Religion & Law

Defending James Cone

By Eduardo Penalver

Just a word about the easy attacks on Black liberation theology and the comparison to Farrakhan.  I agree that Cone's language can seem inflammatory, and sometimes needlessly so.  But he is actually very careful about how he defines his terms.  He uses language like "black" and "white" in very specific ways, ways that do not always correspond to the way we use those terms in everyday language (sort of like the way the term "happiness" gets used in Catholic theology in very loaded ways).  When he talks about defeating whiteness, he does not mean white-skinned people, but rather a system of racially-based oppression.  And when he talks about black people, he means people who live under conditions of poverty and oppression.  This is what he means, I think, when he says that Jesus was black or that any God worth believing in must be part of the black community and against whiteness.  Given how he defines his terms, I agree.  He's not talking about skin color, but about Jesus's and God's preferential identification with the oppressed.  He uses language the way he does, I think, to be provocative and to really challenge his readers, most of whom are probably white.  The language is startling, in part because the iconography of white Christianity is so uniformly, well, white.  God is always portrayed as a white man, Jesus with flowing blonde (!) hair, etc.  Whether you think Cone's tactic works or not, it's unfair (and bordering on dishonest) for James Taranto to look at little snippets of his language and then talk about how hate-filled he is (should we expect anything better from Taranto?  Probably not, but I digress).  Greg, I suggest you go read the entire Black Theology of  Liberation and see if, at the end, you have the same impression.  I read it several years back and found it extremely prophetic, challenging and thoughtful  . . .  and not at all hate-filled.

Full post as published by Mirror of Justice on March 22, 2008 (boomark / email).