Medium Post #relg102

While I had no prior engagement with Lloyd or the authors in Black Art Matters, the ideas expressed by Lloyd and Autumn Brown were not unfamiliar or surprising. We have already read works like those of Christina Sharpe and Dr. James Cone that suggest a more “radical” approach to tearing down the oppressive structures in place. In fact, Dr. Cone’s approach is similar to the “end of the world as we know it” idea that Lloyd describes. Both authors present their ideas for revolution and tearing down the established order of capitalism through a religious lens. Cone envisioned a new world created the way God intended it: with equality for black people and the destruction of oppressive systems. Autumn Brown’s call for an “end of the world” scenario, too, is inherently religious. She sees the systems and inequality in place as too pervasive and insidious to reform. While Brown’s podcast does not explicitly link her “end of the world” ideas to religion, I was immediately reminded of biblical and other religious examples. A particularly famous example is the story of Noah’s Ark, in which God flooded the world and allowed it to be born anew without sin or crime. Another is the “second coming” of Christ. As described in William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming,” the world will be destroyed and purged of sin for a second time before its ultimate recreation. Thus, the black struggle to tear down the systems that oppose them in this purge can always be placed in a religious context.