Tribal Metanarrative

I include this video not for political reasons. I am no fan of Harry Belafonte - his music or his politics. I think that his viewpoint is caustic, dismissive, and laughable if it wasn't so racist.  I am also no fan of Henry Cain. I do typically vote conservative in most elections, but I simply don't know enough about Cain to have an informed opinion on him. I also don't believe that Belafonte represents the thoughts of most or even many African-Americans. His views are on the extreme fringe. The reason why I linked to this video is because of what it demonstrates. It demonstrates the dangers of the type of tribalistic thinking that often accompanies liberationist theologies. Tribalistic thinking allows us to handily separate people into "good blacks" and "bad blacks," "good women" and "bad women," "good evangelicals" and "bad evangelicals," etc. based on how faithful an individual is to the accepted narrative of their tribe. If you occupy a certain tribe (or rather, as is most often the case, if I have placed you into a certain tribe independant of your personal feelings), then you must think, act, and talk in a certain way in order to be "good." In this case, it turns blackness into nothing more than an ideology or dogma.

http://youtu.be/5fxjQ5h6Ri4

Postmodern Hermeneutics

"When did Christian narratives become meta-narrative? In whose eyes and for whom? Are we exaggerating the place of Christian narratives in a world where Christianity is not the dominant religion? Even though governments with strong military powers and rigorous warfare tactics are from Christian countries, Christianity is not the grand religion. Why do we imagine that Christian narratives are the only narratives that post modernity challenges? Given that we are Christians, we see our narratives as grand. They are grand for us, and we are many; but they are not grand for everyone, and they are more.

Havea, Jione, "Is There a Home for the Bible in a Postmodern World?" Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Fall 2007, Vol. 42 Issue 4.