Hip-hop theolo-G

As I was researching liberation theology, which argues that the poor and marginalized are special before Jesus and that the highest moral aim is fighting for them, I stumbled across the Indian theologian Sebastian Kappen.


Kappen (who incidentally looks like a beardless Indian version of my father), published Jesus and Freedom in 1977. The book drew heavily from the Latin American priests and theologians who were experimenting with liberation theology. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which Cardinal Ratzinger (da' Pope) was a member, rejected Kappen's book and liberation theology as a whole because of the movement's Marxist sympathies and investigation of spiritual matters informed by materialism. Kappen wrote the pamphlet Censorship and the Future of Asian Theology as a reply. I slowly read the following:

Moreover, if God is alive and speaks to humans of all places and cultures, there is no basis for a censorship that evaluates all theology by the standard of one theology, I mean, by the standard of the dogmas and concepts developed in the western historical-cultural context. The traditional mode of thinking in the West is representational.
[...]
As Asians, our mode of thinking is unitive rather than analytic, experiential rather than representational, existentialist rather than essentialist. The dichotomies western thought has thrown up — matter and spirit, faith and reason, nature and grace, temporal and eternal, human and divine, and the like — are foreign to us. For us thinking is communing, not conquering; is being present to what presents itself, not re-presenting it through concepts; is being one with the oneness of all, not exploding the one into the manifold. Our ancient seers would have questioned even the 'and' in the customary formulation, God and man, if taken in the additive, disjunctive sense ; so finely attuned were they to the underlying oneness of the many. These cultural specificities are ignored by the church when she compels us, Asians, to think as do people in the West. What is this but cultural imperialism and colonisation of the mind?

The primary locus of theology, therefore, cannot be the closed community of Christians but the open community of all those who hunger and thirst for justice and freedom.* And if the theology that emerges out of dialogue with the Lord of history bursts the old wineskins of tradition, none need shed a tear over it except the makers of old wineskins!**

Word, Baba Kappen-G. Before I made it to the word "manifold," the prophetic words of Deltron Z's Madness stood up in my mind:

The universe is one and I can see what rap can be glorious
Put in the Smithsonium my podiums for holy hymns
But you see who's controlling them
Fuck myself off cuz of the egotistical mode I'm in
[...]
I'm trapped in a bottle
My music's gettin hollow
That's what happens when humanity you follow
Where every leak or info is hard to swallow
Sell your Marlboros and car insurance
Put niggas on the moon and can't pay your burdens
I smoke herb and rock a turban
Meditate on the world and whats occurrin
A lot of white boys like the style and copy
Dig in something deeper and you'll peep that were not free
It's not about the separation its about the population
[...]
When all paths are intersections
It all depends on the persons perception
[...]
I believe you held something back for too long
It grew strong
And energy has its own will
And people think they make music still
But music is there with out you or me we just manipulate
For better or worse so let it situate
[...]
I'm glad I love music and life
cuz it's easy to see the pain and strife
and end it all tonight.

Exactly like an Aeolian Harp, which "is played not by human hands, but by the wind. Its melodies and harmonies are not those that we have chosen. They are the improvisation of nature itself."

(the remainder of this entry has been moved to immutablefruit.livejournal.com)