UC Santa Cruz

The radical Black Christians I compare in this study situated their god-talk precisely at the intersection between Black futurity and Christian eschatology. Black Theology and the End of Time examines how Black theologians during the 1960s and 70s preached, wrote, and organized around the return of Christ at the end of time by looking at how and why they used discourses of Christian eschatology to call forth transformative political futures. In particular, my dissertation stages an encounter between the preeminent Black theologian of the twentieth century, Dr. James Hal Cone (1938-2018), and the founder of Black Christian Nationalism and minister at Detroit’s Shrine of the Black Madonna, Rev. Albert Cleage Jr./Jaramogi Abebe Ageyman (1911-2000). Far from figuring Christianity as something that was essentially opioidic, these Black Power theologians developed a radical, eschatological vision centered on the problem of white supremacy.