Black Power Is Nat Turner
“Black power is Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, or Gabriel Prosser planning a slave revolt. It is slaves poisoning masters, and Frederick Douglass delivering an abolitionist address. This is the history that black theology must take seriously before it can begin to speak about God and black humanity. Like black power, black theology is not new either. It came into being when the black clergy realized that killing slave masters was doing the work of God. It began when the black clergy refused to accept the racist white church as consistent with the gospel of God. The organizing of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Methodist Church, the Baptist churches, and many other black churches is a visible manifestation of black theology. The participation of black churches in the black liberation struggle from the eighteenth to the twentieth century is a tribute to the endurance of black theology.” James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation
And here I thought that violence was, in and of itself, inherently evil. Violence is evil when it is utilized by evil people to accomplish evil goals. But what is violence but a tool which can build alliances for some or eradicate entire cultures elsewhere. Violence is the word whispered in the dark before bombs explode the following day. Violence is accomplished in the mind with the heart, not separate. Violence without the heart kills and maims millions. But violence with the heart justifies the killing and the maiming. The mind calculates the dead. The heart provides the rationale required to live on after the killing and counting of the dead is done. How else is it that we have made it this far as a species? Considering our bent for violence, we ought to have erased ourselves from existence long ago. The mere chance of migration habits might have been our saving grace. There could have been a moment, some ten thousand years ago, when we could have killed each other into extinction the same way we have preyed and annihilated several species of animals in these last two hundred years alone. We call these extinct creatures “game” because what else are we to call that which we kill for sport? And we call the killing of innocent animals a sport. The animals lose their animal-ness and become game, fun, and a joy to hunt down and kill. Trophies litter our halls, heads of creatures decorate our walls. Pictures with dead “game” are displayed for all to see. “See here, in this picture, I killed a nearly extinct rhinoceros. I paid a hefty fee to take this sucker out, and boy did I. One blast straight through the heart and this behemoth, this ancient of days in the world of beasts, this dinosaur in disguise, went down like a house of cards.” And on to the next picture, and the next animal, and the next nearly extinct creature we go.
Yet, if these creatures were to fight back, perhaps the language here is dismissive of the nature of the creature itself when under assault. If the creature were to merely live and its natural desires override man’s desire to kill it, and, in the process, the creature were to mortally wound the hunter, mankind, this unfortunate situation would be considered a tragedy. Not for the creature merely acting on instinct, but for the human hunter acting on intellect, abstract thought, financial gain, social power, and spiritual decay, getting hurt as a result. The creature’s attitude, when it leads to anything other than submission and death, is considered an affront to the nature of the hunter, the man. Therefore, anytime an animal gets the chance to defend itself from the assailant, the hunter, the animal is shunned and the hunter praised and adored.
Is it not mankind, the hunter, who sets the moral standards by which hunter and prey must obey? What if the prey were allotted a chance to introduce its own rules to the hunt? Say, if the hunter misses his first shot, he must place his weapon down and fight the prey with his or her bare hands. Or, better yet, he must take out the rhino, the tiger, and the Tasmanian devil with a blunt object. Perhaps the prey can visit the hunter where he sleeps and attack him when he least suspects it. We can go further yet to have the prey cloaked in some camouflage, where it can sit and wait for the hunter to finish his business in the restroom and pounce upon him when he is done. Prey, too, can instill rules into this game in which their lives are of little value, no? Is the hunter the sole arbitrator of this sport? And, if we call killing animals a sport, can we also call animals killing humans child’s play? Calf’s play? Cubs play? What’s the appropriate moniker for when the tables are turned on the hunter? Karma seems too Eastern. Consequences sound too Western. Perhaps we call it, “You damned fool, this is what happens when you use your intellect and power not for good, safety, and the betterment of life on earth, but use all your faculties to hunt down the vulnerable for sadistic fun. Now, sit there in agony as the world watches that cat you were hunting now shred your bowels open. And once it is done with you, nearly full from stomach to mouth with your flesh, its mouth sticky with your blood, the smell of your early putrefaction stale in the air, we will take hundreds of pictures of your raggedy corpse to share it with the animal kingdom. Your head, or whatever is left of you, will be stuffed and hung somewhere in the jungle for all the animals to marvel at how great and powerful the big cat is in the world now known as the hunt of the bipedal fools!”
Of course, that is a lengthy name for the reversal of roles between hunter and prey, but what else ought we to name such a cruel thing? What names might we pull from the bag of infamy, of human indecency, of human greed and hatred, to best understand the use of violence for evil and pleasure? Because Big Game hunting just sounds like another attempt to rationalize an evil practice by giving the act an approachable and sanitized name. The Romans called gladiator matches “munera,” which meant that each match was a duty or an obligation of those who participated. I am confident that the slave whose bowels had just been disemboweled by some legionnaire did not consider his demise a duty. In which world is being disemboweled an obligation? And did the slave determine that as his or her best way to serve Rome?
Therefore, in what world is it acceptable for white Christians to determine when, where, and how other Christians of a more melanated complexion ought to operate under oppression? Why is it that when Black and Brown bodies are oppressed, their oppression is just “life,” but when White Christians experience discomfort, the situation, their circumstance, is considered a tragedy?
The Work of God
“Like black power, black theology is not new either. It came into being when the black clergy realized that killing slave masters was doing the work of God. It began when the black clergy refused to accept the racist white church as consistent with the gospel of God.” Said Dr. Cone.
We are continuously taught, through fear and trembling, that to use violence against the state as a means to defend your humanity is un-Christian because your subjection to a totalitarian state is the will of God.
Of course, these words come from the same people who champion Joshua’s conquest in Canaan in scripture. The same people who champion God’s chosen people when they used every form of lethal violence to overthrow the inhabitants of Canaan. The same people who read of King David’s wars, exploits, and war crimes as if they were mere history, something of antiquity, unattached to the continuance of human history. The same people who celebrate the fall of Ai and Jericho with glee. The ones who jump for joy at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The same group of people who sit in awe as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome all collapsed under heavy warfare and violence. Evil kingdoms destroyed for their evil deeds.
These same people who celebrate violence in the formation of their respective nations, the overthrow of tyranny, the dismantling of dictatorial powers, the end of fascism, and the obliteration of authoritarian monarchies the world over are the same ones telling US that violence is ungodly, unjustifiable, and evil when we attempt to utilize it to free ourselves from the grips of evil they have introduced to the world.
“Well, Jesus did say turn the other cheek.” Yes, He did, but you slaughtered countless indigenous tribes under the banner of this Christ, for land.
“Well, Jesus did say when they ask you to walk a mile, walk two.” Yes, He did, but you forced countless millions of Africans onto death marches, death voyages, and death plantation camps in the name of this Christ, for profit.
“Well. Jesus said vengeance is mine. I will repay.” Yes, He did, but you used your wealth to pay scientists not to invent a way to stop wars through justice, reconciliation, and peace, but to build world-destroying weapons which were used on unsuspecting civilians, twice. And now these same world-destroying weapons are stocked to the high heavens just in case one of you and your happy Jesus-loving trigger fingers gets offended enough to nuclearize the other side of the planet, thus creating a nuclear winter for the rest of us. All this to maintain the historical meta narrative that you were good and they were evil.
Jesus said many things, most of which you did not heed. He proclaimed a kingdom of love, but you installed kingdoms of pain, suffering, and death. He professed deliverance, the end of oppression, the end of bondage, and you spiritualized these statements so that you could profit from the exploited masses under the banner of Christ in the here and now.
When I sit and watch the genocides which unfold, often undeterred, uninterrupted, and unchallenged, I cannot help but think that someone out there has the power to command their soldiers to stop shooting, the power to stop the bombings, and the power to stop the erasure of thousands of generations. But someone with that much power seldom does use their authority for good. They see the devastation, the horror, the terror they inflict on innocent civilians, and yet they continue. Each hack of a machete, each gas cannister, every bombardment, and every shot fired from a rifle has a cataclysmic potential to create more and more insurgents. The very act of annihilating innocent people works to create the very thing they want to eliminate.
And what is a father to do when he witnesses the destruction of his home? What is in his nature to accomplish when he stands amid rubble and ash, holding fragments of his children in his arms? What happens to a father, a mother, or a sibling when the person they loved so dearly now lies in pieces before them?
When does grief go from grief to despair? And when does despair become rage, and rage into an irrevocable act?
Does the civilian bear the weight of responsibility for his or her actions against the state? Ought they to stand there, in awe, as the state rips their family members to pieces? Does the civilian have a say in the theatre of war? Does the civilian have a say on the proper rules of engagement in a battle? Can a civilian ask the state to stop using 50 kg bombs in his neighborhood? Can such a request be made? Where does it go? Who takes it? And if it arrives, is it honored by the state?
Mind you, the term insurgent is cast upon the civilian defending himself from state violence the same way “game” is cast upon the animal defending itself from the hunter. One must properly name that which he is about to kill before killing it. The definition and attribution of values on the target of your violence must change so that you can kill them more efficiently, without the ramifications that come from dealing with the possibility that you killed your neighbor for national pride. Or rather, you kill them, their families, destroy their property, burn their crops, gas their children, crush their babies under rubble, and atomize their parents, all in the name of national interest and self-defense. These are the guiding principles by which the state, the imposing rulers, operate. They can devastate in the name of defense, but the subject and recipient of said violence cannot. If the suffering soul, the innocent bystander who has witnessed the end of his or her family dares to confront the state and its justified use of totalizing force, the bystander’s agency and definition changes, not from innocent bystander to innocent bystander defending his or her humanity, but from innocent bystander to insurgent, rebel, agitator, cruel fiend, and anti-establishment terrorist who deserves to die.
I Do Not Condemn
Therefore, how can a Christian act, live, and breathe in a world where many of these horrors are done in the name of Jesus, with the financial backing, moral foundation, ethical framework, and existential musings of these atrocities, happening with the assent and agreement of “Christians”?
I do not condemn a Palestinian child for throwing rocks at an Israeli tank. The child will get shot by an Israeli sniper, a trained soldier whose sole existence in that moment is to aim his rifle at the child’s head and remove it from her little shoulders. Who, here, is better prepared to de-escalate? Who here is better prepared to withdraw? Who here is better prepared to draft peace accords and end the bloodbath? The child with a stone in hand or the heavily armored military structure with all the power?
I do not condemn her. I honor that child’s simplicity. I honor her willingness to act on her baser needs, the most animalistic, non-thinking actions of a living organism under the threat of extinction: survive and fight.
White American Christianity and White European Christianity have wrought into the world an afterbirth. It is a bastardized faith known culturally as Christianity, but in action, it is satanic. And no, I do not use this term loosely, condemning things I disagree with as evil simply because they do not align with my perspective of the world and how it works. No. I mean that the Christian faith that much of the White world has imbued to the rest of us then, when whiteness was invented and before that, when Christianity married empire for the sake of wealth, land, and control, we have inherited, unfortunately, a faith that in name glorifies and honors Jesus, but in practice, honors and glorifies the devil.
How is it that Christians in control of much of the world get to utilize violence, death, disease, disruption, and destruction the world over (consider the Americas, South Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia, China [opium war], and more) but whenever the world defends itself, the use of violence is considered tribal, animalistic, and subhuman?
White Christians can create for themselves and amass weapons of mass destruction for “protection” while they atomize Black or Brown nations for attempting to “protect” themselves.
White Christians enact laws to protect the sovereignty of their borders while flying blackhawk helicopters into foreign nations to kidnap and kill Black and Brown people at will.
White Christians believe their lives are so valuable that for any non-white Christian to defend themselves is considered sacrilegious.
My Precious Jesus
What of Jesus? Yes, I want to discuss Christ and the time in which he spoke.
Jesus lived in Roman-occupied Palestine. Jews had some rights, but even the rights they had were often disregarded. Their repressed rage was later realized when the Jews finally rebelled against the Roman Empire, inciting the totalizing force of the empire back on their heads. The temple they had built for themselves was demolished, and they were exiled, once more from Jerusalem, for the insurrection. Jesus witnessed what would be the last century of Jewish possession of the lands in Palestine before Europeans gave it back to them in the 1900s. So, the era in which Jesus lived was one of oppression, devastation, and death, simultaneously experienced while the Jews practiced a faith which sought a future reign of God’s glory on earth. The Jews did not have national charters and constitutions by which to defend themselves against Roman oppression. Universal laws by which to defend themselves against an encroaching superpower like Rome. They did not have the Hague, UN peacekeepers, or the militaristic might to repel the erasure of their national identity under the iron fist of Rome and its legionnaires, legates, centurions, and more. The Jews were there for a moment, and then they weren’t. And it is in this reality where Jesus said to them, turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, and leave vengeance to God, for the Jews and ensuing Christians outside of Judea, had no means by which to appeal to the law, conscience, and humanity of their fellow citizens when faced with the unbending power of Rome.
I’m not postulating that time has made Jesus’s words ineffective and inactive. I want to offer the thought that the world in which we live has passed. We now have international committees that dictate that the annihilation of human life based on creed, race, gender, religion, or whatever reason is considered a capital crime, no matter who does it. If a Jew killed a Roman soldier back then, the Jew had no standing whatsoever. The murder of a Roman official was considered unfathomable even when the Roman official was the aggressor, instigator, and violent one. If you killed a Roman citizen, you would be killed as a result. Your defense had no ground, your attorney would not see you, and the state, under the strict laws of the empire, would demand your death and execute you expeditiously thereafter, hanging your body in the town square for all to see.
Today, however, we no longer live in such a dynamic. At least, we ought not to.
When Christ suggested we turn the other cheek or walk the extra mile, it was because He wanted us to win over the unsaved, unrepentant, cruel, and evil-infested heart of Roman soldiers and all who participated in imperial oppression. Christ wanted to utilize love and pacifism to conquer the broken hearts of unregenerate people.
What, then, are we to do when the people oppressing us, killing us, shaming us, hanging us from trees, and financing our erasure and genocide are avowed disciples of Christ?
Egypt is gone. Assyria is gone. Babylon is gone. Persia is gone. Greece is gone. Rome is gone. The Holy Roman Empire is gone. The Catholicity of the Western world is gone. Christianity has Christianized violent people, and they now use their age-old violent tendencies now, under the name of Christ, to kill.
And what are we to do? Are we to revert modern Christians to their previously unregenerate state so that we can then offer our face, our bodies, and our humanity to impress upon them the love of Christ, that their actions and motivations will be impacted to the point of repentance? If White Christians require apostasy before being presented with the gospel, once more, afresh, through the brutal desecration and mutilation of Black and Brown bodies, then, after some time, will these white people, turned apostate, turned Christians again put down their weapon of choice: violence?
Will they turn apartheid into an integrated community? Will they turn bombs into tables and chairs? Will they turn automatic rifles into gravel for unpaved roads? Will they turn over the wealth acquired from red-lining policies into reparations for the descendants of the people left out of the post-war wealth bubble due to de jure racism?
It is one thing to suffer violence and death under unregenerate oppressors who serve other gods whom we have not known or who serve their lusts. It is another thing altogether to suffer violence and death under regenerate, Bible carrying, worship-singing, church attending, tithe and offering-giving, public-praying Christians.
I Call For Violence
“Black power is Nat Turner.” Yells Dr. Cone. Black power is, “Denmark Vesey, or Gabriel Prosser planning a slave revolt. It is slaves poisoning masters, and Frederick Douglass delivering an abolitionist address.”
Black power signifies the humanity of human beings under oppression. Black power is lived through the struggle for life, liberty, and freedom in an age of suppression, oppression, and subjugation. How else ought humans to live? How else are humans to behave when their very existence is under threat… threat of violence from Christians and their Christianized weapons of war?
As with the tiger surrounded by hunters, so is the oppressed when their entire family is wiped from the face of the earth. Both want nothing more than to be, to move, to feel, and to live without fear of uninvited violence and death. And when the oppressed react, as any living organism would, out of instinct, to hold out a hand in self-defense, that action alone is seen by the hunter, the oppressor, as insurgency, rebellion, and a crime.
I can no longer support my previous understanding of pacifism, because the agents of mass destruction today claim to be Christian. If a Muslim overlord sought to kill me because of my faith, I would reconsider the thought. If a secular totalitarian regime sought to imprison and torture me because of my faith, I would reconsider. But here I am, in the face of horror, watching Christians kill Christians and non-Christians alike, as if their deeds are holy and their motives sacred.
“But you mustn’t use human agency to thwart demonic powers! This is a spiritual war and it will be won in the spirit!”
Yes, of course, but God destroyed Egypt through human agency alongside supernatural agency. God devastated Assyria and Babylon through human agency. God demolished Persian, Greek, and Roman rule on earth through human agency and natural processes. It is rare for God to use merely supernatural means to accomplish His justice against evil empires. Rare. Very rare.
More often, you will find God using men and women to disrupt the continuance of an evil empire. Was it the hand of God or the hands of men that burned down Rome? Was it the hand of God or the cannons of man that repelled British monarchical rule over the United States of America? Between Noah’s flood and the fire next time, God has utilized humans to accomplish his judgment against nefarious states whose sole purpose is to oppress and kill.
So why must we believe that God will not use the rock, the brick, or clubs to disrupt Israel’s genocide in Gaza? Has Israel not become the Babylon they historically detest? Israel has vowed to never again become prey to a nationalist regime like that of Nazi Germany, yet here it enacts the same horrors it experienced in Europe on the innocent civilians of Palestine. Jews in Nazi ghettos revolted and were killed. Who was in the wrong then? The Nazis or the Jews? Should the Jews have obeyed the rules, laws, and edicts of the land? Was their obedience more honorable than their disobedience? Do we not honor the memory of Jewish citizens who fought to their very last breath against their Nazi captors? Jews who fought an unwinnable war against a militarized state with sticks, stones, shivs, and well-coordinated guerrilla attacks against their captors? Did Jews have a right to live, then? Did the Nazis determine whether the Jews could live? If the Jews had a right to defend themselves back then why do Palestinians not have a right to defend themselves now? Regular Jewish dentists, musicians, doctors, and lawyers were immediately reduced to rebels and insurgents deserving of death the moment they stood against nationalist tyranny. And now, the descendants of these Jews are turning Palestinian dentists, musicians, doctors, and lawyers into rebels and insurgents.
In the spirit of Christ, through the lens of Turner, Vesey, Mary Turner, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, and others, many, many more, I will resist the Christian Empire by any means necessary.
“But you must understand that what you ask is to revert society to an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, nail for a nail, foot for a foot legalistic, unforgiving, and deadly society! We’re Christians, for heaven’s sake. We must promote peace!”
And to hell with that line of thinking. The onus is on those in power to repress their insipid desires to kill, take, and destroy. Without their bloodlust, there would be no need for Palestinian boys to throw rocks at tanks.
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
What many of you want, and it shows, is to live in a world where the oppressed never fight back. Where they bury their dead and go on being oppressed in silence, with a smile on their face, knowing that they are privileged to live in a world where Christians dominate them. That is what you want, that is what you had, with enslaved Africans. But never again. Never, ever again.
The violence I suggest to overthrow the corrupted state of Christian supremacy in the world is multifaceted. White Christians read that statement and automatically assume I want to open their guts with a bayonet because that is all they think about and all they do when threatened.
I call for violent actions to disrupt this regime. I call for people to drag their feet when asked to assist in the murder of innocents. I call for people to mishear commands. I call for people to misplace equipment. I call for people to misunderstand coordinates so that bombs fall into the sea and not on refugee camps. I call for thunderous sermons, messages, books, podcasts, films, and documentaries that humanize the oppressed. The same, to condemn the violence of Christianized states whose sole purpose is interest, assets, and gain. I call for purchasing blackout outs. I call for unpaid debts. I call for tears of grief and pain as we stand in solidarity with every oppressed group in the world.
And when all of that is done and Christian nation-states refuse to rescind their violent tactics, I call for Nat Turner.
This is not a step into hopelessness for the hopeless do not care for their lives or their future. Only the hopeful stand together until the very end. Americans used this hope through violence to free themselves from British rule. The Jews used this hope through violence to free themselves from Nazi terror.
But when the African slave uses this same hope through violence, it is considered cruel, unbecoming, and sinister. When the Palestinian uses this hope through violence, it is considered extremist and murderous. When immigrants use this hope through violence against border patrol agents, they are seen as disease-carrying barbarians who need to be deported to hell, if necessary.
How different things seem when the oppressed uses the same language and tools of the oppressor, the same rationale. How different indeed.
It is impossible, as a Christian, to remain unaffected and willingly stationary in light of these horrors.
I call for violence.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
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