Steve Biko. Traci Wyatt

that included Coloreds and Indians. Thus Biko and his colleagues reframed both European and African Christianity into something more inclusive and relevant to the struggle… Through this reframing of Christianity, Steve and his colleagues had put Christianity at the forefront of the struggle, and in the process gave the movement an entry point into the heartbeat of the community. (pp. 173–175)

      The University Christian Movement (UCM) was very influential in introducing James Cone’s concept of black theology to university students. Black theology was really important to Biko as he shared that his own Anglican Church structure was foreign to him and without substance but that he found the other to be relatable and this was why black theology “seem to be so attractive” to him (Biko 1978, p. 212). This concept caught fire and helped expose many black students to an existential Christianity that related to their current situation in an oppressed South Africa. Even though this was another multiracial organization, the leaders were not afraid to address and protest injustices against black South Africans as was the case with NUSAS.

      Basil Moore, one of the founding Methodist clergy of the University Christian Movement (UCM), helped uplift the truth and power behind black theology. Moore believed this theological viewpoint was relevant to the racial dynamics between black and whites in an apartheid South Africa. Additionally, Magaziner (2010) stated, “Moore set the context for black theology’s emergence in South Africa” (p. 99). However, the government became aware of the radical movement of UCM and began to harass NUSAS too, introducing a law that prohibited blacks and whites from gathering more than seventy-two hours at a time. Moore believed that Christ had a more powerful message that had been overlooked by conservative orthodox Christians and, like Cone, believed that Christ’s message was political and instrumental in helping the oppressed to see themselves as human beings who were free.

      Magaziner states:

      Rather, Christ was appealing to believers to look inside themselves, to affirm themselves in recognition that every person “has value simply by being loved by God.” Although such therapeutic language might appear benign, Moore argued that it was politically potent, for with it, Christ had lit “the dangerous fire of [the people’s] sense of dignity and worth as human beings.” Such an awakening made oppression intolerable. Moore’s Christ thus spoke in language similar to that of Black Consciousness… Moore made the allusion explicit: “Jesus fits the situation of South African blacks…[and] the Roman rulers fit the situation of South African whites.” (p. 99)

      Biko’s rearing, institutionalized education, organizational involvement, engagement with his scholarly colleagues, and reading of the literary works of theologians on distant shores helped shape his Christian mind-set. He delved deeply into what he thought it meant to be a Christian, which was not to focus on individualized petty sins. Rather, Biko believed that Christians have a greater responsibility and should focus on sins that harmed the greater good of humanity; it was not possible to operate in ubuntu principles founded in community, love, and respect for others with a Europeanized Christian paradigm that focused on the self.

      Black consciousness was about uplifting, embracing, and unifying the black community, and when it came to adhering and walking in what had become “the gospel of black consciousness,” Woods stated that Biko better exemplified this message than any one of their contemporaries.

      Biko, for this reason, criticized the missionary hermeneutics and ethical application of Christianity that he believed was whitewashed and used as a tool to subjugate blacks and strip them of their culture and traditions during colonization and apartheid. Even though he believed that European-taught Christianity was skewed, he did not abandon Christianity and its tenets but applied it to his new sociopolitical and utilitarian hermeneutical expression. In so doing, Biko appeared to be truthful to his calling as a revolutionary destined to fulfill both the call of his God and of his people. Like Jesus, he became an enemy of the state for speaking truth to power in the form of a liberating message as he paved and illuminated the way to a true humanity.

      Indeed, Biko embodied the message of black consciousness and sought to create, like Jesus, “disciples” among the “conscientized” youth on college and, later, high school campuses across the South African landscape. There is no doubt that black consciousness influenced the thinking of youth during the Soweto uprising in 1976, according to Tinyiko Maluleke, which came a few weeks after Biko’s trial in Pretoria (du Toit and Maluleke 2008, p. 58). In sharing the message of his belief from a black South African Christian perspective, he expressed what he understood as sin and obedience to God and his revolutionary calling as follows:

      Black theology, therefore is a situational interpretation of Christianity. It seeks to relate the present-day black man to God within the given context of the black man’s suffering and his attempts to get out of it. It shifts the emphasis of man’s moral obligations from avoiding wronging false authorities by not losing his Reference Book, not stealing food when hungry and not cheating police when he is caught, to being committed to eradicating all cause for suffering as represented in the death of children from starvation, outbreaks of epidemics in poor areas, or the existence of thuggery and vandalism in townships. In other words it shifts the emphasis from petty sins to major sins in a society, thereby ceasing to teach the people to “suffer peacefully.” (Biko 1978, p. 59)