Tag: James Cone

We Must Find New Ways

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

ConeDay 33 of our Lenten Journey through Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
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From James Cone in Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare (1991):

King’s words have been appropriated by the people who rejected him in the 1960s. So by making his birthday a national holiday, everybody claims him, even though they opposed him while he was alive. They have frozen King in 1963 with his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. That is the one that can best be manipulated and misinterpreted. King also said, shortly after the Selma march and the riots in Watts, ‘They have turned my dream into a nightmare.’ Continue reading “We Must Find New Ways” →

The Losers & the Down and Out

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

ConeFrom James Cone in The Cross & The Lynching Tree (2011)

The real scandal of the gospel is this: humanity’s salvation is revealed in the cross of the condemned criminal Jesus, and humanity’s salvation is available only through our solidarity with the crucified people in our midst. Faith that emerged out of the scandal of the cross is not a faith of intellectuals or elites of any sort. This is the faith of abused and scandalized people—the losers and the down and out.

*Click here for a free PDF of the Introduction and Chapter 1 of The Cross & The Lynching Tree.

The Cross & The Lynching Tree

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James ConeFrom James Cone in The Cross & The Lynching Tree (2011):

The lynching tree—so strikingly similar to the cross on Golgotha—should have a prominent place in American images of Jesus’ death. But it does not. In fact, the lynching tree has no place in American theological reflections about Jesus’ cross or in the proclamation of Christian churches about his Passion. The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing…To reflect on this failure is to address a defect in the conscience of white Christians and to suggest why African-Americans have needed to trust and cultivate their own theological imagination.

*Click here for a free PDF of the Introduction and Chapter 1 of The Cross & The Lynching Tree.

The Context of Oppression

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Cone
From James Cone in A Black Theology of Liberation (1970):

Persons who live in the real world have to encounter the concreteness of suffering without suburbs as places of retreat. To be oppressed is to encounter the overwhelming presence of human evil without any place to escape…

…Who can ‘pray’ when all hell has broken loose and human existence is being trampled underfoot by evil forces? Prayer takes on new meaning. It has nothing to do with those Bible verses that rulers utter before eating their steaks, in order to remind themselves that they are religious and have not mistreated anybody. Who can thank God for food when we know that our brothers and sisters are starving as we dine like kings? Prayer is not kneeling, morning, noon and evening. This is a tradition that is characteristic of whites; they use it to reinforce the rightness of their destruction of blacks. Prayer is the spirit that is evident in all oppressed communities when they know that they have a job to do.