ABSTRACT
The emerging post-Cold War and post-apartheid paradigm of black theology performs a unique role in reaffirming the human dignity of Africans and their black identity. Black theology in South Africa is a contextual theology that engages current political powers and structures from an African context and is in this sense distinct from American black theology and liberation theology, which has its roots in Latin America. The central biblical narrative in American black theology and liberation theology is the Exodus. In these theologies, the Exodus is a definitive narrative that serves as a source for overcoming oppression, which is understood as political victimization. Liberation theology which performs a Marxist analysis deals only with an analysis of class; black theology has been expanded to include culture and race. While liberation theology struggles for class and economic freedom, black theology is a theology of black emancipation, culturally, socially, politically, and economically.
