A Black Theology of Liberation

Reading Assignment:

A Black Theology of Liberation

Ryan J. McGinnis

Dr. Todd Mangum

7/1/11

Part 1

The interpretive key in understanding James H. Cone is found right in the opening pages, first in the preface to the 1970 edition, the foreword to the 1986 edition, and the preface to the 1986 edition. It is here that we discover that Cone is keenly aware of the fact that his composition is contextual and written with a great deal of urgency. 

It is first contextual because of the nature of the Black experience in the 1960’s, as well as the audience to which Cone is writing. Cone would be the first to admit that his work was not written for whites (although he did think that some brave whites would read it). Second, it is urgent, palpable, and practical (as all theology should be done – i.e. not in abstraction) because:

“I did not have time to do the theological and historical research needed to present a ‘balanced’ perspective on the problem of racism in America. Black men, women, and children were being shot and imprisoned for asserting their right to a dignified existence. Others were wasting away in ghettoes, dying from filth, rats, and dope, as white and black ministers preached about a blond, blue-eyed Jesus who came to make us all just like him. I had to speak a different word, not just as a black person but primarily as a theologian (xvi).” 

Cone is honest and upfront concerning his purposes as well as his sources, a practice of humility that is none to often found in other theologians. 

“A Black Theology of Liberation represents my initial attempt to construct a new perspective for the discipline of theology, using the Bible and the black struggle for freedom as its chief source… Theology is always done for particular times and places and addressed to a specific audience… The importance of this point cannot be emphasized too strongly, because there are white theologians (as well as others greatly influenced by their definitions of theology) who still claim an objectivity regarding their theological discourse, which they consider vastly superior to the subjective, interest-laden procedures of black and other liberation theologians. (xxiv).”

With this, Cone traces his sources and purposes in a self-admittedly “inordinate methodological dependence upon the neo-orthodox theology of Karl Barth (xxiii).” Cones sources for doing theology are first: The Black Experience, Second: Black History, Third: Black Culture, Fourth: Revelation, Fifth: Scripture, and Sixth: Tradition. Within the compilation of these six sources (and as demonstrated throughout the rest of the book), Cone is not taking the historical Jesus of Nazareth out of the biblical narrative and projecting his agenda onto Jesus’ message. As Cone says in his concluding remarks, “we are not free to make Jesus what we wish him to be at certain moments of existence. He is who he was, and we know who he was through a critical, historical evaluation of the New Testament Jesus (126).”  Therefore Cone seems to take seriously the notion that the resurrected Jesus is still very much a part of the current reality and situation of the time and therefore is very much at work within the demographic of those to whom his Kingdom belongs. For this reason, all of Cones sources are interdependent and equally valid. 

From beginning to end it would be difficult to nail down a sequential list of topics through which Cone navigates. Rather, it is more so the case that Cone has several larger themes which he often returns to throughout each of the seven chapters. Whereas one might assume a redundancy in the utilization of such a method, Cone strikes a beautiful cadence with which he drives home his point from various angles and in various ways. 

The first theme is the defining and redefining of the task of theology. From the onset, Cone explains his hermeneutical bent or interpretive key through which he views all theology. 

“There can be no Christian theology that is not identified unreservedly with those who are humiliated and abused. In fact, theology ceases to be a theology of the gospel when it fails to arise out of the community of the oppressed. For it is impossible to speak of the God of Israelite history, who is the God revealed in Jesus Christ, without recognizing that God is the God of and for those who labor and are overladen (1).”

In this way, and harkening back to sources from which Cone does his theology, blackness becomes the symbol for the oppressed and whiteness the symbolic language for the oppressor. It is both symbolic and literal for Cone. Going back to the original preface of 1970, Cone explains that:

“’Black theology’ is a phrase that is particularly appropriate for contemporary America because of its symbolic power to convey both what whites mean by oppression and what blacks mean by liberation… for blackness symbolizes oppression and liberation in society (ix).”

This is an important distinction because the misapplied reading of Cone suggests that Cone, in a very literal way, claims that Jesus is ethnically black. Cone’s point that Jesus is black has more to do with his identification with the poor and the oppressed than it does with the color of his skin. Following this logic, blackness, or becoming black (which is death to white identity) becomes synonymous and symbolic with salvation:

“But ‘becoming black with God’ means more than just saying ‘I am black,’ if it involves that at all. The question ‘How can white persons become black?’ is analogous to the Philippian jailer’s question to Paul and Silas, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ The implication is that if we work hard enough at it, we can reach the goal. But the misunderstanding here is the failure to see that blackness or salvation (the two are synonymous) is the work of God, not human work (69).”

Undoubtedly, if one does not take into full account the context of Cone’s authorship, understanding of Cone’s words become impossible to hear, and his logic impossible to follow. 

Another common theme for Cone is what I will summarize as the Gospel of oppression. The Gospel of oppression is the spiritualized reading of the New Testament whereby the gospel becomes an exchange between the individual and God solely for the purposes of securing a place in heaven. With this as the focus, the gospel of the white church communicates to black people that they should hold out for the glorious reality that awaits them when their time on earth is done, thereby pacifying the black populous in their quest for freedom. This method of reading the scriptures comes about when one is unable to realize the depth of their privilege, and sympathize with the literalness of Jesus’ identification with the poor and the oppressed in an affluent society. In Cone’s words:

“The white God will point to heavenly bliss as a means of detouring blacks away from earthly rage (60).”

“In most societies where political oppression is acute and religion is related to the state, salvation is interpreted always in ways that do not threaten the security of the existing government. Sometimes salvation takes the form of abstract, intellectual analysis or private mystical communion with the divine. The ‘hope’ that is offered the oppressed is not the possibility of changing their earthly condition but a longing for the next life. With the poor counting on salvation in the next life, oppressors can humiliate and exploit with fear of reprisal (133-134).”

              

Part 2

A Black Theology of Liberation is the second most dangerous book I have ever read. The first is the bible (I say that with reverence, not as critique). It is dangerous because in many ways I believe Cone to be right. This was another book in which I was given language to articulate what I had been thinking, and it served as a guide to connect the puzzle pieces from the horse’s mouth (whereas my position and status in life has severely limited my ability to fully grasp the direness of the situation).

I remember attending a Baptist Church located on the historic Gettysburg battle field. The message that day was a summation of a spiritualized gospel in which this dark and evil world will be destroyed and our true hope is in some ethereal afterlife, and therefore we ought not cling to our earthly riches, nor make many plans, nor consider any of our deeds as having value.  It was at that moment I thought:

“Is that not what we told the slaves? Be obedient to your masters for your treasure will be in heaven, and not in this life.”

I find Cone’s theology to be far superior to my own in this regard. There is a bifurcation between black and white in our society, and I believe there to be a repression of the history of our deeds as privileged white people who get to interpret the course of the past and subsequently bury the gripes of the present. I began to realize this repression while sitting in class with the urban cohort. It was expressed that the people of color in the room “knew” the history of slavery in this country, but did not know the nature in which slaves were collected and transported across the Atlantic. They, as well as cohort 14, expressed shock that this was subject was never covered in their educational institutions growing up. 

It was at this point that I began to do some reflection and research, in which I discovered that not only in my own education was discourse on transatlantic slavery and modern implications severely lacking, but that these issues have been down played in textbooks and curriculum nationwide.   

With this sense of injustice already in my heart, Cone’s words enter my eardrum with the screaming ferocity of a shot in a barrel. Whereas my theology has, for the most part, only been concerned about my relationship with God, Cone’s theology encompasses the plight of his people. For this reason his words are not self asserting/self validating objective pontifications of abstract concepts, they are a matter of life and death not only for him but his community also.

In this regard, I think Cone should be inducted as one of the fathers (or grandfathers) of Missional theology. Cone clearly articulates the anemic Gospel that has pervaded North American theology (as he as termed “white” theology, but accurate in articulation of it none the less). He says “It will be difficult for white theologians to participate in this reality (black reality) – because of their identification with unreality (21).” By unreality, Cone means that the readers of the New Testament that are born with privilege, prestige, and affluence will be unable to relate and fully understand the implications of the gospel, to which I would agree. 

Cone says “It is not the theologian’s task to settle logical problems unrelated to human affairs. It is the theologian’s task to speak to the times, point to Gods revelation in current events (52).” In this way, Cone once more has opened my eyes to the fact that theology and theological education is done primarily in institutions consisting of a Caucasian demographic steeped in its own language and intrigued by its own identity. Such that seminaries often function as compounds in which people can hide from the harsh realities of societal systemic oppression by burying themselves in the narrow contextual abstraction of a very tangible and practical gospel. If theology does not have one eye on the historical Jesus and another eye on resurrected Jesus who dwells among the community, then it is no theology at all. 

I have only two criticisms of the book. First, every thought that popped into my head as a practical way that I might, as a white man, apply his words was almost immediately denounced by Cone on the subsequent page. The charge was either of being paternalistic or arrogantly pious in seeking to connect with and advocate for the African American community. Having read his later Foreword, I think that modern day Cone would be much more inclined to incorporate the help of white allies in his task.

Secondly, as I recently learned while attending a three day seminar on racial justice, “oppressor” implies intent, and the majority of privileged white Americans are not acting out of intent but ignorance. Yes, they (as well as I) are still very much a part of a system of societal oppression, but most people are not actively or knowingly participating in racism. On this point I find Cone to be apathetic as no excuse in his mind is permissible for what African Americans in this county have experienced and continue to experience. 

While I will never fully understand the place from which Cone has written his book, I submit that had I experienced the same sort of things, I would be hate filled and militant. It is from this posture that I sought to understand Cone’s words, and for this reason A Black Theology of Liberation will forever be an invaluable resource in my theological library.