Inner-City Blues: Black Theology and Black Poverty in the United States

By Darvin Anton Adams

Black theology's addressing of economic poverty in the Black neighborhoods and communities of the United States gives substantive reasoning to the fact that Black poverty is a theological problem. In connecting the narrative of idolatry to the irreversible harm that is associated with all forms of poverty, this new book interlocks the racial subjugation of Black Americans with the false assumptions of capitalism. Here the inner-city blues of poverty are experienced by those who reside in metropolitan cities and rural towns. The poverty of Black Americans is described with a vision of development and reconciliation--one that is intentional in its use of cultural language and inclusive to the destructive images of Black people's deprivation. In understanding how idolatry foundationalizes deprivation in the inner-city communities, I envision the liberation motif in Black theology working with the mission of the Black church for the purposes of community empowerment and neighborhood development. As a form of material and structural poverty, Black poverty is an interdisciplinary study that requires a holistic approach to ministry. With a theological focus on deprived inner-city communities, this new volume strategically moves the conversation of Black poverty from description to construction to solution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Apr 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666792911

Darvin Anton Adams

Darvin Anton Adams is an adjunct professor of theology and biblical languages at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville, and pastors the Lane Tabernacle CME Church in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He also serves as Scholar In-Residence for the Second Episcopal District under Bishop Marvin Frank Thomas Sr. Adams completed his PhD in theology and ethics at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. An eight-time award-winning preacher, Adams is the author of Inner-City Blues: Black Theology and Black Poverty in the United States (2022).

Book preview

Introduction

Make me want to holler

The way they do my life

This ain’t living, this ain’t living

No, no baby, this ain’t living

No, no, no

¹

How does Christian theology reflect on matters of Black economics? As one who is concerned with the holistic condition of Black Americans in particular and poor people in general, I define theology as the holistic study of God in religious faith, Christian practice, human experience, and cultural spirituality. Theology is interdisciplinary discourse that gives biblical reasoning for the liberating truth of God to come to light in sacred and secular contexts. Theology is God-Talk. She shines her brightest when she describes and identifies the creative formation of God’s spiritual presence in the material world. Here, the Spirit of God carries material implications for human beings as they have been lovingly created in the image of God (Gen 1:26). In order to describe and identify the critical norms and sources of one’s theology, he or she must be operating from a working definition of theology that gives meaning to one’s critical approach to biblical hermeneutics, theological praxis, and social analysis. Amongst other methodological agendas, Black theology is a contextual liberation theology that orientates African American religious thought into the Christian experiences of Black people’s struggle for economic freedom in the United States.

Stephen G. Ray understands Black theology to be the proclamation of the Gospel in a way that restores the humanity and dignity of those oppressed by white supremacy. It does so by drawing on the creativity of Black peoples and communities through time. In this work of restoration and witness, Black Theology combats the bondage of the Church and the Christian tradition to the demonry of white supremacy.² This particular depiction is one of practical importance because in the years following the civil rights movement, some Black theologians began urging Black church clergy to view racial justice as essential to Christian theological morality. Proponents of a religious philosophy known as Black liberation argued that God and Christianity are mainly concerned with eradicating poverty and bringing about freedom for Black populations and other oppressed peoples.³ I take solace in knowing that, Black theology was never created by an individual sitting in any ivory tower . . . Black theology arose out of a spiritual and physical life-and-death . . .⁴ The poverty that exists in Black and brown inner-city neighborhoods and communities of the United States is an authentic life situation with dire consequences of spiritual life, psychological struggle and physical death. It requires theological attention from ordained preachers, church historians, trained scholars, economic developers, elected officials and members of the Black church.

Black liberation theology is a Christian theology that provides a politicized, radical and socially transformative understanding of the Christian faith in light of the lived realities and experiences of the economically-poor, the marginalized and the oppressed. Here, Black theology is a liberating theology of economic blackness within the Christian narrative of those whose hope is in the ability and power of God to deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help. He will take pity on the weak and needy and save the needy from death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in his sight (Ps 72:12–14 NIV). In Black liberation theology, the theme of Yahweh’s concern refers to the shortage of economic justice for the poor and needy in society. In proclaiming the blackness of Jesus Christ within the Black power that is associated with the Holy Spirit, we understand the importance of affirming the psychic and spiritual consciousness of Black people who live dually in a ghetto and in a white society in which their lord and savior looks like people who victimize them.⁵ In Black theology, God in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is whatever color (in this case the skin color Black) God needs to be. The liberation motif in Black theology takes into account the fact that once upon a time it was acceptable to lynch a black man by hanging him from the tree; but today’s economics destroy Black communities by crowding many into inner-city ghettos and letting filth, despair and poverty put the final touch on a coveted death.⁶

Dwight N. Hopkins’s text, Heart and Head: Black Theology Past, Present and Future, offers the basic theme of liberation of the poor as a crucial path toward the brokenness and transforming injustices found in America and the world.⁷ Hopkins affirms black theology as one that grows out of the best that African American communities of faith have to offer.⁸ Hopkins’s critical statement leads us to the fact that Black liberation theology in the United States must find a way to address the economic condition of Black people in inner-city neighborhoods and communities. Using a Marxist philosophical criticism, Cornel West would say that Black theology is irrelevant if the poor and working-class people were not taken seriously. In other words, if Black people and their lack of ownership of the wealth in America were not at the center of the Black theology conversation, then Black theology was not in favor of God and liberation. On the contrary, Black theology was in favor of capitalism, which is nothing but exploitation.⁹ As a systematic way of responding to the idolatry of poverty, racism, capitalism, and exploitation, I agree with James H. Cone’s affirmation that all theology should be liberating in that a theology that is not a liberation theology is not theology at all. When Christian theologians are in dialogue about the economics of Black and brown Americans, their conversations must be centered on the blatant denial of the Black people’s basic humanity. Historically, the oppressor has always been the one to determine what it means to be a human being.

This dark reality of Black people not mattering economically confirms Derrick Bell’s message in Faces at the Bottom of the Well.¹⁰ Because Black people have always been the victims of white racism, a large percentage of Black Americans will never be economically self-sufficient. The criminal justice sector of the legal system in the United States will affirm Bell’s theory. When I say legal system, I am referring to the law or a set of laws of a country and the ways in which they are interpreted and enforced. For example, in the book Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases, Linda E. Thomas talks about how US financial capital served as a form of globalized macroeconomic support for apartheid as a context for the special oppression experienced by black West Capetonians, who are members of St. John Apostolic Faith Mission located in Guguletu.¹¹ Thomas reveals that apartheid, the economic, political, and cultural system of segregation and discrimination based solely on race, existed from 1948 (the election of the National-Afrikaner Party) to 1994 (the first ever democrat election in South Africa). During this period, and even before, international global financial capital (especially from the United States) helped to sustain a profound racial asymmetry. Consequently, poor Black South Africans have suffered immensely and, at the same time, have created a spiritual foundation for maintaining a sense of their humanity in face of material deprivation.¹² The macroeconomic support for apartheid in South Africa is one way the United States interpret and enforce their laws. The rich and powerful US finances their rules and regulations by way of putting money behind what they believe about the cultural existence of other human beings.

Thomas’s analysis of apartheid and economic deprivation in South Africa is supremely relevant to the conversation of Black poverty in America’s inner-city neighborhoods. This is because Black theologians must take seriously their precolonial religious traditions. And all black theology must take ethnocentricity seriously in order to treat the particularity of the black experience with antecedents in Africa. We will also need to understand the meaning of religion and the revelation of God so as not to see a conflict between God’s revelation to peoples of Africa and his revelation in Jesus Christ.¹³ Despite being oppressed economically, both native Africans and Black Americans have had to lean and depend on their faith in God and their descriptive analysis of what it means to be Black and poor. Here, Black theology’s concern for the Black poor is both global and local. Roberts reminds us, We have called ourselves ‘African,’ ‘colored,’ ‘Negro,’ ‘Afro-American,’ and now ‘black.’ The fact that we, or at least some of us, call ourselves black today may indicate that this crisis (Black and African poverty) sponsored and sustained by white racism is continuous.¹⁴

Even as we examine the interplay between Christian theology, Black economics and Black culture in the geographical context of the United States, the question remains: what does it mean to do theology responsibly in a Black American context? The societal ideologies of a globalized world have become the central piece of such movements as colonialism, gentrification, imperialism, and environmental racism—all of which carry social psychological and economic implications for Black people. Christian theologians often overlook the multiple factions within the economic dimensions in which an empire operates. These factions function as systemic outreaches that have the power to negatively affect global and local politics, cultures, societies, and economies. As a result, there exists a strong economic dimension (Black poverty in the inner-city neighborhoods) within a particularized theopolitical liberation that can be gauged from the perspective tools of social theory and economic analysis.

Economic theory and economic analysis are fundamentally unchristian. However, this does not mean that theological reflection and a thick descriptive analysis are not helpful. In other words, there are far more descriptive examples of Black poverty in the land than there are liberation efforts and developmental strategies to help alleviate the problem. To that end, I would submit that social theory, an essential tool used by scholars in the analysis of society, social structures and phenomena placed in context within a particular school of thought, gives theology a holistic perspective—one that is both inclusive to economic reformation, resource redistribution and the survival and spirituality of the culture, in this particular case Black culture. Word on the street is that American culture, not Black culture, is the source of Black poverty in the United States. In theory, inner-city Blacks remain poor not because they are Black but because they live in the wasteland of the inner-city. In terms of gauging the reasons for poverty in the Black inner-city, opinions range from it being Black people’s fault to it being poor people’s fault to it being society’s fault. Based upon my research and observations, I would place full blame on the latter—American society. When I use the words American society, I am referring to the idolatrous culture of American racism and the harm it has reaped upon innocent human beings in Black and brown inner-city neighborhoods and communities.

The city of Hopkinsville considers the east side of town an inner-city residential neighborhood. I am the product of what my father calls the Eastside ghetto.¹⁵ Born and reared on the impoverished Eastside of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, I discovered early that my thoughts about God were rooted in the spirituality of the Black church and the economic condition of Black people. My struggle with the notion of how God could ordain unequal distribution of capital and its destructive effects largely on persons of color fueled my study of economic theory and theological response to the negative effects of economic poverty. I came to understand that Black people in Hopkinsville were mesmerized by psychological poverty that had already materialized in the form of economic deprivation. The oppressive experience of generational poverty amongst many Black families in Hopkinsville was accompanied by the economic underdevelopment of its Black neighborhoods. The only tools available for me to do the analytical work in terms of gauging the harm of economic poverty were my eyes in sight of what poverty looked like, and my mind in terms of remembering the images of deprivation that frequently brought me to tears. For me, the images and experiences of poverty in the inner-city represented theological moments.

J. Deotis Roberts affirms that Blacks belong to a subculture within the very structure of American society. Furthermore, the majority of Blacks are poor as well. The basis for identity with those bearing ‘the mark of oppression’ already exists. In the words of the apostle Paul, ‘If one member suffers, all suffer’; this is part of the black reality.¹⁶ For Roberts, economic poverty is the subculture within the very structure of American society to which Black folk belong. The physical pain and mental suffering that accompany inner-city poverty seems to be on par with the human experience of economic deprivation. For Black Americans, poverty is the mark of oppression that has defined what it means to be Black and American. Amidst the harmful effects of racial discrimination and capitalistic hegemony, economic poverty destroys Black communities; sometimes leading to premature and untimely death.¹⁷ Such is the case in those predominantly Black neighborhoods in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

The Spirit spoke to me by way of allowing me to witness the physical and psychological death of a people suffering from ills related to systemic racism. The economic crisis that Black folk are attempting to be liberated from in Hopkinsville represents the same bondage to which early church leaders and Christian theologians have turned a deaf ear. The contemporary context of the Black church tells a similar story in that economics remains a critical issue for Black Americans. Because of the practice of idolatry within the institution, poverty is also a theological issue for the Christian church. Consequentially, the main challenge facing many African American congregations, like the ones I have pastored in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, is to decide what kind of economic system would best serve the needs of God’s people. To some degree, each of the eight CME churches that I have served in a pastoral leadership capacity suffered from the peril of economic poverty. This was because a large percentage of the families within each congregation were poor. The churches were poor because the majority of the people who made up the church were poor. These poverty conditions not only affect the church’s ability to do effective ministry within and beyond the local church, but they also affect the psychological worldview of the people who make up the church. The types of suffering that accompany the experience of poverty in the Black community bring about the questioning of God’s will in the economic/human life of Black Americans.

Black poverty is a theological issue because of what the Bible says about God’s loving action concerning the poor and the full-scale harm that results from idolatry, heresy, and racism as founded in the economic practices of late capitalism and white supremacy. As a form of structural poverty, Black poverty is a theological issue for all of humanity and the Christian church because it serves as a discernible reminder of God’s love for the poor; in that, the Bible explicitly calls for God’s people to love the poor and help those who suffer from poverty. Out of loving concern for those who suffer from the ills of poverty, God requires his people to give attention to and care for the Black poor, and other poor people as well. Black poverty is a theological issue because it destroys the livelihood of Black Americans by depriving them of the basic resources needed to live as human beings. The social ills that accompany the experience of material poverty combined with the historical reasoning for the existence of poverty in the lives of Black people and other minorities, including the white poor, give way to the need for theological conversation.

Each chapter of this book fits into the overall argument of Black poverty being a theological problem for humanity and the Christian Church. The Introduction gives a descriptive account of what it means to be deprived of economic resources. Through the testimony of my inner-city, poverty experiences in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, I describe economic poverty as both a theological issue and a cultural narrative that is founded in the geographical tenets of racial discrimination. By way of introducing the theological conversation of poverty in the Black communities of the United States, I also give credence to other economic insights that are contextually relevant to what it means to be live in poverty.

Chapter 1 presents material poverty and structural poverty as the result of an outgrowth of a system of idolatry. The demonic idolatry that undergirds the systemic production of poverty in Black and brown neighborhoods and communities are forms of sin and evil. In establishing that any form of poverty is a theological problem, this chapter gives a biblical analysis that is layered in the love and concern that God has for the poor. I also expound on the argument that those who live in poverty constitute the poor. I attempt to establish that being economically oppressed and being economically poor represent the same human experience. Because the Bible is the foundational source for Black liberation theology, Old Testament and New Testament scriptures are connecting interlocutors for the liberation motif in Black theology.

Chapter 2 unpacks Black poverty as a theological issue through the descriptive lens of various existential perspectives (human, global, psychological, spiritual, structural, family, and cultural). J. Deotis Roberts, Gustavo Gutierrez, Amartya Sen, Joy DeGruy, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, Cheryl Sanders, John C. Perkins, Peter Paris, and others, give supportive arguments as to how poverty does harm to human beings. By way of unpacking Black poverty as a theological issue, Roberts helps me to give a thick description of economic deprivation in terms of explaining how poverty impacts the whole fabric of Black people’s existence. In addition to giving my definition of poverty, this chapter moves further into the critical conversation of poverty in Black inner-city neighborhoods and communities. The culminating fact is that poverty does irreversible harm to Black families in the United States.

Chapter 3 argues that the American economy was developed and modernized on the backs of African slave labor. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the ways that slavery served as an economic boost to the Southern and Northern economies and benefited the economic development of other parts of the country as well. Because African slave labor was controlled by the slave owners, they were able to develop capital by way of borrowing money from banks and acquiring lines of credit to purchase and sell slaves. This way of doing business marked the beginning of early capitalism. This chapter contributes to the overall conversation of Black poverty being a theological issue by reminding us of how hard Black folk were forced to work to develop the infrastructure of the United States. The present-day, economic condition of Black America is contradictory to the work that Black folk have put into making the United States a world economic power. The poverty that accompanied the African slaves as they worked on the slave owner’s plantation for hundreds of years is the same poverty that a sizable number of Black Americans experience today in their inner-city neighborhoods.

Chapter 4 speaks to what it means for Black theology to take Marx’s critique of capitalism seriously. Marx believed that capitalism represented the immoral practice of economically exploiting the labor worker for the capitalist gain. In unpacking Marx’s critique of capitalism from the vantage points of capital, class struggle, and poverty, one can see how the economic situation of Black Americans mirrors that of the proletariat in that both groups of people are taken advantage of labor-wise, with very few employment rights. Both the Black American and the proletariat are considered as the lowest and poorest class of people while not producing much capital for themselves. In essence, Black folk are das Kapital because they are not considered as part of the working class in the United States.

Chapter 5 gives a thick description of the terms inner-city and ghetto by way of discussing the nuances of how to the growing poverty in inner-city neighborhoods. Here, the Black middle class and their experiences of poverty within and beyond the inner-city is helpful in the introduction of the Black church as the one institution that could provide social, economic, and political aid to those impoverished Black communities. From institutional slavery to contemporary times, the Black church has been the visible mainstay of the Black community. For Roberts, the Black church’s concern with the Black poor is ensconced in the church’s theological concern for humanity as a whole. For Roberts, the Black church ministry commitment to being of service to the Black poor in the Black community is a theological ethic that demonstrates the liberation motif in Black theology.

Chapter 6 provides intense conversations and images of Black poverty in twentieth and twenty-first century Black literature, Black mass incarceration and other forms of Black cultural texts. Very similar to what I witnessed as a child, twentieth and twenty-first century Black literature depicts the oppression of Black people by way of describing the ill effects of their poor living conditions, the lack of jobs that normally leads to long-term unemployment and their educational deficiencies—all referenced in the racist treatment of Black folk by white America. The section on Black mass incarceration speaks to the epidemic of poverty as one that allows America’s criminal justice system to take advantage of the Black poor. Poverty, working alongside systemic racism, constitutes a major reason why Black folk make up the largest percentage of America’s incarceration population. In some instances, the desperation of being poor pushes Black folk into a life of crime and other violent situations (see the psychological perspective of Black poverty in chapter 3).

Chapter 7 gives a raw description of what the inner-city blues of economic poverty looks like and feels like in Black and brown neighborhoods and communities. The raw emotion and image of Black poverty in inner-city neighborhoods is brought to light through the sacred usage of Black cultural texts and theological reflections. By way of affirming the fact that anything that is associated with the economic condition of Black Americans, historically and presently, matters, this chapter gives more depth to the critical conversation of Black poverty in the United States being a theological problem. In addition to presenting some solutions to the epidemic of economic poverty in the Black communities, I introduce the concept of Black economic development in the sphere of economic empowerment, economic advancement, and economic opportunity. The constructive thoughts of Claud Anderson, James Clingman Jr., and Jawanza Kunjufu are critically important. This particular vision gives way to a brief overview of such organizations as Black Lives Matter, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA).

Chapter 8 gives a nuanced treatment to the collaborative conversations of the politics and geography of Black poverty and Black economics. The important work of Black scholars and white scholars alike in the fields of theology, economics, and politics brings to light the need for the United States to pay closer attention to the generational poverty of Black Americans. This chapter also give substantive reasoning as to why economics, finances, and money are sensitive issues for Black people. The economic condition of Black people signals the desperate need for more financial generosity, goods, products, resources, and services within the Black community. In giving theological credence to the work of J. Deotis Roberts, this chapter (as well as chapters 5 and 7) also presents more possible solutions to the poverty that seems to grow and prevail in Black and brown inner-city neighborhoods and communities.

1

. Gaye, Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler).

2

. Hartman, Q&A.

3

. Brief Overview of Black Religious History.

4

. Hopkins, Heart and Head,

62

.

5

. Reynolds, James H. Cone,

11

a.

6

. Black Theology, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_theology.

7

. Hopkins, Heart and Head,

24

.

8

. Hopkins, Heart and Head,

24

.

9

. Hopkins, Introducing Black,

87–88

.

10.

Basic Books,

1992

.

11

. Hopkins et al., Religions/Globalizations,

135–36

.

12

. Hopkins et al., Religions/Globalizations,

136

.

13

. Roberts, Black Political Theology,

20

.

14

. Roberts, Black Political Theology,

21

.

15

. When my father describes the Eastside of Hopkinsville as a ghetto, by no means is he insulting the part of town in which he has resided for over

70

years. He was just being honest about what he sees in the Black neighborhoods in Hopkinsville. Just like other inner-city communities in the United States, the Eastside of Hopkinsville is a neighborhood that is economically underdeveloped, infrastructurally challenged, filled with trash and storm water issues, closed school buildings, decrepit houses, and raggedy streets consistent with deep potholes that do great harm to one’s automobile. Another major characteristic of most Black ghettos is the lack of Black-owned businesses.

16

. Roberts, Black Political Theology,

162

.

17

. In her article, Poverty Leads To Death for More Black Americans than Whites, Jana Kasperkevic references the work of Amani Nuri-Jeter, which affirms that income inequality contributes to high mortality rates in Black communities. Nuri-Jeter and her colleagues found that living in poverty leads to higher death rates for Black Americans. "When we did the statistical analysis, the databases showed us that for one unit increase in income inequality . . . [there] were

400

to

500

fewer deaths among whites and

27

to

37

[more deaths] among African Americans," Nuru-Jeter told the Guardian. The difference between mortality rates for black and white Americans was much greater than she expected. The team especially did not expect to see fewer deaths in white communities as income inequality went up. That, however, can be attributed to economic segregation, which is more prevalent in Black neighborhoods, Nuru-Jeter theorized. She said that poor white Americans are more likely to reap the benefits of living near areas with better resources and higher incomes, while poor black Americans tend to live in relatively isolated inner-city neighborhoods. As the result of Black Americans living in impoverished neighborhoods, they have poorer health, Black Americans are more likely to be obese and have high blood pressure. More than a third of Black Americans surveyed by Gallup are obese. The survey—for which more than

272

,

000

Americans were interviewed—found that for every age group, black Americans were more likely to be obese than their white, Asian, and Hispanic counterparts. Almost half of black Americans

45

to

64

years old were also being treated for high blood pressure. For those

65

and older,

70

percent were receiving such treatment. In Black communities, economic suffering is much higher. Poor Black communities often struggle with higher crime rates, fewer grocery stores, a higher proportion of liquor stores and less green space such as parks. Black Americans are also twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. Not only are Black Americans more likely to suffer from these chronic conditions, but they are also more likely to be uninsured. According to a census survey from

2011

, the uninsured rate for Black Americans was

20

.

8

percent for whites, it was

11

.

7

percent. Speaking to the premature and untimely deaths of Black folk, this article reminds us that Black Americans are

21

times more likely than whites to be shot and killed by cops.

Chapter 1

Demonic Idolatry and the Biblical Perspective of Poverty

Panic is spreading

God knows where we’re headed

Oh, make me wanna holler

They don’t understand

Dah, dah, dah

¹⁸

As a form of material poverty, Black poverty is a theological problem because it stems from an outgrowth of a system of idolatry. This system of idolatry represents the slavery chains of cultural dehumanization and economic oppression in the Black community. Because dehumanization implies deprivation for a number of Black Americans, the sting of oppression includes being economically poor. In his article, New: The Biblical Definition of Poverty, of ‘The Poor,’ Calvin Fox argues that evangelicals overlook the fact that the Bible cites oppression rooted in idolatry as the main reason for poverty.¹⁹ According to Fox, The Bible makes clear that the primary cause of oppression is not greed, but idolatry. As people reject God and His Law to follow idols, they substitute the ungodly values and behavior dictated by those idols.²⁰ Consequently, what makes Black poverty a theological issue is the debilitating and harmful effects that economic deprivation has on Black people. In harming God’s creation, poverty negatively affects Black people’s view of God. To place more human value upon an individual or group of people is to choose the creature over that of the Creator who made human beings in his own image (Gen 1:26). Hence, in a theological sense the ‘God question’ becomes not whether there exists some referent to the term ‘God’ but which God are we referring to when Black people are treated as sub-humans whom God created to exist without economic self-sufficiency.²¹ This form of godly judgment not only provides room for the oppressor to play God in lording over the livelihood of innocent human beings, but it also gives demonic nourishment to the outgrowth of a system of idolatry. Terribly similar to the way racism operates in the United States, poverty in America’s Black communities comes across as the upshot of self-idolatry, self-glorification, and the idol worship of a particular economic and material status.

For many of those who have made an idol out of what was originally created to be a symbol, their desire for a particular economic and material status has gone beyond their desire for God. Their worship of a visible idol illegitimately transitioned them from worship of status to worship of symbol. Theologian J. Deotis Roberts proclaims, A symbol is unique and personal, but it may express the universal as well. The interpretive role of a symbol is apparent as we develop an ethnic perspective in theology—one that moves from the experiences of a particularly oppressed people to all oppressed people. The role of a symbol is to reveal a reality. A symbol is only a means, and when it becomes an end, we lapse into idolatry.²² Roberts recognizes the idol worshiper’s desire and need for absolute power in the crucible of an ungodly power. The Bible speaks of God as power. God’s power shows him to be almighty in his omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and hence God is the ultimate source of power (John 19:11; Rom 13:1). For Roberts, (God’s) Power is the support for his sovereignty. All other powers are subject to God as the final source of power. As absolute power, self-limited only by the balance in his nature and the integrity of his character, God opposes the idolatry in all history and creation.²³ As such, I believe that the moral nature of God and his almighty power are in opposition to the all-out harm that accompanies the poverty condition of Black and brown people. Because goodness, hope, and love are the very natures of God, racism, which is a form of idolatry, is being opposed by the sovereign Power in the universe.²⁴

Pastor Jim Wallis believes that idolatry encompasses the setting up of moral authorities in competition with or in negation of God. Instead of a political crisis, there is a far greater crisis in those who call themselves Christians. My PhD adviser, Stephen G. Ray, refers to these people as good Christian folk. Good Christian folk in the United States always find a way to put their personal loyalties ahead of their loyalty to God. Good Christian folk are the people who make up the Christian Church. Good Christian folk prioritizes religion (their view of God and themselves) over against the uplifting of humanity. According to Wallis, this self-centered way of viewing God represents a theological crisis. The regnant idolatries in the United States include capitalism, nationalism, materialism, racism—ideologies that compete with the rule of God and for the loyalties of people of faith. Wallis confesses:

I have told this story many times about when I was in seminary, and our group of students did a thorough study to find every verse in the Bible that dealt with the poor. We looked for every reference to poor people, to wealth and poverty, to injustice and oppression, and to what the response to all these subjects was to be for the people of God. We found several thousand verses in the Bible on the poor and God’s response to injustice. We found it (the poor and God’s response to injustice) to be the second most prominent theme in the Hebrew Scriptures—the first was idolatry, and the two were often related.²⁵

When one begins the conversation of the harm that idolatry wreaks on humanity, the existential notions of causes, consequences, and cures must be taken into consideration. I say that because the human heart is an idol-making factory. An idol is anything by which we live and on which we depend. An idol is anything that holds such a controlling position in our lives that it rouses and attracts too much of our time, attention, energy, and money. In the words of early Christian theologian Tertullian, Idolatry is the principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, procuring the judgment of God.²⁶ Idolatry arises because something is loved more than God—yet in turn, all idolatry is murder for it assaults God by way of its unfaithfulness to God.²⁷ The connection between the practice of idolatry and the suffering of innocent human beings is paramount, especially when theological reflection is needed to describe the debilitating condition of poor people.

In his journal article, Contending for the Cross: Black Theology and the Ghosts of Modernity,²⁸ Stephen G. Ray refers to this type of selfish unfaithfulness to God as demonic idolatry. The descriptive word demonic refers to the actions that are relative to a demon. As such, the demonic idolatry that precedes the destruction of human beings represent the very opposite of who God is and God’s purpose for creating human beings in God’s image. God is the living embodiment of creation and love. Demonic idolatry is a form of evil and hate. It is referenced in the world of Satan and his legion of demons. The mission of demonic idolatry is materialized in the destructive work of Satan here on earth. Similar to Ray’s construction, Joseph R. Washington’s text, The Politics of God, uses the word demonic to describe the irrationality of religion and racism as both relate to the practice of idolatry. Washington writes, Often religion is a distortion of holy presence, response to the demonic which is sometimes deliberately misrepresented as holy where it is not mistaken for that presence.²⁹ Washington sees idolatry as a third force other than reason or anti-reason; it is to be encountered by human beings. He explains further:

To ignore the irrational neither sends it away nor makes it ineffective in human events. By opting for the rational as opposed to the irrational, instead of engaging both, the scientist-humanist tradition controlling our society improves the material resources and formal procedures of life but ignores too many humans who are victims of distorted religion, which