Christian Education and the Black Church: A Contextual Approach

Abstract

Christian educators in the black church are beginning to recognize some new issues involved in defining their taste. Primary among these questions are not only the standard ones of objectives, content, curriculum, learning, teaching, leadership, and evaluation, but the more insistent and crucial question of the relationship of these to the black experience, the black community, the black church, black theology and black liberation. In other words, the new questions for Christian education as they are viewed by the black church are essentially contextual. From goal-setting to evaluating, black educators in black churches
are viewing the educational process in relation to the kind of learning and teaching that considers the black experience as central and the liberation of black people as its focal point. Briefly, then, the new definition of Christian education views it as that process which teaches concepts, attitudes and skills which facilitate meaningful learning in relation to the black experience and the church’s implicit taste of humanization and liberation.

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