{"id":3262,"date":"2017-08-29T21:26:42","date_gmt":"2017-08-29T21:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=3262"},"modified":"2017-08-29T21:30:38","modified_gmt":"2017-08-29T21:30:38","slug":"james-cone-a-black-theology-of-liberation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2017\/08\/29\/james-cone-a-black-theology-of-liberation\/","title":{"rendered":"James Cone: A Black Theology of Liberation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is a book review I wrote on James Cone’s A Black Theology of Liberation<\/a> for a class on modern theology. \u00a0I’m primarily posting it here because I need to reference my thoughts in another paper, but I hope readers might appreciate the review.<\/p>\n

James Cone\u2019s A Black Theology of Liberation<\/em> was first written, as Cone notes in the Postscript to the Fortieth Anniversary Edition, at the height of the civil rights and black power movements in 1969.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Cone says that \u201c[n]o one can understand this book apart from the social and political context in which it was written.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 In particular, at the time he wrote this book, Cone had become frustrated with theology written by \u201cwhite privileged intellectuals.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 He wanted to write a specifically black<\/em> theology within, to, and for the black experience.<\/p>\n

The book begins with a description of Cone\u2019s theological method.\u00a0 For Cone, \u201cChristian theology is a theology of liberation.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 In particular, Christian theology \u201cis a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 This definition of theology seems consistent with other kinds of liberation theologies, and indeed seems somewhat conventional.\u00a0 Cone draws his existentialist approach from noted white theologians such as Barth and Tillich.\u00a0 However, Cone not only argues for \u201cliberation\u201d as a central motif in an existentialist theology, but further states that \u201cblack theology affirms the black condition as the primary datum of reality . . . .\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

The centrality of blackness to existential reality and therefore to theology, for Cone, means that \u201cwhites are in no position whatever to question the legitimacy of black theology.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 White theology, Cone argues throughout the book, is a theology of oppression, beginning with the extermination of Amerindians and running through the enslavement of blacks.\u00a0 Indeed, for Cone, \u201cwhites have only one purpose: the destruction of everything which is not white.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 The rationality of black theology therefore need not, and should not, remain subject to the criterion for legitimacy drawn from white theology.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding this strong affirmation of the independence of Black theology, Cone proceeds to describe the sources and methods of Black theology in apparently conventional terms:\u00a0 they include scripture, experience, and above all Jesus Christ.[9]<\/a>\u00a0 The \u201cexperience\u201d Cone thinks is relevant, however, is the black experience of oppression.\u00a0 The black experience is in fact the lens Cone uses to interpret scripture and Christ:\u00a0 \u201c[t]he meaning of scripture is not found in the words of scripture as such but only in its power to point beyond itself to the reality of God\u2019s revelation \u2013 and in America, that means black liberation.\u201d[10]<\/a>\u00a0 The meaning of \u201cblack liberation\u201d is crucial to Cone\u2019s theology in this book.\u00a0 As noted above, Cone wrote the book in the midst of the black power movement.\u00a0 Cone\u2019s view of \u201cblack liberation,\u201d therefore, included potentially violent resistance to white America.\u00a0 For Cone, \u201c[t]he black experience is the feeling one has when attacking the enemy of black humanity by throwing a Molotov cocktail into a white-owned building and watching it go up in flames.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

Cone then proceeds to a discussion of what \u201cGod\u201d means in black theology.\u00a0 Consistent with his existentialist bent, he understands the term \u201cGod\u201d to point to a transcendental reality that interprets history.\u00a0 For Cone, this means in particular the history of God\u2019s liberation of Israel as narrated in scripture and the history of God\u2019s liberation of black people.[12]<\/a>\u00a0 At this point in the text, an apparent contradiction arises in Cone\u2019s argument.\u00a0 While \u201c[t]he black theology view of God must be sharply distinguished from white distortions,\u201d Cone suggests that \u201c[t]his does not mean that black theology rejects white theology entirely.\u201d[13]<\/a>\u00a0 Nevertheless, on the very next page after this statement, Cone says \u201c[t]he goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods.\u201d[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

This contrast should be read as intentionally dialectical, as begins to become clearer in the next two chapters on theological anthropology and Jesus Christ.[15]<\/a>\u00a0 While Cone does identify blackness with black bodies, he also notes that \u201c[i]n the literal sense a black person is anyone who has \u2018even one drop of black blood in his or her veins.\u2019\u201d[16]<\/a>\u00a0 In Cone\u2019s chapters on anthropology and Christology, blackness begins to seem more like an existential condition summed up in the black American experience rather than merely a skin color.<\/p>\n

The final chapter discusses ecclesiology, culture, and eschatology.\u00a0 Cone\u2019s eschatology is strongly immanent.\u00a0 He criticizes futurist eschatologies as means by which whites have encouraged blacks to remain docile in their servitude in hope of a future reward.[17]<\/a>\u00a0 His view of culture is similarly immediate to the lived experience of oppressed black people:\u00a0 \u201c[t]he world is not a metaphysical entity or an ontological problem. . . . It is very concrete.\u00a0 It is punching clocks, taking orders, fighting rats, and being kicked around by police officers.\u201d[18]<\/a>\u00a0 Similarly, eschatology, for Cone, must be realized in the present struggle for black liberation.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he also recognizes the importance of \u201cthe future reality of life after death\u201d as \u201cgrounded in Christ\u2019s resurrection\u201d because this hope supplies the courage to face death in the struggle for liberation.[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

It is somewhat jarring for me \u2013 a white middle-aged lawyer, studying theology in a historically mostly white evangelical context \u2013 to read this text.\u00a0 Cone\u2019s frequent use of terms like \u201cwhitey,\u201d his apparent calls to violence by blacks against whites, and his insistence that whites cannot critique black theology, initially seem to suggest that this text bears little value for a broader theological conversation, if it is not in fact completely unhinged.\u00a0 But a more careful reading of the text within its own historical context argues for a subtler interpretation.\u00a0 Cone brilliantly deploys modern white existentialist theology to challenge the very notion of \u201cwhiteness.\u201d\u00a0 He shows that what American culture has assumed as \u201cnormal\u201d \u2013 the white middle class \u2013 is in fact not consistent with the fundamental norms of scripture and Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Cone challenges us to see that what white American culture has despised \u2013 blackness \u2013 is, in fact, the true Christian norm precisely because<\/em> it has been despised.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it is difficult to know how to interpret some of the passages in this text that seem to call for black violence against whites.\u00a0 At times Cone seems seriously to endorse immediate violence, and at other time he seems to suggest that violence is more of a possibility than a necessity.\u00a0 In his chapter on eschatology, for example, Cone concludes that \u201c[l]ooting, burning, or the destruction of white property are not primary concerns.\u00a0 Such matters can only be decided by the oppressed themselves who are seeking to develop their images of the black Christ.\u201d[20]<\/a>\u00a0 Although even the suggestion that violence might<\/em> be appropriate seems shocking, Cone repeatedly invokes Nat Turner, the heroic leader of a slave rebellion prior to the Civil War, in a way that brilliantly disarms modern white liberals who eschew violence.[21]<\/a><\/p>\n

Ultimately, I suppose I must accept Cone\u2019s judgment that, as a white man, I cannot judge black theology.\u00a0 As a white man, I learn from Cone what the experience of \u201cblackness\u201d in America can mean in relation to the existential core of the Gospel.\u00a0 I cannot endorse the calls to violence in this text, but I can at least recognize how my requirement of nonviolent social change implicates a long history of racism that is anything but peaceful.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation<\/em> (Maryknoll:\u00a0 Orbis Books 40th Anniv. Ed. 2010), 152.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, Preface to the 1986 Edition.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 1.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 5.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid<\/em>., 8.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 12.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, Ch. 2.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid., 34.<\/em><\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 25.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, Chapter 4.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 64.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Ibid., 65.<\/em><\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, Chapters 5 and 6.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 69.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 145.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 140.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Ibid<\/em>., 150.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em>, 130.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> See, e.g., ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a book review I wrote on James Cone’s A Black Theology of Liberation for a class on modern theology. \u00a0I’m primarily posting it here because I need to reference my thoughts in another paper, but I hope readers might appreciate the review. James Cone\u2019s A Black Theology of Liberation was first written, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,21,75,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblical-studies","category-justice","category-political-theology","category-public-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-QC","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3264,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions\/3264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}