The Significance of James Cone

By Dr. Stephen Ray

Dr. James H. Cone

As we prepare to welcome Dr. James H. Cone for the 2010 Academic Convocation, let us reflect on the importance of his work for the field of theology and for the Church. Cone might rightly be classed as one of the most significant North American theologians of the 20th century. His work has been influential in the development of numerous liberation theologies, Womanist theology and has been an important dialogue partner with North American and European political theologies. With the publication of his book Black Theology and Black Power Cone shifted the terms of theology in the West. His work accomplished this in two ways. The first was to expose the captivity of the Christian faith to the ideologies which maintained the system of racial oppression in the United States. The second was to place the lives of Black peoples and their communities at the center of theological reflection in a racist society as an act faithfulness to the historic faith. These two projects would then become the center and signature of the movement named Black Theology.

To fully appreciate Cone’s work it is necessary to revisit the particular historical moment in which Black Theology, as such, was born. The United States had just experienced one of the most dramatic transformations in its history as a nation. During the decade leading up to the publication of Black Theology and Black Power the modern Civil Rights Movement had reached its zenith. The legal system of segregation was being taken apart, bit by bit, and the cultural norms which underlie the system of Jim and Jane Crow were being transformed. The nation, as was most of the world, was being dramatically changed yet, in the field of theology in the United States was proceeding apace as if nothing new was happening. In seminary classrooms, at academic meetings, and journals the questions of the day were which side one might choose between neo-orthodoxy or the God is Dead movement—a debate about symbols and language. Or, the discourses raged around who one might find more affinity with Tillich or Barth. Or, the theological reflection focused on what Vatican II might mean for the Protestant church. Or . . . However one might finish this sentence it would most assuredly not have been about theological reflection on the struggles being waged by people of good faith against the systems of racial oppression which were destroying lives and communities of Black people specifically, and the soul of the nation more generally. And so it was in the decade leading up to the April 4, 1968.

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Dr. Stephen Ray is the Neal F . and Ila A. Fisher Professor of Systematic Theology at Garrett-Evangelical. To learn more about James H. Cone and the 2010 Academic Convocation at Garrett-Evangelical go to www.Garrett.edu/convocation.