SOURCE: "Countee Cullen's 'The Black Christ,'" in Theology Today, Vol. 38, No. 2, July, 1981, pp. 160-73.

In the following excerpt, Smylie analyzes Cullen's poem "The Black Christ."

Cullen was not the first to relate crucifixion and lynching, nor did he compose his song ["The Black Christ"] in a theological vacuum. Fundamentalists and Modernists of various grades were locked in abrasive public combat in the 1920s, and heirs of the "social gospel" were interpreting the benefitsof Christ's atoning work in terms of an oppressive economic system. The black community, including Cullen's minister father, could not help but be influenced by the doctrines blowing in the wind of the larger Christian community. But Cullen wrote primarily in the context of the black tradition.

As Eugene Genovese had reminded us, in Roll, Jordan Roll (1974), black religion was best expressed in experiential terms and with a fusion of the work of deliverer Moses...