Black Theology, a weapon in the struggle for freedom: a Gramscian analysis

Abstract

South African churchmen created Black Theology during the late 1960s and early 1970s to add a theological dimension to the African struggle against apartheid. In doing this, they looked to western Christianity, African-American theology, and their own experience of suffering as sources of inspiration, while creating a new religious culture and political orientation to liberate their people from European domination. Hence, Black Theology is in fact an anti-ruling class ideology designed to subvert the existing sociopolitical order. This study examines that ideology treating it as a case study and using Gramscian theory as an interpretive grid. Moreover, it argues that Black Theology informs Gramsci and in so doing, identifies four specific contributions that Christianity is capable of making to a cultural revolution, which include a moral standard, a structured community, an emancipatory language, and a divinely inspired comment to the struggle.