Walker, Theodore, Jr. Empower the People: Social Ethics for the African-American Church. Mary Knoll: Orbis, 1991.

Abstract

Empower the People is a penetrating ethico-theological analysis of questions facing black america and a call for the appropriation of the philosophy of black power in addressing them. Walker explores the present and future circumstance of African-Americans and prescribes a new and liberating social action agenda for the 1990s and beyond. He offers compelling critiques of and alternatives to liberal political philosophy and public policy practice. Examining the multiple problems that face the African-American community, Walker challenges the black church to build on its strengths and fashion a social ethics of both survival resistance. Walker believes that the social issues of the day are so critical that the squeamish need not apply for work in facing them. On "illegimate births" in the AfricaAmerican community: "We need policies of opportunity and empowerment so that we may fruitfully multiply rather than simply multiply...." On the gap between the ideals of the churches and those of a nation in which sexual messages are intolerably garbled: "If sex can't wait until age 30... lubricated latex, pills, implants, and sexual technique cannot adequately bridge the growing gap between biological readiness...the traditional African and Christian linkage between sexuality, procreativity, marriage, and family must be mended." Empower the People includes careful and serious attention to scholarly literature without neglecting the home-grown wisdom and common sense of the black church. Its message is this: the hope of finding an alternative to social catastrophe is not in liberal government policies or philanthropy but in a discerning, righteous exercise of black power - especially black church power.