What is the de-gendering or re-gendering,
recoloring de-coloring of God? In the Christian
tradition the conceptualization of God is white, male, old, etc. What does that do to the Christian psyche,
what structures does that uphold, what does it prevent from forming? Our understanding
of god as male leads to our social interactions so if the epitome and creator of our
existence is imagined as white and male, then that is, to the theist, subconsciously supreme. In Henry McNeal Turner's article, "God is a Negro," this reclaiming through recoloring is very
much a form of activism. It recaptures (or liberates) religion.
Turner is revolutionary because he is completely
transforming the predominant Western concept of God. One's concept of god arguably determines one's relation with others. Can we embrace God intimately if we cannot understand
God in an intimate sense. If people of color conceptualize god as white, within a context of white supremacy, then how could god not be seen as oppressive,
god is no longer liberator.
Howard Thurman
picks up where Turner left off in Jesus and
the Disinherited, where Thurman argues Jesus had the
experience of an oppressed person in his lifetime as Jew under the Roman empire. White theology does not wrestle with privilege and oppression dynamics of the Gospels, but Thurman brings these dynamics to the reader's attention.
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