Quotes from Cone’s Black Theology of Liberation

BlackTheologyOfLiberation

James H. Cone is known as the father of Black Liberation Theology, a school of theology which seeks to interpret Christianity through the lens of the Black freedom struggle. In what follows, I’ll provide quotes from one of Cone’s most famous works, A Black Theology of Liberation. The statements I’ve selected are characteristic of the work as a whole. Indeed, most of these quotes reflect ideas that are repeated multiple times throughout the book. I’ll group the quotes by topic and will then contrast Cone’s thinking with historic Christian doctrine.

Christianity Is About Liberation from Oppression

One of Cone’s core beliefs is that Christianity is fundamentally about liberation from oppression. He emphatically does not mean “spiritual liberation from the oppression of sin,” but is referring instead to sociopolitical liberation. In particular, as the father of Black liberation theology, Cone believes that Christianity is about the sociopolitical liberation of the Black community from White oppression.

“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.” (p. 70)

“Jesus is not a human being for all persons; he is a human being for oppressed persons, whose identity is made known in and through their liberation.” (p. 85-86)

“To participate in God’s salvation is to cooperate with the black Christ as he liberates his people from bondage. Salvation, then, primarily has to do with earthly reality and the injustice inflicted on those who are helpless and poor. To see the salvation of God is to see this people rise up against is oppressors, demanding that justice become a reality now, not tomorrow.” (p. 128)

“If the white and black churches do not represent Christ’s redemptive work in the world, where then is Christ’s church to be found? As always, his church is where wounds are being healed and chains are being struck off. It does not matter in the least whether the community of liberators designate their work as Christ’s own work. What is important is that the oppressed are being liberated.” (p. 134-135)

Needless to say, historic Christianity rejects the idea that “liberation from sociopolitical oppression” is the core message of the Bible. The Nicene creed and every historic Christian confession since then has identified Jesus’s primary mission as the redemption of humanity from sin.

God Sides With Blacks Against Whites

Liberation, at least in the context of the Unites States, is not abstract for Cone. Instead, God is specifically concerned with the liberation of Black Americans from racial oppression. He believe God has elected Blacks as his people. Cone repeatedly refers to the “blackness of God” and to “the black Christ” to emphasize that God has so identified himself with Black Americans that God himself should be considered Black.

“the God of the oppressed takes sides with the black community. God is not color-blind in the black-white struggle, but has made an unqualified identification with blacks.” (p. 6)

“If God is not for us, if God is not against white racists, then God is a murderer, and we had better kill God. The task of black theology is to kill gods that do not belong to the black community” (p. 27)

“The black prophet is a rebel with a cause, the cause of over twenty-five million black Americans and all oppressed persons everywhere. It is God’s cause because God has chosen the blacks as God’s own people. And God has chosen them not for redemptive suffering but for freedom. Blacks are not elected to be Yahweh’s suffering people. Rather we are elected because we are oppressed against our will and God’s, and God has decided to make our liberation God’s own undertaking.” (p. 56)

“If there is one brutal fact that the centuries of white oppression have taught blacks, it is that whites are incapable of making any valid judgments about human existence. The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods.” (p. 61-62)

“Because blacks have come to know themselves as black, and because that blackness is the cause of their own love of themselves and hatred of whiteness, the blackness of God is key to knowledge of God. The blackness of God, and everything implied by it in a racist society, is the heart of the black theology doctrine of God. There is no place in black theology for a colorless God in a society where human beings suffer precisely because of their color. 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… Because God has made the goal of blacks God’s own goal, black theology believes that it is not only appropriate but necessary to begin the doctrine of God with an insistence on God’s blackness.” (p. 63)

“If Jesus Christ is to have any meaning for us, he must leave the security of the suburbs by joining blacks in their condition. What need have we for a white Jesus when we are not white but black? If Jesus Christ is white and not black, he is an oppressor, and we must kill him. The appearance of black theology means that the black community is now ready to do something about the white Jesus, so that he cannot get in the way of our revolution.” (p. 111)

Of course, God is neither White nor Black and it is anachronistic to apply modern racial categories to Jesus, who was a 1st century Jew. Moreover, Christian theology has always emphasized that God is the God over all nations, that Jesus is the savior of all people, and that all Christians of every tribe, tongue, and nation are God’s elect.

Whites Should Not Criticize Black Theology

Cone anticipates (White) critics’ objections and insists that Whites are not capable of understanding, much less critiquing, his theology. Because of his emphasis on particularity, Cone does not believe that sin can be defined universally and specifically denies that Whites can identify or critique sin in the Black community as the transgression of God’s commands.

“The revolutionary context forces black theology to shun all abstract principles dealing with what is the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ course of action. There is only one principle which guides the thinking and action of black theology: an unqualified commitment to the black community” (p. 10)

“In passing, it may be worthwhile to point out that whites are in no position to question the legitimacy of black theology. Questions like ‘Do you think theology is black?’ or ‘What about others who suffer?’ are the product of minds incapable of black thinking” (p. 8)

“Inasmuch as whites and blacks do not share a common identity, whites cannot possibly know what sin is from a black perspective.

Black theology does not deny that all persons are sinners. What it denies is white reflections on the sin of blacks. Only blacks can speak about sin in a black perspective and apply it to black and white persons. The white vision of reality is too distorted and renders whites incapable of talking to the oppressed about their shortcomings.

According to black theology, the sin of the oppressed is not that they are responsible for their own enslavement – far from it. Their sin is that of trying to ‘understand’ enslavers, to ‘love’ them on their own terms. As the oppressed now recognize their situation in the light of God’s revelation, they know that they should have killed their oppressors instead of trying to ‘love’ them.” (p. 51)

“[White revolutionary theologians] should know by now that, in view of white brutality against blacks and church participation in it, no white person who is halfway sensitive to black self-determination should have the audacity to speak for blacks. That is the problem! Too many whites think they know how we feel about them. If whites were really serious about their radicalism in regard to the black revolution and its theological implications in America, they would keep silent and take instructions from blacks. Only blacks can speak about God in relationship to their liberation. And those who wish to join us in this divine work must be willing to lose their white identity — indeed, destroy it.” (p. 62-63)

“there can be no knowledge of the sinful condition except in the movement of an oppressed community claiming its freedom. This means that whites, despite their self-proclaimed religiousness, are rendered incapable of making valid judgments on the character of sin.” (p. 106)

“What does sin mean for blacks? Again, we must be reminded that sin is a community concept, and this means that only blacks can talk about their sin. Oppressors are not only rendered incapable of knowing their own condition, they cannot speak about it or for the oppressed. This means that whites are not permitted to speak about what blacks have done to contribute to their conditions. They cannot call blacks Uncle Toms; only members of the black community can do that. For whites, to do so is not merely insensitivity, it is blasphemy.” (p. 108)

Again, Cone is lightyears away from Christian orthodoxy. God’s moral law is universal and is binding on all people. Sin is defined in terms of the transgression of God’s moral law, not in terms of a failure to seek liberation. All Christians should abhor hypocrisy and should examine themselves before seeking to offer anyone else correction. But no Christian is barred from identifying sin merely on the basis of their ethnicity.

Summary

Cone’s theology is thoroughly heterodox, not merely at the margins but at the core. No matter how concerned Christians are about racism, they should reject Cone’s theology wholesale.

Contemporary readers may also notice striking similarities between Cone’s thinking and critical race theory. Both emphasize the need for Black liberation, focus on the particular over the universal, and valorize lived experience. However, calling Cone a critical race theorist would be anachronistic. A Black Theology of Liberation was first published in 1970, nearly two decades before the emergence of CRT in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Nonetheless, the connection is not imaginary. For example, Paulo Freire, the father of critical pedagogy, wrote the foreword to the book’s 20th anniversary edition. He clearly recognized that he and Cone were engaged in the same liberatory project, a project growing out of the critical tradition and stretching back to the Frankurt School. CRT draws on this same tradition, which explains the resonances between CRT and Cone’s thought.

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