In Religion of the Field Negro, Vincent W. Lloyd argues that secularism, “the exclusion or management of religion by the powers that be” (4), has domesticated Black theology much as, on Malcolm X's account, house labor domesticated some enslaved Black people. By contrast, Malcolm contends, field laborers maintained a more radical perspective on freedom. Malcolm's provocative and contested taxonomy of radicalized Black consciousness provides an effective frame for Lloyd's exhortation to Black theology to reject secularism and reclaim its early radicalism, exceeding the limits of this world: to retrieve “the religion of the field Negro.”
For Lloyd, whenever Black theology, or any theology, thinks that it can “speak rightly and rigorously about God” (9), or that it can solve the problem of white supremacy, it commits idolatry. The task of Black theology, properly understood, is twofold: The Black theologian critiques ideology (white supremacy) and lifts up the wisdom of people who are marginalized because, as Black theology has always claimed, they are where God is. This opens up the conceptual space to begin feeling our way toward a different sort of future, a future that is inaccessible and unimaginable from the privileged spaces academic theologians inhabit.
Appropriately, Lloyd attempts neither to solve nor systematically to describe the problem (11). The introduction offers a stunning critique of whiteness. The chapters isolate strands—including theologians, philosophers, and cultural icons, along with tradition, community organizing, and hope—that might form part of a new fabric yet to be woven should Black theology succeed in its strictly preliminary task of clearing enough conceptual space for the work to begin.
The assortment of topics and figures appears eclectic; each chapter can stand alone. Binding them together is Lloyd's commitment to retrieving the “theology” in “black theology.” He illuminates how secularism domesticates each figure and concept, and how theology can exceed what the world perceives as possible. Retrieving James Cone's emphasis on paradox, James Baldwin's insistence on love, Steve Biko's definition of Blackness, Huey P. Newton's commitment to progress, Gillian Rose's meditations on the soul, and others, Lloyd demonstrates the promise of each vision and diagnoses precisely where it capitulates to secularism.
Another strength of the work is that although Lloyd reads all of the figures sympathetically, he combats the urge to canonize them. Doing so would distract from the critique of idolatry toward which they move us, sometimes in spite of themselves. In proposing Black theology as a task preliminary to constructing a world that rejects white supremacy, in describing the current situation rather than a totalizing vision of a postracial future (see especially chapter 11, “The Postracial Saint”), Lloyd shows not how to beat white supremacy—that is impossible—but what to do next. Blacks, the oppressed, must hope that they can effectively critique idolatry and lift up the wisdom of the marginalized. Whites, the oppressors, must hope for despair, for the realization that we cannot solve white supremacy. Lloyd's unsystematic notes toward a conceptual map are both sobering and hopeful.
Religion of the Field Negro incisively analyzes dominant trends within the field of Black theology and Black religious thought, most especially secularism, by discussing ideas rather than by rehearsing a long list of authors and texts: Lloyd refreshingly refrains from composing a litany of the saints. This philosophically sophisticated and original argument will be of interest to scholars of religion, Black theology, philosophy of religion, whiteness studies, and African American history (religious and secular). It could profitably be assigned in graduate courses on these and other topics.
As I finished reading the book, I wished that Lloyd would return to his compelling opening metaphor. The promise and meaning of “the religion of the field Negro” remains implicit. But I suspect that this is intentional. We cannot know now, and should not presume to speculate, what this revolutionary religion might be were it cultivated and allowed to grow freely. Lloyd exhorts Black theologians to reclaim their radical roots and resume the intellectual labor needed to prepare the field for planning, for planting and, perhaps one distant day, for harvesting.
