Season 3: Episode 4 | Just Left of Centered: Black Theology, Liberation & the Gospel

Black theology and liberation challenge how many Christians have learned to understand the gospel, especially when faith has been shaped in proximity to comfort and power.

In this episode of Jesus, Justice & Mercy, Kristen offers an introduction to Black theology, not as a political framework or academic debate, but as wisdom forged in survival, resistance, and hope. Drawing from history and the voices of Black theologians, pastors, and writers, this episode explores how faith shaped under oppression reveals a gospel that is embodied, costly, and communal.

Rather than explaining Black theology from a distance, this episode invites listeners, especially white Christians, to examine posture, formation, and centering. What happens when discipleship is shaped from the margins rather than the center? How has dominant American theology been formed alongside power? And why does this wisdom speak so clearly to the church’s exhaustion, shallow discipleship, and longing for hope today?

This episode lays theological groundwork for February’s Black History Month conversations, framing the month as formation, not consumption, and prepares listeners to receive the interviews ahead as testimony flowing from a living tradition.

Foundational Voices in Black Theology:

• The Cross and the Lynching Tree | James H. Cone
• God of the Oppressed | James H. Cone
• Jesus and the Disinherited | Howard Thurman
• The Politics of Jesus | Obery M. Hendricks Jr.
• A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African American Religious History | Albert J. Raboteau

Contemporary Voices:

• The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism | Jemar Tisby
• Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope | Esau McCaulley
• Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle | Dante Stewart

Essential Reading:

• The Fire Next Time |James Baldwin
• After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging | Willie James Jennings
• Howard Thurman: Essential Writings | Luther E. Smith Jr.

Note: This is not a comprehensive list, but these are the voices that have most deeply re-formed my own discipleship. Start anywhere. Read slowly. Let the work do what it’s meant to do.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why Black theology emerged from lived experience, not theory
• How social location shapes theology and discipleship
• The difference between faith formed at the center and faith formed under pressure
• Why liberation is not optional to the gospel
• How dominant American theology has been shaped alongside power
• The cost of a disembodied faith, especially for Black bodies
• Why turning toward Black theology does not polarize the church
• How listening itself becomes an act of discipleship

This episode is for you if:

• You feel the tension between the faith you inherited and the Jesus you want to follow
• You’re exhausted by shallow discipleship and culture-war Christianity
• You want to understand why Black theology matters without consuming it

You’re willing to listen from a different posture