LAUSR

ABSTRACT Jonathan Walton recommends that Black theology appropriate the theoretical legacy of Birmingham University’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to improve on Dwight Hopkins’s contrasting account of “conservative” and “prophetic” religious practices. However, Hopkins does affirm the theoretical value of the CCCS. Hopkins’s criticism of Black televisual popular culture follows from his account of how the divine has worked in history for the sake of poor and oppressed agents to combat the monopolization of power. Hopkins’s perspective can be construed, theoretically, to identify, analogously, with Stuart Hall’s account of cultural studies, particularly if Hall’s anti-theory supplements rather than replaces Black theology’s identification with the Black freedom struggle. By showing (1) how Hopkins can be understood to identify with the CCCS and (2) that he presupposes the agency of otherwise socially conservative Black religious practitioners, I offer three conditions for the re-visitation of Black theology with and to the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.