Performing Redemption: Metzian Theology in the Art of Kendrick Lamar

Abstract

The German Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz makes a convincing case that in the face of the catastrophes of the 20th century, Christian theology can no longer isolate itself from its role as a perpetrator of injustice. To that end, he seeks to challenge abstract answers to theological questions with a renewed sensitivity to past transgressions. For Metz, Christian faith cannot simply be a matter of assent to theoretical propositions, but rather a practical engagement with "dangerous memories" of systematic injustice. In this paper, the author takes up Metz's conceptual framework for political theology and uses it to examine Kendrick Lamar's "Sing about Me, I'm Dying of Thirst" as a theological, and specifically soteriological, performance. By re-telling in his own voice the stories of friends who have died, Kendrick both documents the struggle they lived and reveals his own vulnerability to the same conditions (of sin). But in addressing this vulnerability, he transcends it, protecting himself from sin precisely by telling the story. The paper closes with some reflections on how Kendrick's track might gesture towards a mode of doing theology that subverts the abstract tendencies of the hegemonic Western tradition.