Bonhoeffer and Battle Rap

I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t call it a niche.

But out of all the cultural worlds I’ve perused and toured, the ones I enjoy writing about the most are expressive and theological.

If my interests were a retail store, the point-of-purchase products (the strategic display at the front of the store with all the distracting and tempting items) you would see would be battle rap DVDs and tomes of theological content.

Both items not only rank at the peak of my interests, but they now feel like an inseparable part of me. You ever been so engrained in an environment that you took on its fashion trends or picked up its regional accent without noticing? That’s kinda how rap and theology entered my life. My small encounters with them over time snuck up on me and morphed into the most enjoyable and time-consuming parts of my days.

Bars. Words. Performance. Pettiness. Comedy.

Theology. Books. Homilies. Metaphysical reflection and speculation.

These distinct art forms are no longer the separate entities I used to make them.

Surely, the battle rapper’s audience differs from a theologian’s. Battle rap audiences are very niche, albeit becoming more eclectic as the scene evolves and piques the interests of those outside its original context of innovation (this is an important discussion for another time). A theologian’s audience can be equally niche, but theology as a discipline invites everyone to participate in it as an exercise. A theologian’s audience is not innately estranged from a performer’s.

The invitation to relate one’s own experience (about anything) in a theological fashion is more acceptable than it would be to complain about how your insurance premium skyrocketed in a rap battle. That’ll get you murked.

Anyway, this post is an embracing of how my sis

Sharifa

once classified my writing style as a mixture of “Bonhoeffer and Battle Rap”. Yes, I have blog posts that talk about both, but even when I don’t explicitly mention them, they shape and inform my ruminations.

Theology and battle rap intersect for me at the site of concern over horrendous lived realities. Theology contemplates the human condition without God, while battle rap (not exclusively) mourns the once evitable conditions placed onto a people whose histories and opportunities are marred by racism and white supremacy. Then I realized, “wait, theology actually does the same.” The study of God doesn’t halt at pondering human beliefs about God’s interaction with the world, but it explores (breaks down) God’s very involvement in how humans interact with each other.

This is why I’m “almost” using Bonhoeffer interchangeably with theological enterprise. First of all, it works for the alliteration in the title. Second of all, Bonhoeffer’s lofty thoughts about God were never bifurcated from the experiences he endured and observed, especially those of his oppressed Jewish neighbors in Nazi Germany and beyond. His theological reflection reinforced his neighborly commitment, and vice-versa.

The confluence of well-crafted words and expressing them on a stage or behind a lectern and a pulpit is a merging that I want to commit myself to for a minute. Words and deeds. I want to hear bars in homilies. I call these Baromilies. The performance of theologically motivated and rap-battle-inspired words (cuz somtimes you need someone to talk to you greasy) to inspire action within a community is an exciting thing to imagine for me.

One day, over text, I was breaking down one of

Trey Ferguson

’s sermons and sharing with him how I thought he was “scheming” (a hidden plotting device to set up a fire punchline in battle rap) and got the idea to connect these two worlds I love: rap and theology; bars and homilies. Here was my attempt:

I think a Bonhoeffer and Battle Rap world could unite a rapper’s contentions with a theologian’s confessions, and we could all be better for it.

Luh y’all big time,

Ru :)