(RNS) — In late February, Vincent Lloyd, director of Africana studies at Villanova University, interviewed Dwight N. Hopkins, an influential scholar of Black liberation theology who teaches at the University of Chicago. When the interview was published on the Political Theology Network website, as “From James Cone to Donald Trump,” many in the world of Black church theology were taken aback, as Lloyd questioned whether Hopkins had become a supporter of President Trump and the MAGA movement. This would be a sharp departure from Hopkins’ mentor, James H. Cone, the father of Black liberation theology, who died in 2018.

But Lloyd didn’t stop there. He speculated whether Hopkins had followed the supposed trajectory of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “a strand of conservative Black nationalism that responds to the existential insecurity of Black men thrust into elite white spaces.”

Within minutes of its publication, Lloyd’s interview circulated via social media around the world, sending shock waves through the academy. Scholars of religion, theology, biblical studies and related fields registered their confusion, frustration and, in many cases, outright dismay. That a second-generation Black liberation theologian might abandon his commitment to liberation theology, only to find a home in a right-wing political movement that many interpret as hostile to the aims of liberationist thought, was difficult to reconcile.

If true, the claims presented in the interview felt less like a provocative intellectual shift and more like a profound betrayal.

None of it matched what we know about Hopkins. It left many important questions unanswered, primarily: What happened? How are we to account for such a shift? On social media, this became the central refrain: What happened? How could someone who had devoted his scholarly vocation to advocating for the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed embrace a far-right theo-political movement at this stage of his career?

To answer these questions for myself, I reached out to Hopkins about the Political Theology column. In my own interview, which is excerpted below, I explored Hopkins’ inquiry into the Black MAGA movement. We talked about his methodology of going deep into the world of groups he studies, including those with whom he disagrees.

What I came away with is that Hopkins’ turn to research on Black MAGA does not reflect his support of the movement, but rather his curiosity about what attracts other Black people to a political sphere increasingly entangled with white Christian nationalism, colonial attitudes and racial domination.

What he claims to have uncovered is a segment of Black people, particularly in underserved communities, who have leaned into a conservative politic out of discontent with decades of liberal allegiance. His findings provide Hopkins with a theoretical frame for writing about Black Trump supporters but also inform his effort to teach his students how to think and not what to think.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Are you a Black MAGA supporter or leader of the black MAGA movement?

No, I’m not Black MAGA and I’m not a leader in the Black MAGA movement. I am a Black liberation theologian. 

What is Black liberation theology?

Black liberation theology is about poor and working-class families who follow the Jesus stories so that they can have spiritual and material resources to build a life that is freedom. The key term is liberation. It signifies Jesus’ stories about why he came. His incarnation and self-revelation have one primary purpose – to help poor and working people have an abundant life and resources for their families and all communities by liberating them from anything that will block this purpose so that they can practice freedom.

The theology shows how, after his death, his liberation-freedom obligation was passed down through generations. And “Black” answers this question: How has the liberation and theology manifest in Black American culture? There are different institutions that practice BLT, but the Black church plays a huge role in this process.

BLT is a constructive project, not a deconstructive one. One form of BLT starts with what has white supremacy done to Black people, but a second way starts with affirmation and joy for what Jesus has done for poor and working-class Black people. This latter approach gets families up every morning and gets children or the family ready for a new day — a day that was not promised to us. But in the process of joy and building a new day, evil happens. And then one has to deal with evil.

What can you tell us about the theological themes?

The very first article I ever published was “Poor Brother, Rich Brother: Faith, Family, and Education,” in 1991, three years after my first Ph.D. The purpose of the article is to speak about Black American men in the Black church and the larger society, and points to one set of themes underlying my entire near 40 years of teaching. I’m concerned with faith in the Jesus stories in the Bible, the thriving of the family, and education of young generations. What holds these themes together in the article was my describing the economic and material differences within the Black community, especially between poor Black American men and rich ones. “Ultimately,” it concluded, “the plight of the poor brother depends partly on the democratization of the major economic resources in North America.”

That included opening up venture capital so more poor and working people can own wealth for their families. I’ve been on the path of these themes for some time for nearly four decades.

What can you say about your research methods?

I’ve always linked some form of field work and primary sources in my publications. In the case of that first article, I had been working with Black men while doing pulpit duties in a Black church in New York while I was completing my M.Div., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees. That article includes secondary literature and social science data, but it is also based on my work out in the field among rich and poor Black Christian men.

Throughout my academic career, I’ve pursued the archival work and field investigation like a theological anthropologist. I get involved in the subject matter as an academic researcher. In the field, I do interviews, go to different meetings and purchase pamphlets, flyers, paraphernalia, unpublished manuscripts, photographs, minutes from meetings, notes taken, newspapers, journals, transcripts and so on. 

Sometimes it leads to some strange places. For my dissertation, which became my first book, “Black Theology USA and South Africa: Politics, Culture, and Liberation,” I visited the homes of 15 of the founders of USA Black liberation theology and flew to South Africa, which was under a state of emergency, to interview 15 of the founders of South African Black theology.

I also talked to an Afrikaaner theologian, one of the architects of apartheid. My purpose was not to argue with him or try to convince him about the evils of apartheid. My academic purpose was to get as much information to inform my writing project.

Even when I am only editing a book, I follow the same method. I spend time with each of the contributors to learn about his or her theology, method and who they were as people. In 2009, as lead editor of “Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples,” I initiated a 14-country network to think about the practices of building healthy communities and healthy individuals in communities. I traveled around the world, gathering archival, primary and secondary literature from each country. I also got to know each person one-to-one.

How did the Lloyd interview come about, and what was the process?

I was told that the purpose of the interview would be to understand my academic work, its scholarly development over the years and how my academic projects relate to politics. The request appeared to come out of interest in my academic research, and that is why I agreed to the interview. I was quite surprised with the final product, especially the preface, before my actual interview.

The author never mentioned to me any of the claims he makes in the preface, nor had I seen the title of the column. If he had told me what the interview was really about and what he actually thought about my work, I could have easily explained each point, by unpacking my work and my academic method. The preface to the interview engages neither.

Also, the published interview looks rather disjointed and raw, as if disparate points were thrown against the wall, so to speak, to see what might stick, and it ends in a flat way, about a bassoon. It appeared just over 24 hours after the interview was conducted. It seemed like its conclusions were ready beforehand and disjointedly placed in front of a rapid and raw printout of the interview.

(Leonard C. McKinnis II is an associate professor of African American studies and religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)