Religion of the Field Negro
On Black Secularism and Black Theology
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Black theology has lost its direction. To reclaim its original power and to advance racial justice struggles today black theology must fully embrace blackness and theology. But multiculturalism and religious pluralism have boxed in black theology, forcing it to speak in terms dictated by a power structure founded on white supremacy. In Religion of the Field Negro, Vincent W. Lloyd advances and develops black theology immodestly, privileging the perspective of African Americans and employing a distinctively theological analysis.
As Lloyd argues, secularism is entangled with the disciplining impulses of modernity, with neoliberal economics, and with Western imperialism – but it also contaminates and castrates black theology. Inspired by critics of secularism in other fields, Religion of the Field Negro probes the subtle ways in which religion is excluded and managed in black culture. Using Barack Obama, Huey Newton, and Steve Biko as case studies, it shows how the criticism of secularism is the prerequisite of all criticism, and it shows how criticism and grassroots organizing must go hand in hand. But scholars of secularism too often ignore race, and scholars of race too often ignore secularism. Scholars of black theology too often ignore the theoretical insights of secular black studies scholars, and race theorists too often ignore the critical insights of religious thinkers.
Religion of the Field Negro brings together vibrant scholarly conversations that have remained at a distance from each other until now. Weaving theological sources, critical theory, and cultural analysis, this book offers new answers to pressing questions about race and justice, love and hope, theorizing and organizing, and the role of whites in black struggle. The insights of James Cone are developed together with those of James Baldwin, Sylvia Wynter, and Achille Mbembe, all in the service of developing a political-theological vision that motivates us to challenge the racist paradigms of white supremacy.
Once again Vincent Lloyd has written an insightful, demanding, even daring book, and this time with an irritating title straight out of the 1960s. Lloyd throws down a stinging challenge to all those of us who cling to idolatries of race, class, and gender as well as to our privileges in the classroom, the boardroom, and the pulpit. We have betrayed black theology in our failure to uphold the wisdom of the marginalized, the cherished people of God.---M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College
Religion of the Field Negro is an intellectual tour de force. Lloyd exercises a unique ability to bring conversational partners from diverse positions and discourses into dialogue so as to better obtain critical clarity on the future prospects and possibilities of black theology. He is intent on recovering the revolutionary goals of a black theology grounded in the lives, hopes, thoughts, and expressions of ordinary African Americans.
Religion of the Field Negro succeeds at engaging an audience outside of the academy. It is accessible to both lay and expert audiences. It seeks to broaden and deepen the discourse about Black theology and the Black church. It provides an entry point into an important conversation as well as a foundation from which to expand the conversation. This collection of essays would be a solid addition to an upper division undergraduate, or first year graduate, course in Black theology or African and African American philosophy.
Religion of the Field Negro is an exciting book and one that injects both intellectual and revolutionary passion into black theological discourse. Its insistence that the theological be taken seriously in order to fight racial injustice and, in turn, all injustice inscribed into contemporary culture dominated by whiteness is crucial. It unapologetically seats black theological critique as the most important, and most needed, site of cultural and political criticism today. It never shies away from taking the disruptive potential of God, of black church tradition, deeply seriously. And it invests itself in not shying away from black religion being sufficient, in fact necessary, on its own terms in theology and in the world at present.---Jason Wyman, Manhattan College, Theology Today
Religion of the Field Negro incisively analyzes dominant trends within the field of Black theology and Black religious thought, most especially secularism, by discussing ideas rather than by rehearsing a long list of authors and texts: Lloyd refreshingly refrains from composing a litany of the saints. This philosophically sophisticated and original argument will be of interest to scholars of religion, Black theology, philosophy of religion, whiteness studies, and African American history (religious and secular). It could profitably be assigned in graduate courses on these and other topics.
In the wake of George Floyd, and too many others’ brutal deaths, a potential renewal of abolitionist religion hangs in the air... Lloyd’s work makes an invaluable contribution to actualizing that potentiality in everyday life. It needs to be widely read and taught.
Religion of the Field Negro is an excellent exploration of the task, and necessity, of reenvisioning Black theological discourse.---Darrius D. Hills, The Journal of Religion
Vincent Lloyd’s Religion of the Field Negro makes an important contribution to redefining the theological enterprise.
Introduction
Cornerstones
1: Cone
2: Baldwin
3: Mbembe
4: Derrida, Agamben, Wynter
Questions
5: What is Black Tradition?
6: What is Black Organizing?
7: For What Are Blacks to Hope?
8: For What Are Whites to Hope?
Exempla
9: The Revelation of Race: On Steve Biko
10: The Racial Messiah: On Huey P. Newton
11: The Post-Racial Saint: On Barack Obama
12: The Race of the Soul: On Gillian Rose
Afterword: The Birth of the Black Church
Bibliography