Rhetoric Race and Religion
by Daniel White Hodge
R3 Contributor
Hip Hop is a voice. Anyone with half a Hip Hop brain both comprehends this and overstands this as a crucial part of what “Hip Hop is.” One of the working definitions I have used in regards to Hip Hop is this one:
Hip Hop is an urban sub-culture that seeks to express a life-style, attitude, and/or urban individuality. Hip Hop at its core—not the commercialization and commodity it has become in certain respects— rejects dominant forms of culture and society and seeks to increase a social consciousness along with a racial/ethnic pride. Thus, Hip Hop uses rap music, urban fashion, dance, music production, MCing, and allegory as vehicles to send and fund its message of social, cultural, and political resistanceto dominate structures of norms.[1]
Therefore, within this critical sphere of discourse, rappers will call out dominant structures of what they perceive to be oppressive. Often, these structures are political, social, and religious. Rappers call out the social ironies, double-speak, and double standards that are ripe within Black and urban communities. Thus, it stands to reason why rappers would take on issues within “the church” and within Christian communities as there are social ironies, double-speak, and double standards within this area that need dealing with.
We have to remember, that Hip Hop—at its core—wrestles with tension, conflict, and community all in astriction while pushing towards a consciousness of the person in that community. As Christina Zanfagna—an ethnomusicologist who studies rap and religious discourses— reminds us, “Hip-hop wrestles with the ways in which the hedonistic body and the seeking soul can be fed and elevated in dynamic tension.”[2]So rappers like Sho Baraka and Shai Linne are beginning to wrestle with these dynamic tensions and offer powerful critiques of Christian theology in their music. And as I have remained a strong critic of the rap genre “Christian rap,” I am finally delighted to see some artists stepping away from what I describe as “milk gospel messages” into a more Hip Hop critique of prevailing forms of oppression with Black and urban theological discourses. It is about time.
Hence, I am in full support of Sho Baraka and Shai Linne as they begin this much needed critique of Christian theology and challenge the status quo. While I realize Linne’s comments regarding “false teachers” are controversial and provocative, they are needed. In this time of a growing wealth gap in America, young Black male incarceration, and the rise of a “post-church” generation, every one of our leaders need to be “on the hook” as clearly, the traditional evangelistic methods of engagement are not working anymore with this generation. [3]
What Linne and Baraka do is live up to the core of what Hip Hop is about. They are, finally, asking the tough questions of leaders, society, and discourse within the Christian community. They are doing what N.W.A, Tupac, Public Enemy, and Jasiri X—among many others— have been doing for decades: critical engagement the societal context in which you reside in. And this engagement can leave no social stones unturned; this case being church and religion. Linne and Baraka are moving past this “milk” Gospel and engross the Nitty Gritty Hermeneutic[4]within religious and spiritual contexts. They are challenging their listeners to ask tougher questions. They are forcing the listener to broaden the definition of what we define “Christian.” They are, in fact, doing what conscious rappers have been doing for decades: critically challenging society and figures in society around them.
N.W.A.’s professing to indeed “fuck the police” in the face of brutality and abuse from law enforcement. Lupe Fiasco’s strong critique of Barack Obama’s presidency and social policy for Blacks. Tupac’s condemnation of Black churches that take too much money from the poor. And Killer Mike’s potent critical expository of Ronald Reagan—all ring true to Hip Hop’s resistance narrative etched deeply within Hip Hops essential ethos. Rappers are narrativeologists who construct stories from within the contexts in which they live. Rappers such as Linne and Baraka are doing just that and are taking the genre of Christian Rap to new levels.
Isn’t there a line that should be drawn though? Linne’s critique is claiming “false teachers,” isn’t that heretical in and of itself? Linne isn’t creating unity but division and hate. And Baraka’s “choice of words” destroy
any “Christian witness.” These are all fair questions and counter criticism. And, while I do not necessarily feel all of the names on Linne’s list are “false teachers,” the critique is still needed. Moreover, who gets to define what a “Christian” is? Whose narrative do we use as a pious measuring stick to figure out who is “Christian” enough? What makes Baraka’s strong language any different than Jesus calling out religious leaders of his day naming them “snakes,” “vipers,” and “blood suckers?” In that context, that choice of discourse was considered to be “profane” and blasphemous to “call out” such a high official; yet those officials were dirty and Jesus, in a true Hip Hop manner, called them out. So what is the line then? I feel strongly we need to continue to have that discussion and not allow traditionalization, religious piety, and rigid beliefs regarding Christianity to hold us all back from growth.
We—especially in the religion and Hip Hop studies community—need to support artists such as Linne and Baraka as they blaze new trails and give a much needed social critique. Linne’s critique and Baraka’s choice of language are the beginning of, what I would like to believe, a new era on Christian rap. And, while I do not blindly accept everything an artist espouses, it still does not negate the support I give for what they, and artists like them, are attempting to do. This is critique is a rhetoric that is needed.
Bibliography
[1]Adapted from Phil Jackson & Efrem Smith’s work Hip Hop & The Church (IVP 2005) and used in the forthcoming book project See You at the Crossroads: Hip Hop Scholarship at the Intersections of Dialectical Harmony, Ethics, Aesthetics, and Panoply of Voices (Sense Publishing 2014).
[2]Christina Zanfagna, “Under the Blasphemous W(RAP): Locating the “Spirit” in Hip-Hop,” Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology 12(2006): 6.
[3]Daniel White Hodge, The Soul Of Hip Hop: Rimbs Timbs & A Cultural Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inner Varsity Press, 2010). Chapter 8.
[4]Take from ADDIN EN.CITE Pinn199561Anthony B Pinn, Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (New York: Continuum, 1995).61616Anthony B PinnWhy Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology 1995New YorkContinuumAnthony B Pinn, Why Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology (New York: Continuum, 1995).
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