James Cone

James Hal Cone was born in 1938 in Bearden, Arkansas, into a Baptist working-class family in the segregated rural South. His father Charlie Cone was an autoworker and a deacon; his mother Lucy was a domestic worker; the family attended Macedonia AME Church in Bearden. Cone has written movingly about the formation his childhood Black church gave him — the prayer tradition, the spirituals, the preaching, the conviction that something is wrong with the world and God knows it.

He was educated at Philander Smith College in Little Rock (BA, 1958), Garrett Theological Seminary near Chicago (BD, 1961), and Northwestern University (MA, 1963; PhD in systematic theology, 1965). He taught briefly at Philander Smith and at Adrian College in [[detroit|Michigan]], then in 1969 was hired by Union Theological Seminary in [[brooklyn|New York City]], where he taught for the rest of his life.

Black Theology and Black Power

In April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Cone was twenty-nine, in his second year of teaching, and (he later wrote) effectively unable to function for some weeks. The summer of 1968 produced his first book, Black Theology and Black Power, written rapidly and in deliberate confrontation with the white Protestant theological establishment that had failed, in his judgment, to recognize the Black freedom struggle as a theological matter at all. The book is short, fierce, and substantially shaped American religious thought.

The central argument:

• The Christian gospel is the gospel of liberation. The God of the exodus, of the prophets, of the Sermon on the Mount, of the cross and resurrection is on the side of the oppressed. To preach a gospel that does not take this seriously is to preach a different gospel.
• God is Black. Cone’s most-quoted and most-controversial line. The claim is not that God is racially Black in some metaphysical sense; it is that God identifies with the oppressed — and in the American context the oppressed are above all Black. Theology that does not recognize this identification is theology that has aligned itself, whether intentionally or not, with the oppressors.
• Black Power and the Christian gospel are continuous. The Black Power movement of the late 1960s, far from being a departure from Christian commitment, was — Cone argued — the proper extension of the Christian commitment into the present situation. To dismiss Black Power was to dismiss the Black freedom struggle of which the gospel was the original announcement.

The book scandalized substantial parts of the white theological establishment and substantial parts of the Black middle-class church establishment alike. It substantially shaped the next generation of African American theological thought.

The continuing development

Across a long career, Cone systematized and refined the argument:

• A Black Theology of Liberation (1970). Systematic theological treatise; Cone’s mature theological method.
• The Spirituals and the Blues (1972). His engagement with the African American sacred-music tradition; treats both spirituals and blues as theological documents.
• God of the Oppressed (1975). Methodological reflection on the question of how Black theology proceeds; his most autobiographical work.
• Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (1991). His major engagement with the relationship between King and Malcolm X; argues that the two figures need to be read together rather than as alternatives, and that their continuing tension defines the Black freedom struggle’s continuing direction.
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011). His late masterpiece. Reads the American history of lynching alongside the Christian theology of the cross and argues that white American Christianity, having largely failed to recognize the connection between the two, has failed at its core theological task. Among the most theologically substantial pieces of late American religious writing.

Honest framing

A few notes for clarity:

• Internal critiques. Cone was substantially criticized by womanist theologians (Katie Geneva Cannon, Delores Williams, Kelly Brown Douglas) for inadequately addressing the specific situation of Black women within Black theology. Cone substantially incorporated these critiques into his later work; the womanist tradition is now an essential development within and beyond Black [[liberation-theology|liberation theology]].
• The political-religious question. Cone’s theology has been criticized from various directions for being too political (by those who think theology should keep clear of politics) and too theological (by those who think the work of liberation should be conducted in secular political terms). [[0mn1one|The platform]]‘s posture: take Cone seriously precisely as theology that refuses the false separation, and recognize that this refusal is itself one of his central contributions.
• Continuing relevance. Cone’s central question — what does it mean to be Christian in a world structured by anti-Black racism? — has not been answered by American history in the years since his death. The theological tradition he founded continues.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Subset of: [[black-church]]
• Parallels: [[christian-mysticism]]
• Member of: [[person]]

Sources

1. James H. Cone. Black Theology and Black Power. Seabury, 1969. Source class: book / foundational primary.
2. James H. Cone. A Black Theology of Liberation. Lippincott, 1970 (rev. Orbis, 1990). Source class: book / primary.
3. James H. Cone. The Spirituals and the Blues. Seabury, 1972 (rev. Orbis, 1991). Source class: book / primary.
4. James H. Cone. God of the Oppressed. Seabury, 1975 (rev. Orbis, 1997). Source class: book / primary.
5. James H. Cone. Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Orbis, 1991. Source class: book / primary.
6. James H. Cone. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Orbis, 2011. Source class: book / primary, late masterpiece.
7. James H. Cone. Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian. Orbis, 2018. Source class: book / posthumous memoir.

Lenses still to grow

• The womanist response to Cone — Cannon, Williams, Douglas, Stephanie Mitchem, Emilie Townes — as a major continuing tradition.
• Cone’s engagement with the spirituals and blues as theological documents.
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree in detail.
• The continuing Black [[liberation-theology|liberation theology]] tradition — J. Kameron Carter, Willie Jennings, Kelly Brown Douglas, Eboni Marshall Turman, others.
• Cone’s institutional life at Union Theological Seminary as a continuing teaching institution.