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Anthony B. Pinn. Why Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology. New York: Continuum, 1995. 216 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed by Dwight N. Hopkins
The Divinity School of the University of Chicago
African American Review, Volume 31, Number 3
1997 Dwight N. Hopkins
Throughout the history of black religion-from its origin during slavery, through the post-bellum proliferation of black churches, to today's institutionalization of black theology in the academy and churches-African American Christians have maintained steadfastly two cardinal tenets: (1) God is allpowerful, good, and just, yet (2) evil and suffering exist. Traditionally, within such an apparent paradox, black believers never blame God for racial oppression. Furthermore, black churches have preached fervently a gospel advocating how suffering for the black race has built strong positive character, moral leadership for the nation, and religious humility requisite for the eventual goal of equality, and this gospel, in certain cases, engendered radical calls for protest politics. Such a faith not only arises out of a pragmatic need to explain the mundane and catastrophic pain in black American experiences, but it also emerges from a theological doctrine grounded in the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The defining moment of Christianity, African Americans proclaim, comes with the ultimate suffering displayed on the cross. With this sacrificial death, all humankind, especially the oppressed, enjoy hope of a new life and a full humanity.
In Why Lord? Anthony Pinn problematizes this cornerstone of black Christianity and rejects the reality of God in the process. Specifically, he argues that the Christian doctrine of redemptive suffering is fundamentally and irreparably flawed. Suffering can never be positive or fruitful (i.e., redemptive) for African Americans. In fact, a faith in the empowering nature of suffering, for Pinn, has been one of the most debilitating impediments in the history of the African American movement for social transformation. Redemptive suffering instills quietism in humanity and exposes not a just and all-powerful God, but a malevolent Christian divinity. This theological construct, furthermore, directly or indirectly implies that God sanctions suffering, relieves oppressors of their accountability, and clouds the oppressed understanding of suffering as demonic. To rectify this situation, Pinn attempts to abolish the redemptive suffering doctrine within a black theology of liberation while, at the same time, substituting a "strong...