It was my original intention to write this article about black theology in South Africa, where I first encountered the movement. But two things have led me to form the opinion that black theology is of crucial importance to Christianity all over the world, and not just in South Africa, or in the United States, where the idea was born. One has been my reading of two books by the black American theologian James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power, and A Black Theology of Liberation ; and the other has been my introduction, very recent and superficial though it is, to the race question, and kindred political questions, in Great Britain. So I will, after all, devote this article to the subject of black theology as such, and chiefly in the form of a review of Cone’s two books. But I will lead into this subject by way of black theology in South Africa.

In writing this article I incur the risk of bringing down on my head the hostility and scorn of black theologians, or quite simply of blacks. As a white man I have no business to poke my long Caucasian nose in. Cone is quite scathing in BTL (p. 194) on two white liberals who presumed to write on the black power movement; and on the same page he writes: ‘To whites who want to know what they can do (a favourite question of oppressors) black theology says, “Keep your damned mouth closed, and let us black people get our thing together.” ‘ Still, just as in the dominant white ethos of today, or at least of a generation ago, it was possible for a black man to be a good nigger, and sometimes even earn the supreme accolade of being told that he was a true white man, in spite of his skin (You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din), so in the black ethos of the dominated which we are going to be looking at, it is possible for a white man to be a good honky.

Early in 1970 I was approached by the Anglican archbishop of Central Africa with a request that I conduct an investigation for the Anglican communion in Africa of marriage issues—to be precise, ‘a pastoral appreciation of the problems arising out of African marriage customs, both rural and urban, in relation to full membership of the Church’. It was hoped at first that the work could be sponsored by both the Anglican and the Roman Catholic hierarchies, but for various reasons the latter were unwilling to join in on the plan as it had been proposed, so in December 1970 I began work sponsored by the Anglican archbishops alone but with the general understanding that I would look at the problems of Catholics as well, in so far as I could. The Anglican communion is not present in most African countries, notably the French speaking lands (except for Rwanda and Burundi), and it was also decided to leave out West Africa, but the area to be considered remained vast—Kenya to South Africa— and it was obvious that my survey could not include original field research; the idea was to provide an overall view of the position in some nine countries based upon already available literature, brief visits on my part and a questionnaire, together with a theological and pastoral appreciation of the problems the factual survey indicated as most pressing. It is this that I have attempted to do in the six chapters and ten appendixes of my final report, Christian Marriage in Africa, published by SPCK in March of this year.

Fr Hastings has touched on many very serious problems in his report, now published as Christian Marriage in Africa, and in the previous article, with a compassion and sincerity that draw on wide reading and long reflection. Yet I feel myself out of sympathy with much that he has to say. This may be more to my discredit than to Fr Hastings’; at any rate, let me throw down a few words to suggest that at any rate such differences may be permissible.

First of all, on a relatively secondary point, Fr Hastings takes a view of polygamy which, while he is not the first to suggest it, is still very much a minority view among both Catholics and Anglicans. The direction of the New Testament is monogamous, not so much in an explicit command, as in defining marriage by the image of the union of Christ and His Church in the New Covenant. For the baptized Christian, therefore, polygamy is not an option. For the non-Christian, however, polygamous unions, when they are in accord with the traditions of his society, cannot simply be written off as ‘immoral’; to force the disruption of such unions as the price of baptism is much more immoral. Polygamists might therefore be admitted to baptism; and while Christians should regard monogamous marriage as the norm, there are cases where a Christian who has taken more than one wife may be admitted to the Eucharist. Fr Hastings claims that this is the only policy which will be consistent with the ‘central precepts of the Gospel’.

The Rights of Women throughout most of Africa are guaranteed, legally. Yet the full participation of women in the life of many African countries is still more a matter of policy than practice. Very few women share in the actual power of state. Former traditional securities are today less assured. Rather than more high-level appointments, the masses of women need more to be awakened to their potential as the changers of women’s position. For this, ‘Women’s Lib’ may have something to offer.

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‘Women’s Liberation’ is the current development in the United States, although the movement has since spread to Europe. However, a militant reformist movement of African women predates this upsurge of feminist rebellion by nearly two decades. It was born out of national struggles for independence. The women of Algeria fought and worked for their nation’s independence and after the struggle a dynamic women’s organization was founded. Sékou Touré described as ‘decisive’ the contribution of Guinea’s women to the liberation of the country and the growth of the Democratic Party of Guinea. The Mau Mau of Kenya’s forests learned that their women had equally understood the high stakes at risk in the war against European settlers.

These activist roles in bringing about independence in many countries facilitated the development of an undoubtedly latent ‘freedom consciousness’. However, this stirring was only for a duration centred on the struggle against the colonial authorities. In some instances, women’s national movements were given impetus because of the gap between what women expected and had been promised, and what they actually received.

Religious experience is thickly overlayed by theological speculation and the reality of God is further and further submerged beneath theories that fruitlessly attempt to forge a connection between the Invisible and ‘ordinary’ things, between ‘the living ascended glorified personal Christ and lifeless impersonal objects, bread and wine’, as it was put recently in this magazine. Making sense of this sort of discussion is often difficult, because what is actually disputed is the very experience that the doctrine was formulated to express, the experience of God’s presence in things, which, indeed, sinks beneath the weight of words spoken about it. We are increasingly left with the empty shell of a splendid worship from which God himself has retreated.

Of course, many aspects of our faith are well served by serious questioning, but that does not always entitle us to unrestrained reflection. Sometimes speculation obscures its object instead of clarifying it, and the mind creates for itself a vacuum where once there was the immediacy of response: for example, when we begin to believe that a demonstration is required to confirm a reality that can, in truth, only be encountered. Is it not a most peculiar ability of the mind, a strange inclination towards self-destruction, to wonder about the factuality of the world, to wonder about the reality of the forest, or the person we love, or the God we inescapably find in our path ? Perhaps the mightier the experience the less we feel able to cope and the more we feel called to doubt. By putting such things in question they are indeed rendered questionable, and we are confronted with the frustrating task of proving that there is a reality that corresponds to the ideas in our mind.