Two Traditions, Two Locations

From the moment Europeans crossed the Atlantic in 1492, theology traveled with them. It was preached in cathedrals, whispered in slave cabins, inscribed in catechisms, and sung in spirituals. Yet theologies in the Americas did not develop on a level playing field. White theologians—whether John Calvin in Geneva, whose thought profoundly shaped colonial religion, Jonathan Edwards in New England, or later Reformed giants at Princeton and beyond—wrote from positions of cultural dominance. Black theologians, by contrast, wrote and preached from the underside of history: enslaved, segregated, colonized, or otherwise marginalized.

The difference between these traditions is not merely doctrinal emphasis. It is location, lived reality, and purpose. One explained and defended the order of things. The other interrogated and resisted the order of things.

1. Context and Social Location

White theology in the Americas was born from relative security. Edwards preached in Puritan New England; Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield lectured in the calm halls of Princeton; Cornelius Van Til developed apologetics in mid-20th-century academies; Abraham Kuyper was a Dutch statesman and theologian; John Piper, Tim Keller, and R. C. Sproul addressed evangelical audiences in late-modern America. Their theologies emerged where Christianity undergirded the dominant social order.

Black theology, by contrast, was born in the storm. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones led a walkout from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in 1787 after Black congregants were forced from the main pews, forming the Free African Society, precursor to the AME Church and St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia.^1 Maria Stewart and Sojourner Truth preached when women’s voices were silenced—Stewart in 1830s Boston, Truth at the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio.^2 Frederick Douglass thundered against the “Christianity of this land.” James Cone, Katie Cannon, and Delores Williams wrote from within a segregated America that often used the Bible to sanctify injustice.

For white theologians, theology explained the world as it was. For Black theologians, theology asked whether the world as it was could possibly be reconciled with God.

2. Anthropology and the Image of God

Calvin emphasized human depravity; Edwards exalted divine sovereignty; Van Til and Hodge stressed reason and order; Piper and Keller emphasized doctrines of grace. Yet many white theologians ignored or justified slavery and racism. Jonathan Edwards owned enslaved people and, in at least one case, defended another minister’s slaveholding even while denouncing the trans-Atlantic trade.^3 B. B. Warfield, however, explicitly criticized racism and segregation, insisting that Christianity demanded the equality of all believers.^4

Black theology began elsewhere. Henry McNeal Turner proclaimed “God is a Negro,” rejecting depictions of a white Christ.^5 James Cone declared “God is Black,” meaning God takes sides with the oppressed.^6 Delores Williams reread the biblical Hagar to show that God identifies with women cast out, abused, yet surviving.^7

For white theology, humanity’s problem was sin in general. For Black theology, humanity’s problem was also racial hierarchy—and the imago Dei was a radical assertion of dignity against it.

3. Soteriology (Salvation)

For many white theologians, salvation was an individual matter—justification, sanctification, eternal destiny. Edwards envisioned sinners dangling over hell; Piper and Keller stressed substitutionary atonement. The horizon was eternity.

For Black theologians, salvation could never be only otherworldly. Douglass, distinguishing the “Christianity of Christ” from the slaveholder’s religion, insisted that true salvation meant liberation from oppression.^8 Cone argued that liberation itself is salvation—God’s saving act sets the oppressed free.^9 Womanist theologians such as Williams reframed salvation as survival—God making “a way out of no way” for Black women whose lives were continually at risk.^7

White theology asked how sinners might be saved from God’s wrath. Black theology asked how people might be saved from chains, lynching, and poverty.

4. Ecclesiology (Church)

In white theology, the church was guardian of doctrine, sacraments, and order. Kuyper spoke of “sphere sovereignty,” the independence of social institutions under God.^10 Sproul and Keller emphasized faithful preaching and doctrinal integrity. The focus was theological correctness and institutional continuity.

In Black theology, the church was first a survival center. Allen and Jones’s AME Church was a declaration of dignity. The Black church became school, political base, welfare system, and spiritual home. It sheltered fugitives, organized boycotts, and birthed movements. Theology was not only preached from the pulpit but lived in the fellowship hall, the freedom march, and the choir loft.

White theology: church as protector of orthodoxy.
Black theology: church as protector of life.

5. Engagement with Culture and Politics

White theologians often assumed Christendom. Even when they engaged culture, it was from dominance. Kuyper envisioned Christian influence over every sphere of society. Keller wrote of cultural engagement within the assumptions of modern evangelical power. Few confronted systemic racism directly.

Black theology never had that luxury. David Walker’s Appeal (1829) called for resistance and repentance, blending Christian critique with revolutionary urgency.^11 Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) indicted white moderates for their silence, writing, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”^12 Womanist theologians confronted sexism within both Black and white churches. For Black theology, culture and politics were not optional arenas—they were where God’s justice had to be proclaimed.

6. Willie James Jennings: A Bridge and a Critique

Willie James Jennings embodies the crossroads. Trained within white Reformed theology, he exposed in The Christian Imagination how Western Christian colonialism produced a racialized imagination by severing faith from land and neighbor.^13 Yet he does not abandon the tradition; he re-roots it, calling for a theology of belonging and embodied community. Jennings shows that the issue is not simply Black vs. White theology but whether theology begins from the top of society or from the underside.

7. Two Questions, Two Worlds

White theologians: order, doctrine, universality, grace in abstraction.
Black theologians: survival, liberation, dignity, God’s solidarity in history.

Both read the same Bible—but asked different questions.
White theology asked: How is God sovereign over all things?
Black theology asked: Where is God when my people are in chains?

The answers diverged because the lived experiences diverged.

Conclusion: One Faith, Two Locations

The story of theology in the Americas is not single but twin, intertwined. One tradition largely shaped from above, explaining the order of things; the other shaped from below, interrogating and resisting that order. One spoke of depravity and grace in universal terms; the other spoke of dignity and liberation in embodied contexts.

Neither tradition alone can claim the whole truth. But if theology is to speak truth in the Americas, it must listen to both—especially to those who asked the harder question: Where is God when the world denies our humanity?

Notes

“Absalom Jones and Richard Allen,” Episcopal Church Archives; see also Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, “St. George’s Methodist Church.”
National Park Service, “Maria W. Stewart” (Women’s Rights National Historical Park); Library of Congress, “Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman?”—note that the famous refrain was popularized by later transcription.
Kenneth P. Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards on Slavery and the Slave Trade,” Journal of American History 84 (1997): 1329–59.
Bradley J. Gundlach, Process and Providence: The Evolution Question at Princeton, 1845–1929 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 189–92.
Henry McNeal Turner, “God Is a Negro,” Voice of Missions (1898).
James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970).
Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993).
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, 1845; Appendix.
James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1975).
Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931).
David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (Boston, 1829).
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16 1963.
Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

Bibliography

Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1970.
———. God of the Oppressed. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1975.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. 1845.
Gundlach, Bradley J. Process and Providence: The Evolution Question at Princeton, 1845–1929. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013.
Jennings, Willie James. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
King Jr., Martin Luther. Letter from Birmingham Jail. April 16 1963.
Kuyper, Abraham. Lectures on Calvinism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931.
Minkema, Kenneth P. “Jonathan Edwards on Slavery and the Slave Trade.” Journal of American History 84 (1997): 1329–59.
National Park Service. “Maria W. Stewart.” Women’s Rights National Historical Park.
Turner, Henry McNeal. “God Is a Negro.” Voice of Missions, 1898.
Walker, David. Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. Boston, 1829.
Warfield, B. B. Discussed in Gundlach, Process and Providence.
Williams, Delores S. Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993.