Black Gods of the Metropolis by Arthur Huff Fauset

What I hope to do in this series of posts is offer some tentative thoughts about a set of apologetic questions often raised by urban religions and cults. If we fail to understand this dynamic and genius of Black religion then we will fail the apologetic task at the start. Before the religious claims become intellectual or “purely theological” they are first existential. The questions answered by Black religions and cults have a great deal to do with the sojourn and suffering of Black people in the United States. There’s a simple reason for this: Black religion in urban centers developed to answer a very different set of questions than the major world religions. What would-be urban apologists soon find out is that the typical approach doesn’t work with a lot of people. This approach assumes that if the Christian faith can be intellectually defended and shown to be stronger than rival claims, then the apologist has successfully defended the faith. Mainstream texts “do apologetics” by describing the core beliefs of a faith, comparing those beliefs to Christian claims, and then arguing for the superiority of Christian teaching. A very different set of religious ideas exist in inner-city neighborhoods, so most mainstream texts contain little information about them.īut a more fundamental issue also exists.

Many are finding out that the objections and issues presented in urban communities differ significantly from those presented in typical books on apologetics. That means becoming familiar with the concerns and objections of urbanites who may either be unfamiliar with Christian claims or oppose those claims with arguments of their own. In Christian terms, people are trying to find effective ways of defending the faith among people in the inner-city. There’s a growing interest in “urban apologetics.” By “urban,” most people mean dense ethnic neighborhoods usually in the inner-city.

Black Gods of the Metropolis by Arthur Huff Fauset