Christian Research Journal Reads Episode 130: Is The Black Man God? Challenging the Central Claim of the Nation of Islam

This is Episode 130 of Christian Research Journal Reads. This is an audio version of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL article, “Is The Black Man God? Challenging the Central Claim of the Nation of Islam” by Jimmy Butts. This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 40, number 3 (2017). https://www.equip.org/articles/is-the-black-man-god-challenging-the-central-claim-of-the-nation-of-islam/

 It was accompanied by Postmodern Realities Episode 040: Is the Black Man God? Challenging the Central Claim of the Nation of Islam. 


This podcast presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles. As the flagship publication of the Christian Research Institute, the Journal seeks to equip followers of Christ to think and to live Christianly—to exercise truth and experience life. Truth, especially essential Christian doctrine, forms the basis for how we live our lives in Christ. As the apostle Paul instructed Timothy in 1 Tim. 4:16, “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”The Christian Research Journal enjoyed a print incarnation of almost 45 years. Now exclusively an online publication, the Journal consists of thousands of free articles. We hope that through these audio articles you are not only equipped to proclaim and defend your faith but that as a disciple you also draw closer to Christ in your walk with Him.  You can find the written version of each article that is an episode of Christian Research Journal Reads at the website of the Christian Research Institute, equip.org. All Christian Research Journal articles at equip.org are completely free and do not require a subscription and are not under a paywall.All episodes will be available at the following podcast platforms with more being added daily! You can help spread the word about this new podcast by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on and telling others!You can view off our Website at the at this link and off our Journal main page. 



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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is episode one hundred and thirty of the Christian
Research Journal Reads Podcast. Is the Black Man God Challenging
the Central Claim of the Nation of Islam by Jimmy Butts.
This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal in
the print edition of volume forty, number three in twenty seventeen.

(00:31):
The Christian Research Journal Reads Podcast presents audio versions of
Christian Research Journal articles. To read the full text of
this article along with its documentation, go to equip dot org.
That's e qu ip dot org.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Is the Black Man God Challenging the Central Claim of
the Nation of Islam by Jimmy Butts. Read by Christine
Winterstellar Synopsis. During the nineteen fifties and sixties, Americans were
confronted with a unique time of racial conflict. African Americans
organized a movement to challenge the racial caste system in

(01:15):
the Nation. Amidst this largely Christian movement were African Americans
who were disillusioned by Christianity's complicity in their experience of
racial terror. Many of these people joined the movement known
as the Nation of Islam and o I. Those two
decades mark the zenith of the NOI's recruitment and activity.

(01:37):
Although presently the numbers have dwindled, there are signs of
continued influence in African American communities, such as the continued
ministry of Minister Lewis Ferrikhon and the twentieth anniversary of
the Million Man March held in October twenty fifteen. One
of the fruits of Farakhan's ministry is doctor Wesley Muhammad,

(01:59):
who has defended the doctrines of the Nooi using his
academic training in the area of religion. In the past,
the myths taught by this group were seen as fanciful
and easily rejected by the intellectually minded individual. However, Mohammed
seeks to legitimize the teaching that the Black Man is God.

(02:21):
This defense, however, although claiming to be founded on a
historic Afrocentric philosophy, departs from the majority of African thought
on the nature of God. Mohammed also bases his theory
of the development of anthropomorphic understandings among philosophers on his
presupposition about traditional Jewish hermeneutics rather than the history of

(02:43):
interpretation of the Bible. Finally, he seems to miss the
fact that his own explanation about an ontologically immaterial being
conflicts with ni orthodoxy. For African American religions, the quest
to reconcile the absurdity of living in a society that
cannot seem to reform completely from denying one's worth with

(03:06):
faith in an omnipotent creator seems to occupy a dominant
place in their formulation. This framework should help the observer
understand how the ideology of the Nation of Islam NOI
was able to develop in the context of African Americans
attempting to make sense of their reality. The need for

(03:27):
ethnic quote roots unquote is a concern that some leaders
have long ignored. According to doctor e U. S. E.
N Udom, whose field research on the NOI I am
indebted to, although the Black church has been the central
institution among African Americans, rather than addressing the psychological and

(03:47):
practical needs of the black community, it has accommodated the
broader culture by focusing more on the hereafter, he goes
further and argues that the lack of engagement among black
preachers and urban centers has made the messages of other
religious leaders more attractive. Whether one agrees with his assessment
or not, it should be apparent that a large number

(04:10):
of African Americans are looking for answers to life outside
the Christian tradition and are no longer attending the Black Church.
The Nation of Islam was able to capitalize on this
estrangement from the Black Church and suggests that Islam is
the religion for the Black Nation. The movement's effort to
give Black people a sense of identity, civilization, tradition, and

(04:33):
culture made it a logical alternative to those who felt
that the Church disregarded these needs. Doctor Mullana keourenga originator
of the holiday Kwanza, expresses this view quote Messenger Mohammad's
theology is, above all a liberation theology which seeks to
free Black people from mistaken conceptions about themselves and their oppressor.

(04:57):
Even with these cultural factors that may explain its allurement
to those dissatisfied with the Black Church, Historically, it has
been unable to attract a large number of formally educated
African Americans. In recent years, however, a young charismatic scholar
and member of the NI has arisen by the name
of doctor Wesley Mohammed. Having received his doctorate of philosophy

(05:21):
in Near Eastern studies from the University of Michigan. He
seems to give academic legitimacy to the NI. He explicitly
states that his mission is the academic vindication of Elijah Mohammed.
This makes an apologetic response to the claims of the
NI urgent for this generation of Christians. In the past,

(05:43):
some Christians assumed the teachings of the NI were intellectually
impotent and could draw adherents from only the uneducated. Wesley
Mohammad's career challenges that assumption. I will engage critically with
Mohammed's claims after providing a brief history of the nation
of Islam and a summary of Mohammed's defense of the

(06:03):
doctrine of God history. The first revival of an Islamic
movement among African Americans was the Moorish Science Temple during
the early twentieth century. The NOI owes its origin to
this group. Essian Udam explains quote. For some time, one W. D.

(06:24):
Fard assumed leadership of the Moorish movement. Fard claimed to
be the reincarnation of Noble dru Ali. By nineteen thirty,
a permanent split developed in the movement. One faction, the Moors,
remained faithful to Noble dru Ali, and the other, which
is now led by Elijah Mohammed, remains faithful to Prophet Fard.

(06:47):
Fard was a silk peddler in Paradise Valley in Detroit,
where there was a large African American population. He began
teaching the people and founded his first temple by nineteen
thirty scatimated to have recruited up to eight thousand followers.
By nineteen thirty four, he mysteriously disappeared from any authoritative record.

(07:08):
By nineteen thirty three, the NOI needed a leader who
would carry on the teachings Afard. A split arose between
those who accepted Fard's deification and those who rejected it.
Those who accepted it set up a temple in Chicago
under the leadership of Elijah Mohammed. Born in eighteen ninety

(07:29):
seven to a Baptist minister, Elijah Mohammed was then named
Elijah Pool. He also was a Baptist minister for a
time until he became a member of the NOI. Mohammed
was seen as someone who suffered for the cause of
Allah because he was convicted in nineteen forty two for
encouraging draft resistance He led the NOOI until his death

(07:51):
in nineteen seventy five. One of his most profitable recruits
was a man who eventually became known as Malcolm X.
Malcolm was a great orator who was very skilled in
street preaching. Through the help of his ministry, the NI
grew substantially over the next few years. After Elijah Mohammad's death,

(08:12):
his son, Imam Wallace Mohammed became the leader of the
NOI and began moving it toward Islamic Orthodoxy. He disavowed
his father's divine authority, disbanded the paramilitary Fruit of Islam group,
and changed the doctrine from religious Black Nationalism to Americanism
and Orthodox Islam. While many accepted these changes, in nineteen

(08:36):
seventy eight, Lewis Farakhan dissented and began to resurrect the
original form of the NI. Since there are many people
who continued to this present day to adhere to this
form of Islam, a brief description of doctor Wesley Mohammad's
defense of their doctrine of God is necessary. Wesley Mohammed's
defense of the doctrine of God, although in conflict with

(09:00):
Elijah Mohammed, Wesley Mohammed argues that Genesis IE records the
evolution of the body of God. He describes Day one
as the beginning of God's corporeal manifestation. Prior to this,
God was hidden in the darkness and eventually emerged out
of that darkness into a luminous anthropose. In essence, God

(09:22):
incarnated the black body of atom. Wesley Mohammed borrows from
physics to describe how Allah, existing as an electric force
and through his will for self manifestation in a material body,
caused an explosion that resulted in the first atom. He
argues that movement of energy causes it to gain mass.

(09:45):
When it reaches the light barrier, it has acquired so
much mass its acceleration appears to have stopped. The energy
now becomes frozen matter. He contends that quote this is
how matter is produced. All matter is fro energy, equating
energy with spirit. He suggests that this process demonstrates how God,

(10:08):
being spirit energy materialized into a man. Wesley Muhammad also
cites history to prove his thesis about God. The ancients,
he argues, believed that God and Man were of the
same nature, and that belief in God as a formless
spirit did not begin until the fifth century b c.

(10:28):
With the Greek philosophers. In fact, the Semitic revelatory tradition
had no such understanding of God as immaterial prior to
contact with Hellenistic culture. This interaction caused Jews and Muslims
to depart from their original understanding of God. In early
Islamic history, the Mutezila school of theology developed as a

(10:51):
minority group opposing popular Islamic belief in the human like
descriptions of Allah in their texts. They applied Hellenistic rationalism
to strip away the references to Allah that conflicted with
the God of Greek philosophy. From this, he concludes that quote,
the immaterial deity of the philosophers replaced the man god

(11:13):
of scripture and Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Honorable Elijah
Mohammad therefore represents a turning back to the God of
old unquote. Finally, Wesley Mohammed is convinced that the anthropomorphic
language in scripture justifies his claim. In Isaiah forty two thirteen,

(11:35):
there is an explicit reference to Yahweh as a man. Furthermore,
the language and context of Genesis one twenty six requires
the conclusion that Adam's physical and corporeal appearance was like God's.
He goes on to say that the quote Hebrew term
rua and Greek term numa used in these passages to

(11:56):
characterize God as spiritual both imply a luminous mans material substance. Quote.
In response to the quote God is not a man
unquote texts found in scripture, he argues that the Hebrew
actually says that God is not a man who lies
or repents, and not that He is categorically not a man.

(12:16):
On the surface. These arguments may seem convincing to some,
but one must subject them to critical evaluation critique of
Wesley Mohammed's view. Besides reaching questionable academic conclusions in order
to support his thesis, there are other weaknesses of Wesley
Mohammad's position. I contend that Mohammed's understanding of God departs

(12:40):
from the collective religious understanding of African people. He argues, quote,
to reject the basic contours of Elijah Mohammad's teaching on
God is to reject the collective testimony of the ancients
and their scripture, our ancestors and our scriptures unquote. However,
apart from a few examples. African peoples, in all of

(13:02):
their religious traditions, both biblical and non biblical, do not
attribute a body to God, nor suggests through their use
of anthropomorphic language that he is a human being. According
to a traditional pigmy him. Addressing the attributes of God,
they say, quote he has no body unquote. Another scholar

(13:25):
points out that African American theology shares the view that
there is a balance between God's transcendence and his imminence,
similar to that of continental African theology. In other words,
unlike Wesley Mohammad's doctrine, God is not identical with his creation.
Although the author can see the psychological function of the

(13:47):
deification of a people who have been degraded, James Baldwin
uncovers its greatest weakness quote, an invented past can never
be used. It cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life,
like clay in a season of drought unquote. Another weakness
of Wesley Mohammad's thesis is its failure to acknowledge the

(14:08):
usage and legitimacy of anthropomorphic language. The symbolism in this
type of language quote offers the greatest intellectual coherence possible
unquote when referring to the infinite God. As doctor Mark Smith,
professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary,

(14:29):
put it, quote, divinity can be grasped in association with
the human or in nature, not apart from the human
or the natural, nor can it be reduced to either unquote.
One must note that through the interaction with the Greco
Roman world, along with the translation of the Scriptures into
Greek by the third century before christ, Jews felt the

(14:52):
pressure to defend their scriptures to the philosophically oriented culture.
Doctor Hava Terroche Samuelson, who earned to PhD In Jewish
philosophy and Kabbalah from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, agrees
when she states, quote, in the new rationalist climate, which
sets up reason as a judge of religion, Judaism had

(15:14):
to be proven to be a rational religion unquote. Therefore,
while Wesley Muhammad argues that the non literal readings of
anthropomorphic statements in the Jewish Bible were a reaction to
encounters with Greek philosophers, contrarily, this more precise articulation of
God's nature may simply have been a response to some

(15:35):
misinterpretations of texts whose metaphoric meanings were assumed within the
Jewish context. In other words, the more detailed articulation of
divine incoporeality may be the response of Jews to the
development of false teachings from people unfamiliar with Jewish interpretive
assumptions during that time. It is ironic, however, that Mohammed

(15:58):
interprets the anthropomorphic lefe language from Isaiah forty two thirteen
as suggesting that God is a man, while on the
same page he quotes the anthropomorphic descriptions from Deuteronomy thirty
two forty two that state Yahweh will quote make his
arrows drunk unquote, but seems to accept a figurative interpretation

(16:20):
rather than insist that the arrows are human due to
the human quality attributed to them. Therefore, he is inconsistent
within his own methodology. Lastly, Wesley Mohammad's description of God's
temporal self manifestation in the original Black Man conflicts with
Elijah Mohammad's critique of Christianity's quote spook God unquote. When

(16:43):
Elijah Mohammed used the word spook, he was critiquing the
idea that God cannot be seen and does not have
a material body. Contrarily, Wesley Mohammad states that quote prior
to Adam, Allah existed as the divine form a man
of light with no material body. This means that Wesley

(17:05):
Mohammad's God is not a man onto logically, but an
immaterial divine spirit or, in the words of Elijah Mohammed,
a spook. Therefore, his whole thesis is self defeating. The
author has argued that Wesley Mohammad's doctrine of God is
deficient because it does not stand up to his own
standard of the testimony of African religious thought. It ignores

(17:29):
the biblical and theological usage of anthropomorphic language, and although
it affirms Noi orthodoxy, it is refuted by its chief authority,
Elijah Mohammed. For these reasons, African Americans should not be
beguiled by Wesley Mohammad's writings or the nation of Islam
as a whole.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
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Research Journal Reads podcast, which provides audio articles of Christian
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Speaker 2 (18:00):
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