James Cone and Black Liberation Theology
James Cone first addressed this theology after Malcolm X's proclamation in the 1950s against Christianity being taught as "a white man's religion". According to Black religion expert Jonathan Walton:
"James Cone believed that the New Testament revealed Jesus as one who identified with those suffering under oppression, the socially marginalized and the cultural outcasts. And since the socially constructed categories of race in America (i.e., whiteness and blackness) had come to culturally signify dominance (whiteness) and oppression (blackness), from a theological perspective, Cone argued that Jesus reveals himself as black in order to disrupt and dismantle white oppression."
Black liberation theology contends that dominant cultures have corrupted Christianity, and the result is a mainstream faith-based empire that serves its own interests, not God's. Black liberation theology asks whose side should God be on - the side of the oppressed or the side of the oppressors. If God values justice over victimization, then God desires that all oppressed people should be liberated. According to Cone, if God is not just, if God does not desire justice, then God needs to be done away with. Liberation from a false god who privileges whites, and the realization of an alternative and true God who desires the empowerment of the oppressed through self-definition, self-affirmation, and self-determination is the core of black liberation theology.
Read more about this topic: Black Liberation Theology
Famous quotes containing the words james, black, liberation and/or theology:
“Better risk loss of truth than chance of error—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)
“... the generation of the 20’s was truly secular in that it still knew its theology and its varieties of religious experience. We are post-secular, inventing new faiths, without any sense of organizing truths. The truths we accept are so multiple that honesty becomes little more than a strategy by which you manage your tendencies toward duplicity.”
—Ann Douglas (b. 1942)