About the author: Jason Oliver Evans is a research associate and lecturer at the University of Virginia. He is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of Christian systematic theology with theological and social ethics, Africana studies, and studies of gender and sexuality. Evans completed his dissertation on the person and work of Jesus Christ through critical engagement with key texts by Karl Barth, James H. Cone, Delores S. Williams, and JoAnne Terrell. Drawing upon these authors, Evans renders overall a constructive Black queer theology of atonement and Christian life.
I have a confession to make.
As a Black queer theologian, I struggle with reconciling the systematic and constructive modes of theological study because of the lingering tension that I feel about their supposed incommensurability.1 On the one hand, I love orderly, comprehensive, but not exhaustive, and coherent presentations of Christian teaching.2 Accordingly, I pay considerable attention to the church’s dogmatic claims, notably the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and Incarnation, and study how they both cohere and relate to matters of salvation and liberation. I aim to understand the ratio of Christian faith, namely, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and expound upon it in my scholarship. I also desire to demonstrate the essence of Christian faith through my life’s witness and pastoral ministry. And so, I understand the systematic mode of Christian theology, following the insight of Augustine of Hippo and Anselm of Canterbury, to be an exercise in fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding.”3
On the other hand, the constructive theologian in me comes to terms with the history of Western settler-colonial Christian expansion, chattel slavery, and their devastating impact on countless lives. This history reveals that colonial powers maligned, captured, traded, transported, enslaved, exploited, abused, violated, and condemned peoples of West African descent to die—all in Christ’s name!4 Given this socio-historical context, I am specifically concerned with how Black LGBTIQA+ people’s flesh, and, by implication, all Black people’s flesh, have been marked by modern constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. I also cannot elide the fact that a malformed theological imagination leads to malformed doctrine and practice, which in turn bolsters an antiblack, queer-antagonistic, and trans-antagonistic world. Informed by Black liberation, womanist/Black feminist, and LGBTIQA+ thinkers, my work exposes, disrupts, and deconstructs theologies that legitimate Black LGBTIQA+ people’s suffering under the regime of white supremacist capitalist cis-heteropatriarchy.5 Moreover, the constructive theologian in me also challenges middle-class white European and Euro-American theologians’ presumptions to speak on behalf of all others (e.g., women, Black, Asian/American, Latinx/Latin American, Indigenous peoples, LGBTIQA+ people, the poor, disabled, etc.) alongside some of these thinkers’ continued reluctance to integrate dogmatic loci such as Christology and soteriology with sociopolitical concerns.6
Given Christianity’s entanglement with American chattel slavery and its afterlife, theologian Amaryah Armstrong argues that for Black queer theological reflection to be a viable discursive practice, it cannot be justified in Christian theological terms. Such a refusal to reproduce the boundary-policing logics of Christian orthodoxy or heresy, Armstrong insists, ultimately decenters Christianity as the hegemonic religious framework for understanding Black queer sociality and thus opens up possibilities for a just theological practice—one that is also informed by other religious and non-believing traditions.7 I agree with Armstrong that any adequate theology cannot be understood to be an exhaustive enterprise. However, I doggedly hold on to the belief that a Black queer Christian theology can be, or, dare I say, must be confessional8 insofar as Black LGBTIQA+ people, as members of Christ’s body, confess their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and seek to understand, justify, and orient their lives precisely in terms of what the God revealed in Christ has done for them.9 Therefore, I envision the practice of Black queer Christian theological reflection to be not a task of exhausting the mystery of Black queer life and death but aims to adequately examine it considering the mystery of the incarnate Word who has obtained Black LGBTIQA+ people’s eternal redemption through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
So, I feel torn between the systematic and constructive modes of theological reflection. I struggle with the tendency of some systematic theologians to ignore contextuality and power dynamics embedded in theological reflection. Alongside this, systematic theologians also seem to be preoccupied with rehearsing dogmatic claims in ways far removed from the lived experiences of contemporary people, especially those who find themselves on “the underside of history.”
Conversely, I am concerned with how some constructive theologians, despite their noble efforts, downplay the soteriological significance of classical doctrine. For instance, James H. Cone famously quipped that Athanasius of Alexandria’s homoousios question—how the eternal Son is “of the same essence” with God the Father—is not, in the end, a “Black question.”10
Perhaps I have inadvertently internalized a dissonance that is not really mine because, at the end of the day, I do not see any discrepancy between affirming and expounding upon the church’s dogmatic claims and how God is passionately committed to seeking justice and liberation for Black LGBTIQA+ people. The task, therefore, I argue, is to painstakingly and prayerfully seek to integrate dogmatic claims with sociopolitical concerns and convey this connection for the edification of the body of Christ toward the salvation and liberation of the world.
So, why Barth, of all people?11
Given my social location as a cisgender Black gay man living in the United States, my religious heritage as one rooted in the Afro-Baptist tradition, and my commitment to offer a theology that adequately attends to Black LGBITQA+ people’s lives, it may discomfit some thinkers that I have found an interlocutor in Karl Barth. In an earlier blog post, I shared that I read Barth’s God Here and Now as an undergraduate student and then took a course on his theology while enrolled in divinity school. I appreciate Barth’s insights on the authority and significance of the Bible, and I marvel at the breadth and depth of his thought.12 However, I started to question the usefulness of Barth’s thought as I accepted my sexual identity and, in turn, began rethinking my overall theology and my relationship with the church. Given Barth’s inattention to race and his cis-heteropatriarchal theological anthropology, it would seem difficult to put forth any justification for retrieving his insights toward Black LGBTIQA+ people’s collective liberation. Barth condemns homosexuality as a “malady…the physical, psychological and social sickness, the perversion, decadence and decay.”13 Despite this slippage into abstraction and the practice of natural theology that he outrightly criticizes elsewhere,14 I found Barth to be the right conversation partner for Black queer theological reflection. Barth helps me to integrate the church’s dogmatic claims and sociopolitical concerns.
I recently turned my focus upon key selections from Barth’s Church Dogmatics (hereafter, CD), specifically his doctrine of the Incarnation (CD I/2), election (CD II/2), and reconciliation (CD IV/1). I argued that Barth’s theological ontology proves instructive for contesting cis-heteropatriarchal theologies that legitimate the oppression of Black LGBTIQA+ people.15 Then, I queered Barth’s doctrine of election and reconciliation and suggested additional conceptual tools for reframing and expanding his thought considering the lived experiences of Black LGBTIQA+ people.16
What I learned from Barth is that the triune God self-determines in the person of Jesus Christ to be Deus pro nobis and Immanuel—God for us and God with us. I argue that Barth’s God is for Black LGBTIQA+ people insofar as God in the person of the Word has come into the world and assumed human flesh, and freely accepts responsibility for their guilt as sinners and bears sin and its consequences upon himself. I strengthen Barth’s claim by drawing upon the insights of James Cone to accentuate Barth’s point that the Word assumed subjugated Jewish flesh. As Cone argues, the Son of God assumed an oppressed human condition to make plain God’s self-identification and solidarity with the oppressed and to contend for their liberation.
Moreover, Barth’s God is for Black LGBTIQA+ people to the extent that the triune God eternally constitutes Godself by God’s gracious movement toward them as God’s beloved creatures. God’s election of grace is God’s primal decision and eternal decision to move freely toward Black LGBTIQA+ people in Jesus Christ, who is the entire election of God. Finally, Barth’s God is for Black LGBTIQA+ people insofar as Jesus Christ is the subject and object of reconciliation. The triune God has given Godself over in the person of the Son and willingly offers himself unto death for the sake of Black LGBTIQA+ people’s reconciliation, conversion to God, and redemption from death to eternal life. Furthermore, I initiated the process of queering Barth’s doctrine of election and reconciliation and suggested additional conceptual tools for reframing and expanding Barth’s thought so that it more adequately speaks to the situation of Black LGBTIQA+ people.
Admittedly, I am not sure just how far I can “queer” Barth. I still have much to learn from Barth and will continue to strive with him at key points, pushing his thoughts in creative directions toward emancipatory and liberatory ends. For now, as I continue on this journey of Black queer theological reflection, I am grateful that Barth has been an instructive companion.
Further reading:
Bodley-Dangelo, Faye. Sexual Difference, Gender, and Agency in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. New York: T&T Clark, 2020.
Copeland, M. Shawn. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, Being. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2023.
Jennings, Willie James. “Barth and the Racial Imaginary.” In The Oxford Handbook of Karl Barth, edited by Paul Dafydd Jones and Paul T. Nimmo, 499–516. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Reichel, Hanna. After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023.
For a historical account of the distinction between these modes of theological reflection, see Jason A. Wyman Jr., Constructing Constructive Theology: An Introductory Sketch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017). Recently, theologian Hanna Reichel takes on and elegantly upends this supposed incommensurability between “systematic” and “constructive” theologies in their recent work on theological method. See Hanna Reichel, After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023).
See John Webster, “Introduction: Systematic Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, ed. Kathryn Tanner, John Webster, and Iain Torrance (New York: Oxford University, 2007), 1–15. For an appreciation of systematic theology from a queer perspective, see Ivy Helman, “Queer Systems: The Benefits of a More Systematic Approach to Queer Theology,” Cross Currents 61, no. 1 (2011): 45–62.
See Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, 4th ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2023), 2ff. I was first introduced to this famous definition of theology upon reading the second edition of Migliore’s text many years ago.
See Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University, 2004); see Sylvester A. Johnson, African American Religions, 1500–2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (New York: Cambridge University, 2015).
See James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (1969; reis., Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997); J. Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1971); Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, 20th anniv. ed. (1993; reis., Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2013); Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999); Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender, and Politics (London: Routledge, 2000); Horace L. Griffin, Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2006); Robert E. Goss, Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus Acted Up (2002; reis., Eugene: Resource Publications, 2006); Gerard Loughlin, ed., Queer Theology: Rethinking the Western Body (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (New York: Oxford University, 2008); Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University, 2010); Patrick S. Cheng, Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology (New York: Seabury Books, 2011); Jay Emerson Johnson, Peculiar Faith: Queer Theology for Christian Witness (New York: Seabury Books, 2014); Pamela R. Lightsey, Our Lives Matter: A Womanist Queer Theology (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2015); Monica Joy Cross, Authenticity and Imagination in the Face of Oppression (Eugene: Resource Publications, 2016); M. Shawn Copeland, Knowing Christ Crucified: The Witness of African American Religious Experience (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2018); Linn Tonstad, Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2018); Justin Sabia-Tanis, Trans-Gender: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith (2003; reis., Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2018); and Jarel Robinson-Brown, Black, Gay, British, Christian, Queer: The Church and the Famine of Grace (London: SCM Press, 2021).
Thinkers such as Jürgen Moltmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Dorothee Sölle, and Frederick Herzog are notable exceptions to this trend.
Amaryah Shaye Armstrong, “Thinking Practice: Method, Pedagogy, Power and the Question of a Black Queer Theology,” Modern Believing 60, no. 1 (2019): 10–14.
Armstrong, “Thinking Practice,” 13. Armstrong raises French philosopher Michel Foucault’s notion of the confessional to warn the would-be Black queer theologian of the potential dangers of adopting and deploying this approach. Armstrong writes, “As Foucault notes, the confessional mode can often provide the discursive cover for an uninterrogated Christian form of authority and sovereignty.” For reasons beyond the scope of this post, I do not find Armstrong’s argument against confessional theology convincing, in part because Foucault’s definition is not the only way to construe the matter of confession. See Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1990).
See Douglas John Hall, Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).
Cone, God of the Oppressed, 13.
I pose this question in solidarity with theologian Micah Cronin. See Micah Cronin, “Resisting Homophobic Theologies with Karl Barth (of All People),” The Other Journal 36 (Fall 2023): 68–74, https://theotherjournal.com/2023/12/resisting-homophobic-theologies-with-karl-barth-of-all-people/.
See Jason Oliver Evans, “The Form of the Word: On the Authority and Significance of the Bible in Karl Barth’s God Here and Now,” God Here & Now, Center for Barth Studies, November 15, 2023: https://barthcenter.substack.com/p/the-form-of-the-word.
See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Volume III: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 4, trans. A. T. Mackay, T. H. L. Parker, H. Knight, H. A. Kennedy, and J. Marks, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (1961: reis.; Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010), 166. Further, Barth argues that homosexuality violates co-humanity, which is at its root a hierarchically-ordered fellowship between man and woman. Granted, a letter Barth wrote in the late 1960s suggests revising his views. For a critique of Barth’s views on homosexuality, see Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 146f.; see also Jaime Ronaldo Balboa, “Church Dogmatics, Natural Theology, and the Slippery Slope of Geschlecht: A Constructivist Gay-Liberationist Reading of Barth,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, no. 4 (December 1, 1998): 771–789. See Faye Bodley-Dangelo, Sexual Difference, Gender and Agency in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (New York: T&T Clark, 2019).
See Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology: Comprising “Nature and Grace” by Professor Dr. Emil Brunner and the reply “No!” by Dr. Barth, trans. Peter Fraenkel (1946; reis., Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2002).
Barth’s theological ontology is his characteristic and persistent way of describing the God-human and, derivatively, inter-human relationships in terms of active relations. See George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 30f.; see also Paul T. Nimmo, “Actualism,” in The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth, ed. Richard Burnett (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 1.
See Jason Oliver Evans, “If God Be for Us: Toward a Theology of Atonement and Christian Life from a Black Queer Perspective,” PhD diss., (University of Virginia, 2024).