Abstract
Western religious thought is perpetually anxious to legitimate itself — to undergird beliefs. Every school of theological thought has its own view of the authority of the Christian Gospel. The temptation and perhaps even the need exists for Black Religion to do the same. Yet the instant it consents even to deal with the “problem of authority,” it runs the risk of conceding both an alien set of criteria and a whole new frame of reference. Nevertheless, Black Religion, which is Christian, must ultimately eschew theological isolationism and walls of partition, especially after it has found itself. The solution to the danger and dilemma of conceding too much would seem to lie in a careful statement of what Black Religion is, in its own terms, followed by a statement of what it is not, possibly employing tentative comparisons with stereotypes of Western theology. It was this sort of statement and comparison that seized my mind on a flight far from these shores, and what follows was transcribed on landing. It is offered here as a start for the process just mentioned.