Calvinism, Coloniality, and the Politics of “Orthodoxy” Why Black Christianity Has Never Needed Reformed Determinism to Be Theologically

This essay is not written for everyone.

This is for theologians. For pastors. For seminarians. For scholars of history, philosophy, and religion. For those wrestling with the relationship between power, knowledge, doctrine, and the formation of Christian consciousness.

And perhaps more importantly, this is for those beginning to realize that theology is never merely theological.

It is also epistemological.

Theology Is Never Neutral

One of the greatest illusions modern Christianity inherited from Western modernity is the belief that theological systems emerge in a vacuum; untouched by empire, geography, race, power, economics, or cultural dominance.

But theology does not float above history.

Theology is produced somewhere.

By someone.

Inside particular ecosystems of power.

And one of the realities many Christians are still unwilling to confront is that what is often presented as “pure orthodoxy” in contemporary evangelical spaces is frequently Western theological certainty masquerading as universality.

This is where my own doctoral research has increasingly pushed my thinking.

In brief, my dissertation explores the ecosystem of coloniality and postmodernity as an epistemological shift, particularly how systems of power shape what communities come to recognize as legitimate knowledge, authoritative interpretation, and theological normativity.

In other words: Who gets to define orthodoxy? Whose categories become universal? Whose theological language becomes “serious theology”? And whose theological traditions are treated as emotional, reactionary, experiential, or insufficiently rigorous?

These are not secondary questions.

They are theological questions.

Calvinism and the Colonial Inheritance of Theological Authority

Let me be clear from the outset: this is not an anti-Calvinist manifesto.

There are brilliant Reformed scholars whose work I deeply respect.

But what concerns me is how Calvinism often functions socially within modern evangelicalism; particularly among young theologians online, not merely as a theological framework, but as a mechanism of intellectual legitimacy.

For many, Calvinism has become a kind of theological credentialing system.

A performative signal that one has moved beyond “surface Christianity” into the realm of serious doctrinal sophistication.

But historically, that assumption collapses under scrutiny.

Because one of the most inconvenient truths for modern theological gatekeeping is this:

Black Christianity has historically been deeply orthodox while largely existing outside strict Calvinistic paradigms.

And not because Black Christians were intellectually deficient.

Not because they lacked theological seriousness.

But because Black Christianity emerged from an entirely different historical and epistemological struggle.

The Black Church Did Theology Under Conditions of Survival

Theology in Black ecclesial traditions was forged under the violence of coloniality.

Not merely colonialism as a historical event, but coloniality as an enduring structure: the ongoing organization of power, knowledge, race, humanity, and legitimacy according to Western hierarchies.

Black Christians were asking theological questions while living inside systems explicitly designed to deny Black humanity itself.

That changes the nature of theological inquiry.

For enslaved Africans and their descendants, theology could not merely ask:“ How does divine sovereignty function metaphysically?”

Theology had to ask, “Can the image of God survive the plantation?”

That is not liberalism. That is theological anthropology under terror.

Theology had to ask: Does God hear the oppressed? Does salvation speak to social death? Can the Gospel confront dehumanization? Can the Spirit sustain dignity when the world insists you are property?

This is why Black Christianity often developed through:

• Wesleyan traditions,

• Holiness movements,

• Pentecostal spirituality,

• liberation-centered hermeneutics,

• embodied worship,

• testimonial epistemologies,

• and communal understandings of salvation.

These were not theological deficiencies.

They were theological responses to historical realities Western theology often had the privilege to abstract away from.

The Epistemological Violence of Theological Superiority

What fascinates me pastorally and academically is how certain theological traditions become coded as intellectually superior while others are treated as emotionally expressive but doctrinally immature.

That coding itself is not neutral.

It reflects an epistemological hierarchy.

Western systematic precision is often privileged over embodied theological experience.

Detachment is treated as more objective than testimony.

Abstraction is treated as more trustworthy than survival knowledge.

But whose standards are these?

Postmodernity disrupted many of modernity’s claims to neutrality, exposing how power shapes what societies call truth, reason, legitimacy, and universality.

And yet many theological communities still operate as though their frameworks descended untouched from heaven itself.

They did not.

Every theological tradition is historically situated.

Every tradition emerges from particular anxieties, conflicts, assumptions, and social worlds.

Including Calvinism.

Black Christianity and the Refusal of Deterministic Closure

Historically, Black Christians have often resisted rigid determinism not simply because of theological preference, but because of existential reality.

When you have lived under systems telling you your future is fixed…your humanity is fixed…your inferiority is fixed…your social position is fixed…

the language of freedom matters.

The language of possibility matters.

The language of deliverance matters.

This is why so much Black preaching is saturated with movement: God making a way. God bringing Israel out. God opening prison doors. God lifting the lowly. God pouring out His Spirit on all flesh.

This is not accidental.

It is theological resistance.

Even the worship traditions of the Black Church carried epistemological weight.

Testimony itself became a form of knowledge production.

The shout became theology.

The spiritual became hermeneutics.

The sermon became communal survival.

Orthodoxy Is Larger Than Reformed Internet Theology

One of the most historically uninformed realities of contemporary Christian discourse is the assumption that Calvinism represents the intellectual center of Christianity itself.

It does not.

The early Church was not uniformly Calvinistic. African Christianity was not uniformly Calvinistic. Eastern Orthodoxy is not Calvinistic. Large segments of global Pentecostalism are not Calvinistic. The historic Black Church has overwhelmingly not been Calvinistic.

Yet all have confessed Christ.

All have proclaimed the Gospel.

All have participated in the historic Christian tradition.

This is why I increasingly believe one of the great theological tasks of our time is recovering epistemological humility.

Because theology is not merely about arriving at conclusions.

It is also about interrogating the systems that taught us which conclusions were allowed to sound authoritative in the first place.

A Final Provocation

Perhaps the deeper issue is not whether Calvinism is true or false.

Perhaps the deeper issue is why certain theological systems become associated with intellectual legitimacy while others are dismissed as spiritually passionate but academically secondary.

That is not merely theology.

That is power.

And until the Church becomes honest about the relationship between theology and power, we will continue confusing cultural dominance for doctrinal supremacy.

The irony, of course, is that the global Church has always been far more diverse than the modern evangelical imagination allows.

The Kingdom of God has never spoken with only one accent.

And history itself bears witness to that.

-Rohan Samuels