A Critical Interpretation of Speaking Truth to Power: Re-Presenting the Theological Methodology of James H. Cone

By Darvin Adams

My PhD adviser and the president of Chicago Theological Seminary, Stephen G. Ray, Jr., reminds us that James Hal Cone was not only the Father of Black Liberation Theology, but he was also the Father of Liberation Theology proper. Cone was the first of all liberation theologians to construct a systematic theology for the human experience of systemic oppression. The preeminent voice of thinking theologically about the Black experience in the United States, Cone’s constructive method can be described as a revolutionary theological anthropology. Cone's thought, in concert with Paul Tillich, stresses the idea that theology is not universal, but tied to specific historical contexts. Here, Cone intentionally critiques the Western tradition of abstract theologizing by examining the tenets of its social context. While Cone is heavily influenced by such thinkers as Karl Barth, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Karl Marx, at the heart of his methodology lies an inspirational ability to speak theological and cultural truths to empirical and colonial powers as the truth of God is revealed to him. Whether one considers Cone’s methodology as the strength of his theology or vice-versa, Cone successfully references the structural sins of white theology and the white church as the major reason for the tragic history of human oppression amongst Black Americans. As part of his theological analysis, Cone argues for God's own identification with "blackness" whereby the Black experience of suffering and oppression is identified with the experience of God in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit for the purposeful motif of human liberation.

The major themes of Cone’s theological method are God, Jesus Christ, racism, suffering (survival) and liberation. Cone’s view of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are referenced in the Old Testament book of Exodus, the Prophets and various books in the New Testament. In view of the Bible as the Word of God, Cone believes that the gospel portrayal of Jesus Christ in solidarity with the poor is the gospel message. Hence, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the ultimate act of liberation. For Cone, Black theology and the Black Church are products of this biblical tradition. The Bible is important, but it is not the starting point for theological reflection. Both the Black experience and the Bible serve as major sources for Cone’s revolutionary vision of Black Liberation Theology. Methodologically, Cone reads the Bible through the lens of the Black experience. For Cone, the Black experience narrates the history of Black struggle and cultural survival. By most accounts, Cone’s theology is a survival theology of the Black human experience in that Black survival encompasses the everyday realities of life and death. As Cone sees it, the experience of crisis within one's human identity calls for a particular type of truth-telling; one that renders a prophetic, theological analysis of how Black people have been caught in the systemic web of white social, economic and political power (privilege).

Cone’s theological method draws upon the various resources of African-American religion and Black culture for the purposes of speaking the truth and constructing a liberating theology for oppressed Black folk. Using oppression as both source and norm, Cone's unique ability to speak truth to power affirms the Black experience as a source of theological reflection. In this frame of theological thought, Cone contends that human beings cannot test the truth of the Black narrative by using intellectual categories that were not created from the Black experience itself. Cone contends that, “There is no truth for and about Black people that does not emerge out of their experience.”

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