Cone, James H. 1938–

views updated May 21 2018

James H. Cone 1938–

Theologian, educator, author

“Always my attempt is to understand the meaning of faith, the meaning of God, in a world that is broken,” theologian and religious writer James H. Cone revealed to Nessa Rapoport in a Publishers Weekly interview. Regarded as the father of black theology, Cone has devoted his professional life to the study of religious faith from an African viewpoint. In 1970 he wrote A Black Theology of Liberation, a groundbreaking, influential work that links the study of Jesus Christ’s life with the African-American experience. Cone presents the position of blacks in American society as symbolic of the oppressed poor around the globe, and his theories reportedly served as an inspiration to the organizers of Latin American liberation theology. Furthermore, his vision of Christ as a social revolutionary stimulated the formation of a comprehensive black theology in South Africa.

Born August 5, 1938, in Fordyce, Arkansas, Cone grew up in the segregated town of Bearden. Both of his parents were social activists. Charlie Cone, his father, filed a lawsuit against the Bearden School Board to desegregate the schools during the early 1950s. Although threatened with lynching, the elder Cone maintained his activism. This fierce display of independence, combined with the nurturing closeness of friends and family, provided assurance for young James. As he disclosed to Rapoport, “No person has influenced me more than my father in his courage, sense of self, and the clarity of his commitment to end racial injustice.” Cone’s mother also inspired him: “[She] gave me the gift of speech and faith. She was a public speaker in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is where I discovered my own voice.”

In 1958 Cone began his graduate training at Garrett Biblical Institute (which later became Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) in Evanston, Illinois. Studying at black colleges as an undergraduate, Cone was surprised by the severity of racial prejudice he encountered in the midwestern town in general and at Garrett during his graduate study. He learned that black students rarely received any grade above average. Racism was apparently not considered a theological problem by the majority of the teachers of religion there. Influenced by one particular professor at the seminary, however, Cone decided to enter Garrett’s doctoral program. He was the school’s only black Ph.D. student during this period.

At a Glance…

Born August 5, 1938, in Fordyce, AR; son of Charlie (a social activist) Cone; married (wife died). Education : Philander Smith College, B.A., 1958, L.L.D., 1981; Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, B.D., 1961; Northwestern University, M.A., 1963, Ph.D., 1965. Religion: Christian.

Theologian, educator, author. Philander Smith College, Little Rock, AK, assistant professor, 1964-66; Adrian College, Adrian, Ml, assistant professor, 1966-69; Union Theological Seminary, New York City, professor of theology, 1969—.

Member: American Theological Society, Society for the Study of Black Religion, American Academy of Religion, Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.

Awards: Edward Waters College, LL.D., 1981.

Addresses: Office —Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway, New York, NY 10027.

Cone realized his potential as a writer while formulating the tenets of a new black theology. In 1968 he wrote his manifesto, “Christianity and Black Power,” a commanding work in the field that unites Christian belief with the black power movement of the 1960s, which strove for racial equality through a consolidation of the political and economic power of African-Americans. The next year, Cone found a way to vent the smoldering anger he felt at his own treatment as well as that of his enslaved grandparents: he published a book entitled Black Theology and Black Power.

Cone also began his teaching career at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1969. The next year he wrote his milestone work, A Black Theology of Liberation. Rapoport called the book “a searing reappraisal of Christianity from a black perspective,” and an Ebony reviewer postulated that Cone’s writing had “changed forever the way the gospel was viewed in America.”

Cone researched material for ten years to write Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Published in 1991, this work followed in the tradition of Cone’s previous books on the transformation of society. In it, he contends that the distance between the philosophies of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X was narrowing as their lives ended. According to Cone, after viewing the conditions of urban ghettos, the Reverend King, who advocated nonviolent resistance, was moving in the direction of Malcolm X’s militant black separatist views, which called for blacks to fight against racism “by any means necessary.” Conversely, Cone theorizes that by the time of his assassination in 1965, Malcolm X had shifted toward King’s perception of nonviolent direct action as a means to integrate blacks and whites in American society. In a piece for the New York Review of Books, George M. Fredrickson deemed Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America “a major contribution to the discussion of race and ethnicity in modern America.”

Although supportive of Malcolm X’s canon of black militancy throughout his career, Cone appears in the 1990s to endorse King’s vision of “beloved community.” He wrote in Martin & Malcolm & America: “The beloved community must remain the primary objective for which we are striving. On this point Martin was right: ’For better or worse we are all on this particular land together at the same time, and we have to work it out together.’” As Rapoport summarized, Cone’s “struggle to reconcile the many contradictions he sees—between being Christian and being black; between being American and being black; between faith and suffering; between his life at Union [Theological Seminary as a distinguished theological professor] and the street life of Harlem—[is what] continues to fuel him.”

Selected writings

Black Theology and Black Power, Seabury, 1969.

A Black Theology of Liberation, Lippincott, 1970.

The Spirituals and the Blues, Seabury, 1972, reprinted, Orbis, 1991.

God and the Oppressed, Seabury, 1975.

For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church, Orbis, 1984.

My Soul Looks Back, Orbis.

Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare, Orbis, 1991.

Contributing editor, Christianity & Crisis, Review of Religious Research, Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center.

Sources

Books

Cone, James H., Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare, Orbis, 1991.

Periodicals

Ebony, August 1991.

Library Journal, October 15, 1984.

New York Review of Books, September 26, 1991.

New York Times Book Review, March 17, 1991.

Publishers Weekly, February 15, 1991; October 25, 1991.

—Marjorie Burgess

Contemporary Black Biography Burgess, Marjorie

James Hall Cone

views updated Jun 27 2018

James Hall Cone

The American theologian James Hall Cone (born 1938) was the author of the first major attempt to integrate Black Power philosophy with theology. He became the leading exponent of Black theology in the decades following the 1960s.

James Hall Cone was born in Fordyce, Arkansas, on August 5, 1938. After attending the local schools, he received a B.A. degree from Philander Smith College (Arkansas) in 1958, a B.D. degree from Garrett Theological Seminary (Wisconsin) in 1961, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University in 1963 and 1965, respectively. He taught religion at Philander Smith College, Adrian College (Michigan), and beginning in 1970 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he was awarded the distinguished Charles A. Briggs Chair in systematic theology in 1977. He was visiting professor at several colleges and universities throughout the United States, including Drew University, Princeton Theological Seminary, University of Notre Dame, and Howard University. He lectured throughout the world and in virtually every state in the Union. Cone received the American Black Achievement Award, in the category of Religion in 1992.

James Cone became the preeminent Black theologian in the United States and the leading exponent for what is termed Black theology. The decade of the 1960s was a period of great social and racial turmoil in the United States. The civil rights movement of the early and mid 1960s with its model of passive resistance, led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had become more militant and separatist toward the end of that decade, with Malcolm X the most charismatic leader of this more revolutionary approach on the part of some Blacks. "Black power" became the clarion call for this more radical segment. The time was ripe for Black theologians to articulate a new vision of theology that would be geared to the Black Power movement.

The first major attempt to integrate Black Power with theology was James Cone's book Black Theology and Black Power (1969). Here Cone developed the thesis that Black Power is "Christ's central message to twentieth century America," that Black Power means "complete emancipation of Black people from white oppression by whatever means Black people deem necessary," and that "Whether whites want to hear it or not, Christ is Black, baby, with all the features which are so detestable to white society." Such rhetoric was not likely to win friends among white people, so consequently Cone became the target of a barrage of white criticism. What his critics failed to do was to read Cone's book from cover to cover, for in the final paragraph of his book he explains: "Being black in America has very little to do with skin color. To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are. … Being reconciled to God does not mean that one's skin is physically black. It essentially depends on the color of your heart, soul, and mind." For Cone, then, blackness is a symbol for the oppressed and whiteness is a symbol for the oppressor.

In his subsequent writings Cone consistently maintained the use of these symbols. In his second book, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), Cone's rhetoric sounds strident if one fails to understand his use of the terms black and white. For example: "To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores." Or again, "Black theology will accept only a love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy." In looking back on these earlier books, Cone later admitted that he would no longer use such extreme language, but, nevertheless, his condemnation of racism and oppression was as strong as ever.

James Cone's influence continued to grow after the publication of his first book in 1969. He played a major role as catalyst in the emergence of liberation theologies throughout the Third World in their concern to free the oppressed from political, social, and economic misery. He was an effective spokesperson at the meetings of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, which beginning in 1976 brought together theologians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. One of the most remarkable qualities about James Cone was his ability and willingness to grow and change with the times as he confronted new challenges. As early as 1977 he had come to see that Christian theology must develop a world-embracing vision that extends far beyond the immediate concerns of Black America and the particularities of the Christian faith. He wrote in Cross Currents in 1977: "I think that the time has come for black theologians and church people to move beyond a mere reaction to white racism in America and begin to extend our vision of a new socially constructed humanity in the whole inhabited world. … For humanity is whole, and cannot be isolated into racial and national groups." Cone readily admitted that in his earlier years as a theologian he failed to appreciate that he was guilty of male chauvinism and sexist language, especially with respect to Black women. In the introduction to the revised edition of Black Theology and Black Power he wondered aloud, "With black women playing such a dominant role in the African-American liberation struggle, past and present, how could I have been so blind?"

Twenty years after the first release of A Black Theology of Liberation, Cone's Martin & Malcolm & America compared the messages and missions of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. "Paradoxically, in some ways Malcolm has more to say to us today than Martin does. Malcolm had seen the nightmare early on and had learned to carve out hope. Martin began with the dream and faced the nightmare toward the end of his life when he began to see the massive poverty in the ghettos of Los Angeles and Chicago. He began to recognize the sickness of American society and widened his vision to include the black urban poor and the poor of the Third World."

Cone's willingness to learn as well as to teach was a mark of his true greatness. He ranks in the top echelon of theologians of all races and faiths today who are most admired and respected. In addition to his incisive writings he was a brilliant lecturer and a fiery preacher. And if the medium is the message, then the teachings of James Cone find their most eloquent testimony in the charisma and quality of his personal life and human relationships.