"Get at me God" : the theology of hip hop: a hermeneutic for the 21st century Black church.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, 2017.The aim of this study is to juxtapose hip hop theology and Black church theology in order to design a new hermeneutic for the twenty-first century Black church. This new hermeneutic will be used to inject a jolt of energy back into this institution, which is the most revolutionary organization of the past 200 years. In the twenty-first century, this flagship of social justice in the United States stands badly wounded and has become in some respects catatonic. The preaching of the core gospel to which it ascribes has been tainted by the materialism of prosperity theology and the dismissal of its greatest asset, the youth that are its legacy. Ironically, that which the church has forgotten may also be the instrument through which its resurrection will occur. Just as traditional Trinitarian theology holds that the Father (God) became the Son (Jesus) and that the Son will become the Father, so to will the child (hip hop) one day become the parent (the Black church) as the instrument, or as it were the Ethernet cord, through which the power of Christ will once again quicken the church's veins and help it to remain vigorous for many generations to come. The church's salvation is the bastard hip hop generation left for dead, unfathered and in some ways unmothered, and to raise itself. That generation of the church's darkest blight is also its greatest hope. The theology of hip hop can be a forerunner for the gospel, much like John the Baptist. In the African American church, which is the precursor to what I define as the Black church, there is a generational split between traditional mainstream congregants and this leftbehind remnant. The post-civil rights era witnessed the growth a vacuum within the African American church and the larger African American community. The closer that the ancestors of the chattel property who built the United States came to full inclusion and citizenship, the more that stalwart cog of the community began to disintegrate. Two-parent homes became singlemother households; integration became obliteration. Success, the pursuit of happiness, and the American dream became longer hours and overtime in the pursuit of luxury goods at the price of latch key children raised by the streets and popular culture. In order develop this hermeneutic for the new millennium, it is necessary to define hip hop and to analyze its theological framework, and to do so in the context of the history of the culture. The focus here is not on rap music per se, but on understanding how this music shapes the thoughts, attitudes, and perspectives of millions. Rap music is not hip hop culture, but rather the soundtrack of life in the urban centers of America. Equally important are the history and theology of the Black church, which I distinguish from the African American church. The goal is to identify the theological implications and their current applications to the future of African Americans, hip hop, and the underserved. I accordingly compare and contrast the similarities and differences between hip hop culture and the black/African American church in regard to their origins, the events and circumstances that formed them, and their current status. I will also examine current global, social, racial circumstances that inform and affect both the church and the culture of hip hop. I will scrutinize the task of prophetic preaching as it relates to the biblical prophets, the civil right prophets, and now the urban prophets in order to map a course for prophetic preaching that reaches across racial, socio-economic, and gender lines to inspire, liberate, and comfort the oppressed and marginalized. The culmination of this endeavor will be to integrate hip hop theology into existing Christian thought, just as Liberation, Womanist, or feminist theology