Silence, by Shusaku Endo, is set in the 17th century at the peak of persecution and apostasy of Christians in Japan. Christian priests, Sebastian Rodrigues, Juan de Santa Marta, and Francisco Garrpe, plan to go to Japan to do missionary work and seek the truth of their teacher, Christovao Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized. However, with the tension of Christian persecution in Japan, it is unsafe for the Rodrigues and Garrpe, but they continue their journey. The notion of God’s silence is one focus of the book, and there are numerous instances where Rodrigues struggles to understand the logic behind God’s silence. Although he often begs for God’s help, Rodrigues assumes that God does not hear his prayers. He begins to fear there is …show more content…
Romero states, “It is the poor who tell us what the world is, and what the church’s service to the world should be.” In Silence, Rodrigues’ and Garrpe’s sheer presence in Japan helped the oppressed Japanese Christians. Both Jesuits recognized the need for their missionary work in Japan to proclaim good news to and for them and to defend them. However, Rodrigues battles with his life as a missionary among great suffering, “But Christ did not die for the good and beautiful...the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.” If God is there and exists, then their work and missionaries are saving those whom Christ died for. However, if God remains silent then Christians are suffering in a hard life that will only lead to death.
As the black community similarly lives the oppressed lives of Japanese Christians, the black community often feels the absence of God’s presence when young, innocent, unarmed black men are gunned down. Especially with the Black Lives Matter movement, many question whether their efforts will lead to the recognition of the increased violence against African-Americans. It is through the efforts of people, such as Rodrigues and activists, that listen to the oppressed communities to help bring good news and defend the
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Similarly, Garrpe was willing to give up his life for his faith, since to die as a martyr was seen as way to salvation for oneself. When Rodrigues told Mokichi and Ichizo trample of the fumie, Garrpe had looked back at him with a reproachful look hesitant to Rodrigues’ advice. Although, at the time of Garrpe’s death it is unsure whether he had apostatized when swimming toward the drowning Christians, “as he swam, he was shouting something.” Garrpe was willing to lay down his life for the persecuted Christians. He was a suffering servant of God and took upon himself to suffer with God’s
The second edition of “African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness,” covers the religious experiences of African Americans—from the late eighteenth century until the early 1980s. My paper is written in a chronological order to reflect on the progress blacks have made during the years—by expounding on the earliest religion of Africans to black religion of today. Race Relation and Religion plays a major role in today’s society—history is present in all that we do and it is to history that African-Americans have its identity and aspiration.
Becoming a true theologian and scholar deals with not limiting the extents of homiletics. The assumption is that the black preaching tradition is distinct and identifiable. What is interesting for any African American student of homiletics is that while many argue for a defined set of African American homiletic characteristics, there is little agreement on what these characteristics are? When people try to characterize what makes African Ame...
Rodriguez makes a point of stating that there are tensions between the “brother religions”, religions that should be unified but instead are “united and divided by the masculine sense of faith”, still this same pattern is shown within the church (146). Rodriguez acknowledges the fact that the church is being divided each day due
Francis of Assisi is one of the most influential personalities in the entire world. In the book ‘Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel Life,’ Cunningham recounts the life of this humble monk who lived in the medieval times, and shaped the Christian life, which spread in Western culture throughout the rest of history. I believe Cunningham accurately accounts for the life of Francis of Assisi, and in doing so; he provides a trajectory of the Christian faith from its early and historical proponents through its fusion with western culture, and its subsequent spread throughout the world.
James H. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Cone probably is best known for his book, A Black Theology of Liberation, though he has authored several other books. Dr. Cone wrote that the lack of relevant and “risky” theology suggests that theologians are not able to free themselves from being oppressive structures of society and suggested an alternative. He believes it is evident that the main difficulty most whites have with Black Power and its compatible relationship to the Christian gospel stemmed from their own inability to translate non-traditional theology into the history of black people. The black man’s response to God’s act in Christ must be different from the whites because his life experiences are different, Dr. Cone believes. In the “black experience,” the author suggested that a powerful message of biblical theology is liberation from oppression.
...umie, for whatever reason, he truly meant it. Thereafter, the only priestly duty he performs is to give Kichijiro absolution one last time. (Endo, 191) Other than that, he gives up entirely. He becomes an informer, writes an anti-Christian treatise, and does everything exactly as the Japanese magistrates tell him to. Even Kichijiro shows himself to be a better Christian than Rodrigues: he had to apostatize as many times as he did because he never meant any of them. But the priest himself did. Augustine writes that God desires only one sacrifice, "the heart bruised and humbled in the sorrow of penitence." (Augustine, 378) But Rodrigues cannot even offer him that. At the end, he is truly a Christian no longer. The only comfort he can take, if he does, is an ironically painful one: that it was the most Christian act he'd ever committed that had gotten him where he was.
Author of “The Negro Family”, E. Franklin Frazier believed that the centrality of the bible, structure of Black worship, and notion of God that evolved from the invisible institution to the Black Church was confirmation of the power of white influence . These tactics and different developments were merely adaptive methods used by slaves in order to worship freely in a confined space. Frazier’s beliefs were undermined by author Gayraud S. Wilmore’s description of Vodun in his book Black Religion and Black Radicalism. Frazier’s contention that black religion was evidence of white influence assumes a blank and passive slate. While Vodun in West Africa did have organization that was probably “infiltrated by Roman Catholicism” the goal of New World Africans was to adapt and understand their lives (Wilmore 43). Although white influence was forced upon New World Africans, slaves did not accept this influence but rather interpreted it to create a new, place-based Vodun religion. Vodun adapted to New World conditions, functioned as a coping mechanism, and possessed evolutionary qualities.
From these convictions, the idea of black liberation theology was created. Blacks relate Christianity to the struggles they have endured, therefore it has to be black. “In a society where men are defined on the basis of color of the victims, proclaiming that the condition of the poor is incongruous with him who has come to liberate us.”
The African Methodist Episcopal Church also known as the AME Church, represents a long history of people going from struggles to success, from embarrassment to pride, from slaves to free. It is my intention to prove that the name African Methodist Episcopal represents equality and freedom to worship God, no matter what color skin a person was blessed to be born with. The thesis is this: While both Whites and Africans believed in the worship of God, whites believed in the oppression of the Africans’ freedom to serve God in their own way, blacks defended their own right to worship by the development of their own church. According to Andrew White, a well- known author for the AME denomination, “The word African means that our church was organized by people of African descent Heritage, The word “Methodist” means that our church is a member of the family of Methodist Churches, The word “Episcopal refers to the form of government under which our church operates.”
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Print. The. 2003 Roberts, Deotis J. Black Theology in Dialogue. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press. Print.
"God of the Oppressed" is brilliantly organized into ten chapters. These chapters serve as the building blocks to the true understanding of Cone’s Black Theology. This progressive movement begins with an introduction of both him and his viewpoint. He explains that his childhood in Bearden, Arkansas and his membership to Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E) has taught him about the black Church experience and the sociopolitical significance of white people. “My point is that one’s social and historical context decides not only the questions we address to God but also the mode of form of the answers given to the questions.” (14) The idea of “speaking the truth” is added at this point because to go any further the reader must understand the reason and goal for Black Theology. Through the two sources in that shape theology, experience and scripture, white theology concludes that the black situation is not a main point of focus. Cone explains the cause for this ignorance, “Theology is not a universal language; it is interested language and thus is always a reflection of the goals and aspirations of a particular people in a definite social setting.” (36) This implies that one’s social context shapes their theology and white’s do not know the life and history of blacks. As the reader completes the detailed analysis of society’s role in shaping experiences, Cone adds to the second source, scripture.
C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 352. Lindsay A. Arscott, "Black Theology," Evangelical Review of Theology 10 (April-June 1986):137. James H. Cone, "Black Theology in American Religion," Theology Today 43 (April 1986):13. James H. Cone, "Black Theology and Black Liberation," in Black Theology: The South African Voice, ed. Basil Moore (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1973), 92, 96.
The above-mentioned essays are: Nihilism in Black America, The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning, The Crisis of Black Leadership, Demystifying the Black Conservatism, Beyond Affirmative Action: Equality and Identity, On Black-Jewish Relations, Black Sexuality: T...
Hamlet once said, “To be, or not, to be, that is the question”. This famous statement expresses Hamlet’s moral dilemma between life and death just as Rodrigues’ chooses between dying a “glorious” martyrdom or betraying his faith. On his critically-acclaimed novel, Silence, Shusaku Endo depicts different acts of betrayal to interpret his version of Christianity. Endo uses Rodrigues, Kirchijiro and Ferreira to represent different types of betrayal of faith affecting the novel as a whole. Through their betrayal, Endo portrays the weakness of humanity and its downfall but also shows God’s grace for the choice of redemption.
The Story of Christianity is a very informative summation; a continuation of Volume 1 which covered the beginning of the church up to the Protestant Reformation, while Vol. 2 dealt with the Protestant Reformation up to more modern time period. This author delivers a more comprehensive and deeper look into the development of Christianity, which includes particular events which had transpired throughout the world; particularly how Christianity has expanded into Central and South America. Gonzalez opens up this book with the “Call for Reformation,” where he shares with his readers the need for reform; the papacy had started to decline and was corrupt, in addition to the Great Schism, which had further weakened the papacy (p.8). The author explains how the church was not the only issue but that the church’s teachings were off track as well, seeing that the people had deviated from...