01/02/2026
To the preachers attacking social justice and liberation theology in COGIC:
Before you open your mouths to castigate liberation theology, you might want to actually study the man whose shoulders we’re standing on.
Bishop Charles H. Mason was preaching and practicing liberation theology long before it was labeled as such.
Mason was the son of formerly enslaved people. His theology wasn’t abstract, sanitized, or detached from Black suffering. It was forged in the fire of Jim Crow terror, racial apartheid, and economic exclusion. He understood—intuitively and prophetically—that salvation divorced from freedom is a lie.
Holiness, sanctification, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost were never meant to make Black people passive, silent, or compliant. They were instruments of dignity, power, self-determination, and resistance.
Bishop Mason:
Built independent Black institutions to free us from white religious control
Promoted education, cooperative economics, and communal uplift
Challenged the hypocrisy of America demanding Black blood for democracy abroad while denying Black humanity at home
Created a “holy space” where despised Black people could understand themselves as God’s chosen generation
That is liberation theology — whether you like the term or not.
What you’re actually defending isn’t “the old paths.” You’re defending a whitenized evangelical framework that Mason rejected by his very existence. You rage against liberation theology while saying absolutely nothing about white Christian nationalism. You foam at the mouth when Black theologians name oppression, yet you go mute while a racist, authoritarian movement wraps white supremacy in a cross and calls it Christianity. You call liberation theology “political,” but you don’t blink when Jesus is conscripted to defend voter suppression, mass incarceration, book bans, the erasure of Black history, and the worship of power.
That silence isn’t holiness—it’s submission. If your theology only has smoke for Black people speaking truth and none for white power abusing the gospel, then you’re not guarding the faith. You’re protecting whiteness. Your theology sounds less like Mason and more like MAGA pulpits, Christian nationalism, and white evangelical grievance politics. You’ve traded Pentecostal fire for Fox News talking points. You shout “holiness” while aligning with movements that mock the poor, criminalize Blackness, erase Black history, and baptize white supremacy in Jesus’ name.
And the irony is rich. You condemn liberation theology while enjoying the fruits of Mason’s liberation work. You preach from pulpits he built while attacking the very theology that made COGIC possible.
COGIC was never neutral.
COGIC was never silent.
COGIC was never aligned with empire.
If your gospel requires Black people to accept oppression quietly, avoid naming injustice, and cozy up to racist power structures — that gospel did not come from Bishop Mason.
It came from whitened Christianity, dressed up in Pentecostal language and sold to the highest political bidder.
So miss me with the ahistorical nonsense. Miss me with the attacks. Miss me with the cowardly shots that won’t say my name.
I will stand 10 toes down preaching the gospel according to Jesus’ liberation mandate and the legacy of Bishop Mason — whether the c**n pulpit likes it or not.
So instead of tap dancing to the offbeat rhythm of colonized Christianity and condemning liberation theology, do your homework. Learn COGIC history. Study the life, ministry, and convictions of Bishop Charles H. Mason. Sit with the reality that our church was born in resistance, not respectability. Read, listen, and unlearn the whitenized evangelical talking points you’ve borrowed and baptized. Until you understand where we came from—and why—we don’t need your condemnation. We need you to catch up.
Because COGIC’s roots are Black. Its theology was born in struggle. And its future will not be dictated by MAGA-aligned impostors who forgot where they came from.
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Talbert Swan
