Like a Thief in the Night

Abstract

What would it take for whites (especially those males claiming to be Christian) to have formed within themselves the kind of “vital ferocity” necessary to struggle lifelong against the powers and privileges that whiteness constantly leverages in and around them? This essay seeks to answer this question by embracing black liberation theology as gift of bombast for the white church, bearing the blood-cry of a betrayed “American” Abel. The white church in our day continues to live largely in denial of a judgment already clogging its own veins. It has yet to listen and learn from the deepest groan of Spirit inside its own history.