"How many of Cone's books have you read?"
Ever since Jeremiah Wright posed that question to Sean Hannity eight years ago, I've been meaning to write a diary on James Cone, the premier figure of Black Liberation Theology. I've promised many times to do it, but have been held back by a sense that I had to do it perfectly. I've started to revisit Cone in light of #BlackLivesMatter - his writings are so pertinent to the conversation about racist police brutality that has been going on for decades but is just beginning to gain traction beyond the spaces one could always expect it. Instead of providing an overview and summary of all of Cone's ideas, I'm just going to reflect a little on re-reading his first major book, Black Theology and Black Power.
Cone published Black Theology and Black Power in 1969, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Malcolm X had already been killed in 1965, and the Black Panther Party had been formed in Oakland in 1966. A shift in mood and tactics in African-American activism was underway. Cone's book captures the anger and moral imperatives of this historical moment.
Cone's book proceeds through six chapters. The first defines the meaning of Black Power. The second chapter gives a theological rationale for equating the Black Power movement with God's self-revelation in this historical moment. He then indicts first the white churches and then the black churches for their failure to meet the revolutionary demands of the Gospel. He then discusses some basic perspectives of Black Theology and closes with a meditation on violence and reconciliation.
Some quotes to give you a flavor of his ideas:
There are no degrees of human freedom or human dignity. Either a man respects another as a person or he does not... Racism, then, biologically is analogous to pregnancy, either she is or she is not, or like the Christian doctrine of sin, one is or one is not in sin. There are no meaningful "in betweens" relevant to the fact itself. And it should be said that racism is so embedded in the heart of American society that few, if any, whites can free themselves from it.
To suggest that Christ has taken on a black skin is not theological emotionalism.... Thinking of Christ as nonblack in the twentieth century is as theologically impossible as thinking of him as non-Jewish in the first century. God's Word in Christ not only fulfills his purposes for man through his elected people, but also inaugurates a new age in which all oppressed people become his people. In America, that people is a black people. In order to remain faithful to his Word in Christ, his present manifestation must be the very essence of blackness.
Black Theology is an earthly theology! It is not concerned with "last things" but with the "white thing." Black Theology like Black Power believes that self-determination of black people must be emphasized at all costs, recognizing that there is only one question about reality for blacks: What must we do about white racism? [...]
The idea of heaven is irrelevant for Black Theology. The Christian cannot waste time contemplating the next world (if there is a next). Radial obedience to Christ means that reward cannot be the motive for action. It is a denial of faith to insist on the relevance of reward. [...] The free Christian man cannot be concerned about a reward in heaven. Rather, he is a man who, through the freedom granted in Christ, is ready to plunge himself into the evils of the world, revolting against all inhuman powers which enslave men.
I first read
Black Theology and Black Power in college, when I had already gone through a bit of a theological earthquake after reading the radical feminist philosophy of Mary Daly, coming out as a gay man, and getting involved in solidarity work with Latin American revolutionary movements. While I'd already encountered much radical theology in this process,
Black Theology and Black Power had a force and clarity that brought my thinking to a whole new level. Not only did it make clearer what the connection between what I was doing at demonstrations during the week and what I was doing on Sunday in church was, it gave me a model for thinking about my own life as a gay man in unapologetic and uncompromising terms.
One thing I didn't catch twenty years ago is how strong the continuity between Cone's early work and the established Protestant theology of his time was. Black Theology and Black Power is the result of Cone's immersion in the theological giants of his day - Niebuhr, Bultmann, Tillich, and Barth - as well as significant existentialist critics of religion - Camus and Sartre. Cone would later see this overdependence on white theology as a weakness - but his mastery of the most sophisticated theology of his day meant that white theologians could not ignore him. He was speaking their language and turning it on them, full force.
Another difference between reading Cone twenty years ago and reading Cone now is that with the lessening of energy that comes with aging and the disappointments that come with experience, I've moved from my basic response being "FIGHT THE POWER!" to "this is all true." My sense of hope has narrowed considerably. Twenty years ago, I read Cone with the energy of a young person, who naively believed in the possibility of creating a utopian future. Cone's "NO!" came with an implicit "YES!" to throwing oneself into the energy of The Revolution. My horizon of hope is much narrower, I absorb the pain and anger Cone describes in relation to more of a sense of duty to do the right thing than out of a sense of hope for the end of oppression.
And finally, it is depressing to see how current Cone's theology remains. When we witness the steady destruction of black lives by law enforcement - either by outright killing or mass incarceration - today, we're reminded that everything Cone said about white supremacy and white liberal guilt in 1969 is just as valid today.