New Visions & Political Theology: The Unnoticed Convergence of King “the apostle of nonviolence” & Fanon “the apostle of violence”

My presentation comparatively analyzes two contemporaneous freedom fighters: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. radical Civil Right’s activist—also known as, “the apostle of nonviolence” —and Frantz Fanon radical Algerian anti-colonial activist—also known as, “the apostle of violence”. In popular historical memory, the former is invoked as formally religious and the latter officially secular, but each are mislabeled as conventionally operative within the religion-secular binary that subtends the terms of order. Through an examination of their significance to the Black Freedom Struggle, their considerations of anti-Black racism and colonialism as a theological problem, and visions of the radical Black sacrality of their theorizing/praxis, this paper considers a surprising similarity they carry which pushes forward the discussion of religion and politics, and sheds light upon alternatives, at a common fundamental level they share, moving beyond impoverished binary views of alterity, of policing and governance: religion/politics, sacred/secular, violence/non-violence, and so on. In brief, it claims though there are vast ideological differences and divergences in tactics there is a deeper point of convergence in their struggle for humanity and freedom. Flowing amidst their differences is Manning Marable’s “Black Water” & beneath them “There is A River,” according to Vincent Harding, clarifying a critical confluence. There is one “river of struggle steadily developing its black power beneath the rough surfaces” of anti-blackness. This is, Lawrence H. Mamiya’s “Black sacred cosmos,” pointing to a sacred universe uniting them. Divergences are not as sharp as supposed by many, but each share a common ground. Oppositional mischaracterizations enervate political discourse and constrain how religion/politics is understood. Such a binary even veils a particular racial order, that is shot through with anti-blackness, and seeks to govern/manage/rule Black emancipatory politics. Without a critical stance to this racial order one unwittingly offers it endorsement. Consequently race is obscured, and also both organizing and broader coalitions for social justice are obscured as well. Thinking comparatively instead beckons the occasion to rethink rigid distinctions and oppressive pedagogical practices hidden beneath the surface of things.

Possibilites emerge in a deep connection between these so-called “religious” and “secular” thinkers, which is deeply political, humanist, and sacred/theological. For instance: What might happen if we think of King’s theological vision as politically revolutionary (or just as revolutionary as Fanon’s)? Or what might happen if we think of Fanon’s decolonial vision theologically/religiously (or just as much of a ‘type’ of theological work as King’s)? What might this entanglement create? And how might this comparison push us to see the radicality of each thinker? Might such a meeting challenge caricatures and create openings for insight? To probe such inquiries we must consider the glaring differences of their methods and appreciate those differences. This work identifies a split, in the way memories of King and Fanon, and their respective contributions are invoked, particularly with regard to nonviolent resistance or anticolonial-violence, and attempts to help others bridge the divide pointing to more complex crossings across the religious and the political, or the sacred and secular.  As a way forward, I am pressing into this critical conjuncture utilizing King and Fanon as interlocutors to complicate modern day dichotomous conceptions of violence/nonviolence, religion/politics, or the sacred/secular. I perceive that such an analysis helps us disrupt hegemonic binaries, in which a racialized imperialist pedagogy is operative to weaken Black emancipatory politics. Here there is rather a more creative interplay going on where the boundaries between violence/nonviolence, religion/politics, or sacred/secular are blurred/messy. We must wrestle with these complexities to discover deeper questions of the human impulse for social justice, which also suggests new possibilities for theological vision and alternative political and social imaginaries. 

Both King and Fanon are a part of the long Black Radical Tradition, which is evident in the similarity of their anti-racist and anti-colonial stances, and with regard to the socio-economic justice they both sought. This paper seeks particularly to participate in the widely circulating conversations of King, in light of his enduring radical legacy over 50 years after his assassination. Inasmuch as the paper diagnoses ways in which Fanon has been caricatured and mis-identified as a belligerent, if not savagely violent, other, it also discerns how King’s radical legacy is still caricatured to innocuous soundbites creating a sanitized and domesticated legacy. Instead this paper seeks to recover a radical and deliberate, and revolutionary and methodical King and Fanon. It sees that both were interested in the complexity of human beings, the human condition, and indeed human flourishing.