wikipedia.org
James Hal Cone (August 5, 1938 - ) is an African-American Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition. He is one of America’s best known architects of Black theology, a form of Liberation theology. He is currently the Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.
Cone was born and raised in Arkansas and received a B.A. degree from Philander Smith College in Arkansas in 1958, a B.D. degree from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in 1961, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University in 1963 and 1965, respectively. He taught theology and religion at Philander Smith College, Adrian College in Michigan, and beginning in 1970 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he was awarded the distinguished Charles A. Briggs Chair in systematic theology in 1977.
James Cone was the first person to create a systematic Black theology. He felt that Black Christians in Northern America should not follow the “white Church”, as it had failed to support them in their struggle for equal rights. Though this theme runs throughout Cone’s work, his early books (Black Theology and Black Power and A Black Theology of Liberation) draw heavily on mainstream white theologians like Karl Barth (on whom Cone had written his doctoral thesis) and Paul Tillich.
One particular aspect of this theology involves God’s identification with “blackness”:
The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism…The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God’s own condition. This is the essence of the Biblical revelation. By electing Israelite slaves as the people of God and by becoming the Oppressed One in Jesus Christ, the human race is made to understand that God is known where human beings experience humiliation and suffering…Liberation is not an afterthought, but the very essence of divine activity. (A Black Theology of Liberation, pp. 63-64)
In response to criticism from other black theologians (including his brother, Cecil), Cone began to make greater use of resources native to the African American Christian community for his theological work, including slave spirituals, the blues, and the writings of prominent African American thinkers like David Walker, Henry McNeal Turner, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Critiques by black women also led Cone to make consideration of gender issues more prominent in his later writings, thus paving the way for womanist theology. His theology has also been heavily influenced by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
[edit] Quotes
Some of Cone’s quotes have drawn controversy, especially in the political context of the 2008 Presidential campaign, as opponents of Barack Obama, whose pastor Jeremiah Wright was inspired by Cone’s theology[1], put forward inflammatory excerpts of Cone’s writings.
- “To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!” [Black Theology and Black Power, pp. 139-140].
- “It is important to make a further distinction here among black hatred, black racism, and Black Power. Black hatred is the black man’s strong aversion to white society. No black man living in white America can escape it…But the charge of black racism cannot be reconciled with the facts. While it is true that blacks do hate whites, black hatred is not racism. Racism, according to Webster, is ‘the assumption that psychocultural traits and capacities are determined by biological race and that races differ decisively from one another, which is usually coupled with a belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race and its rights to dominance over others.’ Where are the examples among blacks in which they sought to assert their right to dominance over others because of a belief in black superiority?…Black Power is an affirmation of the humanity of blacks in spite of white racism. It says that only blacks really know the extent of white oppression, and thus only blacks are prepared to risk all to be free.” [Black Theology and Black Power, p. 14-16]
- “All white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, “Racism is not my fault,” or “I am not responsible for the country’s inhumanity to the black man…But insofar as white do-gooders tolerate and sponsor racism in their educational institutions, their political, economic and social structures, their churches, and in every other aspect of American life, they are directly responsible for racism…Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty. Karl Jaspers’ description of metaphysical guilt is pertinent here. ‘There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant.’ ” [Black Theology and Black Power, p. 24]
- “For the gospel proclaims that God is with us now, actively fighting the forces which would make man captive. And it is the task of theology and the Church to know where God is at work so that we can join him in this fight against evil. In America we know where the evil is. We know that men are shot and lynched. We know that men are crammed into ghettos…There is a constant battle between Christ and Satan, and it is going on now. If we make this message contemporaneous with our own life situation, what does Christ’s defeat of Satan mean for us?…The demonic forces of racism are real for the black man. Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man “the devil.” The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by the demonic forces.” [Black Theology and Black Power, pp. 39-41]
- “Racism is a complete denial of the Incarnation and thus of Christianity…If there is any contemporary meaning of the Antichrist (or “the principalities and powers”), the white church seems to be a manifestation of it. It was the white “Christian” church which took the lead in establishing slavery as an institution and segregation as a pattern in society by sanctioning all-white congregations.” [Black Theology and Black Power, p. 73]
- “Black theology cannot accept a view of God which does not represent God as being for oppressed blacks and thus against white oppressors. Living in a world of white oppressors, blacks have no time for a neutral God. The brutalities are too great and the pain too severe, and this means we must know where God is and what God is doing in the revolution. There is no use for a God who loves white oppressors the same as oppressed blacks. We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject God’s love.” [A Black Theology of Liberation, p. 70]
[edit] Controversy
Dr. Cone has explained his theology as follows:[2][3][4][5]
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community… . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
- Black Theology and Black Power (1969, ISBN 1-57075-157-9)
- A Black Theology of Liberation (1970, ISBN 0-88344-685-5)
- The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation (1972 ISBN 0-8164-2073-4)
- God of the Oppressed (1975, ISBN 1-57075-158-7)
- For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church (Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?) (1984, ISBN 0-88344-106-3)
- Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare? (1992, ISBN 0-88344-824-6)
- Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1999, ISBN 1-57075-241-9)
- Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998 (1999, ISBN 0-8070-0950-4)
Original article
(Posted on March 21, 2008)
Comments
How does Cone manage to cash the paychecks he gets from Union Theological Seminary? It’s a White Man’s institution, and consequently racist. Perhaps Cone, like most black academics, has been oppressed against his will into a lucrative sinecure. Must be tough.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 5:43 PM on March 21
“Black hatred is the black man’s strong aversion to white society. No black man living in white America can escape it…But the charge of black racism cannot be reconciled with the facts. While it is true that blacks do hate whites, black hatred is not racism.”
There’s no other way to say it: The man is a moron. Further, he’s so steeped in hate and vileness he’s his own worst enemy.
Educated people of other races throughout this country write of many things, but blacks concentrate solely on race. Only race. And how unjustly they’ve been treated.
They’re consumed with it probably because when they look around them they see nothing but black failure. It’s everywhere, and if one were a black in a professional position he would be embarrassed, because he would feel he’s less than average as are most all the rest, and he feels he’s tainted by association.
So what would a person in that position do? He would have two options. He would either work to try to elevate the black masses or he would obfuscate and lie, blaming anything and everything but black incompetence. Well, after trying the first and realizing the impossibility of elevating people to a status they cannot attain, the only option left would be the latter, and that is exactly what black leaders have been doing for 150 years. It’s whity’s fault. It’s systemic racism. It’s oppression. It’s this; it’s that; it’s EVERYTHING BUT US!
What is so disgusting about their tactics is that they repeat such preposterous charges so often they believe them themselves. In the process of all the lying and obfuscations they work themselves into a rage, which they pass on to the retards who follow them.
Black on white crime is the result, so if this Obama needs to concentrate on anything it is curtailing black on white assaults, murders, rapes, torture-murders, and robberies.
Nothing will elevate blacks unless they elevate themselves which is impossible, because they don’t really have the necessary mentality for competition in a civilized nation.
How could somebody like this Michelle Obama, who has such low intelligence and who has been given AA accreditation and positions of employment she’s not qualified for, be so hateful toward white Americans?
How could a black senator who was given a privileged upbringing by a white parent and white grandparents be so distorted in his thinking that he’s claiming blacks don’t have as many opportunities as everybody else and that they are held back not by their own inabilities but by whites whom they are quick to tell you they hate? If white bias held blacks back, why didn’t it hold him back?
The answer is very obvious: Both have had 20 years of absolute lying indoctrination by a white-hating preacher that would hate whites just as vociferously if they had given a monthly payment of a 10,000 dollars to every black for the last 50 years. That’s not an exaggeration. Think about it.
What white America must realize is that the “change” this evil, propagandized black senator is referring to amounts to nothing more than giving blacks everything they can’t earn for themselves. It’s as simple as that.
And what white Americans must also realize is that this Cone’s views and attitudes are not the exception within the black community, they are the rule.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 6:14 PM on March 21
By this twisted logic here:
“All white men are responsible for white oppression… Karl Jaspers’ description of metaphysical guilt is pertinent here. ‘There exists among men, because they are men, a solidarity through which each shares responsibility for every injustice and every wrong committed in the world, and especially for crimes that are committed in his presence or of which he cannot be ignorant.’ ” [Black Theology and Black Power, p. 24]
blacks are also responsible for “white oppression”.
This guy is an obvious nutcase, and if crazy black people, who’ve had Trillions of dollars of subsidization, as well as admissions and hiring preferences, handed to them, cannot refrain from drugs, guns, gangsta rap, and booty dances, and refrain from raping, robbing and killing whitey, long enough to pick up some books and take advantage of the abundant opportunities available to them in modern day America, then that is their ridiculous problem.
Posted by Okaaaaaaay at 6:43 PM on March 21
I must admit to enjoying watching Obama implode over this. He can’t win this argument. He is pro-black and has been for decades. I only wish he would allow Whites the same courtesy.
Have you all seen this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuB_W8o_UsU
It shows Obama Hussein’s speech writer was also John Edwards and another black man running for office. Obama Husseins’ words are not his own - this speech writer has been recycling this stuff for years. Also Obama Hussein has taken words from the movie Malcom X.
Posted by Renae at 7:02 PM on March 21
I read this and it smacks of tribalism. My (black)tribe has been harmed by your (white) tribe in the distant past. All my woes are the fault of your tribes participation in past to the “great wrong”. Nothing personal, its just about your tribe. And my tribe’s failing, be it crime, violence as well as poor social and work skills flow from the white tribe. Is this not racism?
Healing the “great wrong” is unlikely any time soon. To remedy it requires self-help inclusive of taking responsibility for one’s behavior, and hard work through a proven process (even though that process may be white/asian, as it is why those tribes have outdistanced themselves from the others). Further, there is the binding group identity of the righteous victim that forms the black community. High unwed birthrates, high preventable health issues like VD, and high crime rates are other common characteristics but these are not the personal responsibility of the black tribe members, as these behaviors are a legacy of the “great wrong”. Sadly for the black tribe, there is no example of a group of people improving themselves with a a philosophy of victimhood and without personal responsibility.
Like Iraq, where extremists interpret their god to fit their sect’s political ambitions, so has Dr. Cone and his followers. The results are well known.
Posted by at 7:39 PM on March 21
Renae:
You’re referring to James Thine Axelrod On Thy Staff. The other black candidate is current Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. So Axelrod’s scam is that he writes a speech with “hope change hope change” refs aplenty, and every two years, some sucker pays him to read it in public.
Posted by Question Diversity at 9:15 PM on March 21
does anyone know what position Cone or Wright maintain on the reparations argument?
Posted by toonces in indianapolis. at 11:47 PM on March 21
I like what Ann Coulter had to say about Rev. Wright.
“Obama tried to justify Wright’s deranged rants by explaining that “legalized discrimination” is the “reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up.” He said that a “lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families.”
That may accurately describe the libretto of “Porgy and Bess,” but it has no connection to reality. By Rev. Wright’s own account, he was 12 years old and was attending an integrated school in Philadelphia when Brown v. Board of Education was announced, ending “separate but equal” schooling.
So for half of Rev. Wright’s 66 years, discrimination against blacks was legal — though he never experienced it personally because it existed in a part of the country where he did not live. For the second half of Wright’s life, discrimination against whites was legal throughout the land.”
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=241
Posted by Drifter at 5:52 AM on March 22
Did Obama even write his famous speech on race?
That’s a legitimate question that every news outlet should be asking right now, instead of simply gushing over what may be just another good performance by a script-reading actor.
Posted by Citizen at 11:03 AM on March 22
“What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal.”
This is the ideology of GENOCIDE. This desire has been expressed TIME AND AGAIN by very prominent blacks.
These people are insane. We’re not talking about a fringe, but the MAJORITY of black people think this way. You just cannot live around such pathological people. Anymore than Jews could live around Nazis. There is no use of discussion. (Yet just look at how majority white countries everywhere are letting more flood in. There will be no safe haven anywhere.)
This ideology is all based on such sweeping ignorance: “White Christianity” was NOT behind slavery. The EXACT OPPOSITE is true: It was none other than White Christian Abolitionists who FIRST OPPOSED slavery and eventually succeeded in ending it in European controlled areas. And, with the British Navy, curtailed the black African slave trade in the Muslim world too.
The fact is that it was BLACK AFRICANS who controlled and operated the slave trade, capturing, force marching to the coast, and selling other black Africans. Slavery is BLACK AFRICAN culture. Not White Christian culture.
You attend and support a church because you believe in that church’s creed. The creed of Obama’s 22 year church is this “Black Liberation Theology” creed that advocates genocide of whites. By Obama’s own admission, his “spiritual guide” Jeremiah Wright, a disciple of this creed, brought him to this brand of “Christianity”. So it is pretty obvious that Obama must be in full agreement with it.
Gullible white people who support Obama are deluding themselves. It is patently obvious that Obama is a stealth candidate who will tell whites whatever they want to hear in order to get their votes that he needs. But his past actions speak to what the REAL Obama is behind the facade.
Posted by at 10:21 PM on March 22
Obama may well trigger a Great White Awekening. If he is elected, think Mugabe references within two years. If he is the Dem’s nominee, McCain will walk away the victor and the blacks may well riot - again - in places like Detroit, LA and Chicago. (Indeed, is the Great White Mother is the nominee they may also riot). I don’t think people will put up with it again. The $$ transfers have been too great; the crime is too high; the goodwill has been real - and all we get is lectured and spat on.
Obama represents the institutionalization and legitamization of black on white crime. This is a revolution a la Chavez and Castro in the making. I have never loved Hillary quite so much.
Posted by An Ally in NYC at 3:30 PM on March 23
This is by no means Christianity, nor does it agree with the teachings of Jesus Christ, and there is nothing in the King James Version of the Bible that supports this twisted and sick theology.
Very serious wars have been conducted in the past over much less serious distinctions in the faith. It is good they have kept this hateful excuse for a religion a secret for so long. This is not Christian, this is a religion of revenge, grudge, and retribution. It is the most evil thing I have ever read.
Posted by Memphomaniac at 1:48 AM on March 24
“This is by no means Christianity, nor does it agree with the teachings of Jesus Christ”
It’s more like high school sociology.
Posted by at 11:31 AM on March 24
The frightening question is “who is behind Obama?”. Who really is paying for this and promoting him? And then the most terrifying question…why?
Posted by LOGIC at 11:43 AM on March 24
The frightening question is “who is behind Obama?”. Who really is paying for this and promoting him? And then the most terrifying question…why?
Posted by LOGIC at 11:43 AM on March 24
Look Who’s Backing Obama
The names of the top 5 US corporations backing Obama speak volumes…
Goldman Sachs - $421,763
UBS - $296,670
Lehman Brothers - $250,630
National Amusements - $245,843
JPMorgan Chase - $240,788
http://www.rense.com/general80/look.htm
Obama’s foreign policy advisor and vocal supporter is Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, who says that Obama offers ‘a new definition of America’s role in the world’.
This is the same Brzezinski who created the Illuminati’s Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller in 1973. The Trilateral Commission is dedicated to a world government dictatorship and closely connects with other strands in the web like the Council on Foreign Relations (member: Barack Obama) and the Bilderberg Group.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message487849/pg1
Posted by Lisette at 12:11 PM on March 25
