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Books by James Cone
God of the Oppressed
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A Black Theology of Liberation /
For My People, Black Theology and the Black
Church
Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (1992)
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Black Theology and Black Power
Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of
Liberation, 1968-1998 /
The
Spiritual and the Blues: An
Interpretation
Black Theology: A Documentary History: Volume Two: 1980-1992
/
My Soul Looks Back
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Dr. Cone is an ordained
minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He is listed
in the Directory of American Scholars, in Who’s Who in
America, Who’s Who in American Religion, Who’s Who
among African Americans, and Who’s Who in the World.
He is the author of eleven (11) books and over 150 articles and
has lectured at more than 1,000 universities and community
organizations throughout the United States, Europe, Africa,
Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He is an active member
of numerous professional societies, including the Society for
the Study of Black Religion, the American Academy of Religion,
and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT)
in the Philippines.
Dr. Cone is best known for his ground-breaking works, Black
Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation
(1970); he is also the author of the highly acclaimed God of the
Oppressed (1975), and of Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or
a Nightmare? (1991); all of which works have been translated
into nine languages. His most recent publication is Risks of
Faith (1999). The 30th Anniversary of the publication of Black
Theology & Black Power was celebrated at the University of
Chicago Divinity School (April 1998), and a similar event was
held for A Black Theology of Liberation at Garrett-Evangelical
Theological Seminary (April 2000) and at the Catholic
Theological Society of America (June 2001). His research and
teaching are in Christian theology, with special attention to
black theology and the theologies of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America, as well as twentieth century European-American
theologies. His current research focuses on “The Cross and the
Lynching Tree,” exploring the relationship between the two
theologically.
more bio
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About this time I was placed under an overseer, from
whom I ran away - and after remaining in the woods thirty days,
I returned, to the astonishment of the negroes on the
plantation, who thought I had made my escape to some other part
of the country, as my father had done before. But the reason of
my return was, that the Spirit appeared to me and said I had my
wishes directed to the things of this world, and not to the
kingdom of Heaven, and that I should return to the service of my
earthly master -"For
he who knoweth his Master's will, and doeth it not, shall be
beaten with many stripes, and thus have I chastened you." And
the negroes found fault, and murmured against me, saying that if
they had my sense they would not serve any master in the world.
And about this time I had a vision - and I saw white
spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was
darkened - the thunder rolled in the Heavens, and blood flowed
in streams - and I heard a voice saying, "Such
is your luck, such you are called to see, and let it come rough
or smooth, you must surely bear it." I now withdrew
myself as much as my situation would permit, from the
intercourse of my fellow servants, for the avowed purpose of
serving the Spirit more fully - and it appeared to me, and
reminded me of the things it had already shown me, and that it
would then reveal to me the knowledge of the elements, the
revolution of the planets, the operation of tides, and changes
of the seasons.
1831 Confessions
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Bill Moyers and James Cone (Interview) /
A Conversation with James Cone * * * *
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Table
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I contend that theological
language must be paradoxical because of the necessity of
affirming two dimensions of reality which appear to be
contradictory. For example, my experience of being black-skinned
means that I cannot de-emphasize the literal significance of blackness. My
people were enslaved, lynched, and ghettoized in the name of God
and country because of their color. No amount of theologizing
can remove the reality of that experience from my consciousness.
And because blacks were dehumanized by white-skinned people who
created a cultural style based on black oppression, the literal
importance of whiteness has historical referents.
But that is only one aspect
of my experience. When I begin to investigate the particular
experience of blackness and whiteness in America, I begin to see
beyond it. Through my particular experience of blackness, I
encounter the symbolic significance of black existence and how
that existence is related to god’s revelation in Jesus Christ. In the divine-human
encounter, the particular experience of oppression and
liberation, as disclosed in black-skinned people, is affirmed as
God’s own experience; and through that divine affirmation, I
encounter the universal meaning of oppression and liberation
that is not limited by skin color. The same is true for the
literal and symbolic meaning of whiteness, which has the
opposite meaning of blackness.
Dialogue on Black Theology
Table (contd.)
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|
Arizona gov. signs bill
targeting ethnic studies—The
measure signed Tuesday
prohibits classes that
advocate ethnic solidarity,
that are designed primarily
for students of a particular
race or that promote
resentment toward a certain
ethnic group.The Tucson
Unified School District
program offers specialized
courses in African-American,
Mexican-American and
Native-American studies that
focus on history and
literature and include
information about the
influence of a particular
ethnic group. For example,
in the Mexican-American
Studies program, an American
history course explores the
role of Hispanics in the
Vietnam War, and a
literature course emphasizes
Latino authors. Horne, a
Republican running for
attorney general, said the
program promotes "ethnic
chauvinism" and racial
resentment toward whites
while segregating students
by race. He's been trying to
restrict it ever since he
learned that Hispanic civil
rights activist Dolores
Huerta told students in 2006
that "Republicans hate
Latinos."—YahooNews |
 |
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Defining Religion:
Religion is a search for meaning when you don't have
it in this world. So, while they might have controlled the black
people physically and politically and economically, they did not
control their spirit. That's why the black churches are very
powerful forces in the African American community and always has
been. Because religion has been that one place where you have an
imagination that no one can control. And so, as long as you know
that you are a human being and nobody can take that away from
you, then God is that reality in your life that enables you to
know that. . . . : Even though you're living under the shadow of
the lynching tree. Because religion is a spirit that is not
defined by what people can do to your body. They can kill your
body, but they can't kill your soul. We were always told that.
There is a spirit deep in you that nobody can take away from you
because it's a creation that God gave to you. Now, if you know
you have a humanity that nobody can take away from you, they may
lock you up. They may lynch you. But, they don't win.
James Cone
Bill Moyers Journal
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Table
(contd.)
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A Conversation with Wilson
Rudy: Topics like church and religion
make me uneasy, and especially when one talks about individual
beliefs and faith and how well they have been absorbed and
lived. It gives me no pleasure at all in taking up the
subject of how blacks actually live out their religion and how
the “Black Church” actually operates in our lives.
Of
course, as black women, you probably are much more familiar with
those intimate matters than I. I say that only because it is
primarily black women who make the numbers in the “Black
Church.” I am like most black men at odds with and outside the
“Black Church.”
But the role of the black church in
liberation struggle is a necessary topic. It needs more poignant
reflective thought than it has been given in the last several
decades. In my humble view the so-called Black Church is
probably one of the most reactionary, perverse institutions
within the black community, and have become more so since the
deaths of Martin and Malcolm. There was hope when it retained
its congregational, community, agrarian oriented aspects. As it
manifests itself in urban centers now in the South, North,
elsewhere, they are harbors for sycophants, demagogues, and
scoundrels—now educated and trained in the best seminaries,
and thus loaded down with well-honed dogma and doctrines which
they hoist by force upon the people.
Defining Religion, Describing
Religious Practice
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Table
(contd.)
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Central to Cone’s own interpretation is his
conviction that a very evident theme of liberation pervades the
spirituals. “So far from being songs of passive resignation,
the spirituals are black freedom songs which emphasize black
liberation as consistent with divine revelation.” Through the
skillful use of illustrations from the spirituals, he
convincingly demonstrates that “the theological assumption of
black slave religion as expressed in the spirituals was that
slavery contradicts God, and he will therefore liberate black
people.”
But, Cone adds, the spirituals do not provide
a simplistic or escapist solution. Black suffering is faced
honestly and realistically in the spirituals; there is no
attempt to explain it away or to dismiss it as unimportant.
Rather, these songs gave a theological perspective to suffering
– as expressed, for example, in the line “I’m so glad that
trouble don’t last always.” Cone likens the spirituals’
treatment of the problem of suffering to that of the Old
Testament books of Job and Habbakuk. Christian hope, he says,
“is a vision and promise for the poor, the sick and the
weak.” In this regard he excoriates those white theologians
who have promulgated a theology of hope based on “theological
abstractions” rather than on the sufferings of the oppressed.
The Spiritual
and the Blues
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Books
Ron Walters.
The Price of Racial Reconciliation (2008)
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Table (contd.)
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To suggest that Thomas Gray created the religious world contained
in the “Confessions” is to speak absurdities. We owe much
gratitude to Gray and numerous other white men for saving tons of
slave literature. The questioning of the authority of this
revelatory text is thus a red herring, expressing an unwillingness
to accept Turner’s religious perspective. This obtuseness does
not in any manner lessen the “Confessions” as the actual words
of Nathaniel Turner. It is a document to which he testified in a
Southampton court as his truth.
To
know Turner then we must look first and foremost at Turner’s own
words than what others say about him. Turner’s basic referent
was neither William Garrison nor David Walker. The Bible and its
testaments were his foundation. As an adult, his mentors were not
New England abolitionists, but the Holy Spirit and Christ, persons
who possessed much more reality for him than any Boston social
reformer. Despite the biblical illiteracy of today’s generation,
the Bible story was our story. The scriptures are the grounding of
our major cultural roots, far more so than the political
ideologies that have gathered together to call themselves
“black” or “African.”
Before modern education and the secularization
of America, African Americans were a biblical people.
Bible
and Sword
Table (contd.)
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Frustration with being regarded as
"a marginal voice" often encourages clergy to embrace
the language of the modern state. Preachers begin to talk like
politicians, and while gaining some credibility as political
power brokers, in the process they tend to lose the prophetic
edge that they could and should bring to the political debate
and to the process of imagining a better society.
This is a temptation to which Dr. King never
yielded. He consistently employed theological concepts and
language to challenge the modern state to be more just and
inclusive. He opined on practical and concrete political
matters, but only insofar as they were outgrowths of the
theological and ethical principles he espoused.
It is humbling,
hopeful, and empowering to consider that preachers, church
women, and Sunday school children led a revolution in our
lifetime. They marched, prayed, voted, and challenged the nation
to, in the words of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "conform America's
political reality to her political rhetoric." They have passed
the baton to us.
—Robert M. Franklin, "Awesome
Music, Great Preaching, and Revolutionary Action: The Mind of
Martin Luther King, Jr.," The Princeton Seminary
Bulletin, XXIII (2), 2003.
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updated 3 April 2008
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