrete and painful consequences — the common experience of oppression, poverty and exploitation.” (Kalilombe). As a continuance of this human experience, Black Christianity today carries the potential to function as a vehicle for spiritual, racial, and social redemption and as a driving force for a renewed Christian mission.