“The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.”
Dr. James H. Cone
One of the great theologians of our time passed yesterday. Dr. James H. Cone, forged black liberation theology in the crucible of the civil rights movement and has remained on the cutting edge of its development. His many books began with Black Theology and Black Power and include, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare; God of the Oppressed; and The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Dr. Cone was the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Seminary in New York City.
While I never had the opportunity to meet him or study under him in person he has none the less been one of my most important mentors from afar, guiding me to discover my whiteness, daring me to imagine what “whiteness” surrendered to Jesus the Christ could look and feel like. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. Cone argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus… its becoming clear to me just how correct Dr. Cone was throughout his career.
“The Christian community, therefore, is that community that freely becomes oppressed, because they know that Jesus himself has defined humanity’s liberation in the context of what happens to the little ones. Christians join the cause of the oppressed in the fight for justice not because of some philosophical principle of “the Good” or because of a religious feeling of sympathy for people in prison. Sympathy does not change the structures of injustice. The authentic identity of Christians with the poor is found in the claim which the Jesus-encounter lays upon their own life-style, a claim that connects the word “Christian” with the liberation of the poor. Christians fight not for humanity in general but for themselves and out of their love for concrete human beings.”
― James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed
Rest in Peace, dwight
