« Back to Issue 43

Reclaiming Liberation Theology - the Rise & Demise of Black Theology

Author:	Alistair Kee
Published By:	SCM Press (London)
Price:	£19.99
ISBN:	978 0 334 04164

Reviewed by Luke Penkett.

Black Theology is the latest book in SCM’s Reclaiming Liberation Theology series. I wrote about the first that if the other books in this series were of the same calibre we would be fortunate. We are.

Alistair Kee is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His Black Theology delivers a wake up call to Liberal Theologians in general and to those writing on black theology in particular. As Ivan Petrella, the series editor, writes, “Sometimes it takes an outsider perspective to re-awaken a field.” This, I’m sure, has been achieved with the present work.

Originally published (by Ashgate) in 2006, Kee’s seminal book has additional material and is essential reading for all with a passion for black and/or contextual theology.

What marks it out from its predecessors and peers is its emphasis on economic oppression, especially with regard to black women. Kee convincingly argues that most Liberation Theologians, especially in the UK, Africa and the States, are satisfied by repeating material written and spoken about in the 1960s and 1970s - that is, in the years before global capitalism. In particular, American theologians, he writes, have not addressed issues of impoverishment of poverty-stricken black Americans at home, or the complicity of black Americans in the exploitation of Africa.  

Affluent blacks in the West, Kee claims, are no longer the victims, but the people who should be influencing western governments to change policies towards the poor. Black Theologians, he urges, should move on for the sake of the black poor throughout the world.