flying.farther

Above, the reader will note a new tab: Theological Responses to the Wright Fiasco.

I decided to order the reflections on Liberation theology, Jeremiah Wright, James Cone, Barack Obama, and the media fiasco and to make a space for such a list. I expect such a tab to become somewhat important around November. I also have found some current readers show up at some of the less important posts, so in an effort to guide the reader towards the core, I have also emphasized certain posts on the list. Lastly, I suspect for now, the majority of people would not care for continuing posts, but I do plan on updating the list when need be in the future, say, around election time when all those negative adds slam Wright to slam Obama.

There was a decent summary piece on Black Liberation Theology in the New York Times yesterday. It attempts to locate Dr. Wright within the historical movement of Black Liberation Theology, and in order to do so, James Cone and Gary Dorrien, both professors at Union, are interviewed. Its worth a quick read and it is certainly better than much of what the media has put out so far.

Interestingly, the article covers two specific subjects that I want to make sure are addressed — one normally ignored, and the other, a focal point for controversy. The first is the acknowledgement of Catholic Liberation theology in the discussion of Black Liberation theology:

Even as Dr. Cone and others such as the Rev. William A. Jones at Bethany Baptist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, crafted a theology of black liberation, Catholic theologians in Central and South America crafted their own liberation theology, arguing that God placed the impoverished peasants closest to his heart.

There is little evidence that one liberationist talked to another; rather, these were cornstalks rising in a fertile and revolutionary field. “These were remarkable similar arguments, that oppressed people have their own way of hearing the Gospel,” said Dr. Dorrien of the Union Theological Seminary.

On this note, I’ve got a copied picture of Dorothy Sölle, Jürgen Moltmann, Gustavo Guitérrez, James Cone, and Christopher Morse from years ago taken here at Union - Cone still had his fro and some were wearing plaid. And after seeing this picture last year, I asked Dorrien, since Guitérrez spent a year at Union in the early 70s (hence the picture), if there was much talk then between Guitérrez and Cone, and Dorrien said the same thing then as he was quoted in the article, “there seemed to have been little talk, if at all.” I suppose this shows how far Liberation theology has come today, where there seems to be a lot of conversation. However, I am also wary that the article does not spend enough time on the Marxist aside. It seems that still today Marxism is a loaded term and to have such a small mention might have been irresponsible.

The second issue addressed in the article are Wright’s comments concerning AIDS as understood by Cone:

Dr. Cone, the black liberation theology theorist, has known Mr. Wright for decades and says he much admires his provocations. But when Mr. Wright opined recently that the United States government may have used AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black people (Mr. Wright notes, correctly, that the United States has tried biological warfare on foreign nations), Dr. Cone winced.

“I don’t believe that,” Dr. Cone says. “But I will say that when blacks look at what government has done to black people, the eugenics and the syphilis, it’s easy to get angry.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: I hope our government didn’t introduce AIDS, but its not like the United States has a track record that says the contrary. I don’t want to believe it happened, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore the other abuses that the United State pulled, which was so similar to the Nazi doctors in concentration camps. With all this in mind, no wonder liberation theology operates through a hermeneutic of suspicion.

With this whole hoopla around Dr. Jeremiah Wright, perhaps the most frustrating part, besides the airing of an out-of-context, five-second clip over and over, was that virtually no one talked to Wright himself. Well, thats going to change tonight. I’d heard some rumors this past week, but now even CNN is reporting that Wright will be on Moyers tonight, so I figured I would mention it as well. Moyers, 9 PM on the east coast on PBS.

I’ll post links later when the interview is up on the Moyers website. In the mean time, for those who still feel they need a first time introduction to black liberation theology, or a re-fresher course, watch Cone interview on Bill Moyer’s Journal here.

Prof. James Cone gave an interview that was aired on NPR’s Fresh Air. You can listen to it online here (about 13 minutes). The podcast is available here. Dwight Hopkins is in a follow up interview here (about 28 minutes).

If one wants to see more of Cone, check out his interview on Bill Moyer’s Journal (about 40 minutes).

Now, perhaps a fair, popular discussion can happen, or is that asking too much?

Edit: Apparently Prof. Cone gave NPR an hour and a half interview. From that time, NPR aired 13 minutes. I guess everyone fails sometime? I just wish it wasn’t on this.

It seems that people are still latching onto about Black Liberation theology. Although most seem to be Republicans now, churning up material in case Obama gets the Democratic ticket.

Politics aside, it still concerns me how much slander is involved when bringing up Black Liberation theology. See this if you feel you need yet another example. (I’m going to stop posting one-sided journalistic failures on this blog unless I’ll be examining it in the same post.)

However, I think some of you will be glad to know what was told to the Union community a few days back:

On Monday, March 31 at 3:00pm, WNYC–93.9 FM–will broadcast an extensive interview with Professor Cone on Black Liberation Theology.

It will be repeated on the AM station at 7:00pm the same day. The show originates with “Fresh Air” on WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, with Terry Gross, and will reach 500 NPR stations that day.

I have massive respect for NPR. I expect they won’t “let Cone off the hook” and will ask insightful questions, but I also expect a fair interview and one that lets Cone speak up on the radio for popular-ish consumption. I do not care where one falls on the spectrum of opinions about Cone, this I am quite sure, will be worth hearing.

Video h/t to I am a son of God.

As much as I appreciate J. Kameron Carter’s work already and look forward to his forth coming book, Race: A Theological Account, I worry that many people will simply pick up his book and begin to engage race from a contemporary starting point.

Carter is making a critique of Cone, but Carter is also indebted to Cone in a number of fundamental ways. Black theology would not exist today the way it is, if it were not for the space that Cone created (not to mention the entire tradition stretching back centuries even). I suggest that, and I myself will be doing this this summer to refresh and learn things I do not know, we must go back to reading W.E.B. DuBois and others that have carried the tradition forward. Carter, as far as I understand, is still very much in his tradition and we must seek it out. We must not be lazy. Honest theological discussion is hard work.

Also, in some respects, Carter is seeking a fulfillment to what Cone has been yelling about for years, mostly to deaf ears. Cone insists that race is a theological problem. Yet still theology by and large has avoided such a topic. Interestingly, Carter’s book, by virtue of its title alone, is addressing Cone’s direction at the same time it deconstructs and reconstructs. To understand Carter, we will need to understand Cone.

I figured it would be good for readers to be able to see all the posts I’ve done recently on this whole fiasco surrounding Wright and Obama. Heres the list so far in chronological order:

1. Obama, Race, and Theology: A theological analysis of Obama’s speech.

2. Cone on CNN?: A rumor that hasn’t seemed to have panned out unfortunately.

3. A Humble Suggestion: Suggesting a book along the title of Religion Still Matters for Cornel West.

4. Wright’s Sermon: A longer video of Dr. Wright’s sermon where he utters the infamous phrase “God damn America.”

5. Understanding Wright by Understanding Cone: Black Liberation Theology from Cone: A very short introduction to reading Cone.

6. Carter on Obama: Citing J. Kameron Carter’s response to Obama’s speech.

7. Cone Explained: How the Media, Politicos, and Others Like Them are Stupid as a Brick and Got it All Wrong: Explaining the significance of Tillichian symbolism in Cone’s work, how one should rightly understand what Cone does say, and a link to Carter’s critique.

Yes, dear readers, I’m still pissed over this media hyped bullshit surrounding Wright and Liberation theology. There really is no other word for it. Oh, and maybe “stupid as a brick” works also. The thing is, as much as Sean Hannity, the rest of Fox News and other conservatives are to blame, so are the other media outlets. There seems to be an entire breakdown in journalistic ethics, among other things. When a loud voice is lazy, no one can afford it.

I feel some what compelled to explain Cone, so that out of context quotes like such:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

are put back into their context. Remember everyone, nothing is intelligible without context. There must be a frame work to interpret through, literary or historical, otherwise these are meaningless symbols on the page.

The first thing that the media, and others on blogs who simply copy and paste from the pitiful Spengler article, do not seem to grasp the idea of understanding their subject. Ask a theologian who is aware of Cone on a competent level and immediately ontology and Tillichian symbolism will surface. By the way, Cone footnotes Tillich a lot in A Black Theology of Liberation. (You can read up on ‘ole grab-ass here if you need to.)

In A Black Theology of Liberation, Cone makes the claim that Jesus was black. However, this rightly understood means that Jesus is ontologically black today. See the quote below:

If Jesus is the Suffering Servant of God, he is an oppressed being who has taken on that very form of human existence that is responsible for human misery. What we need to ask is this: ‘What is the form of humanity that accounts for human suffering in our society? What is it, except blackness?’ If Christ is truly the Suffering Servant of God who takes upon himself the suffering of his people, thereby reestablishing the covenant of God, the he must be black.

…But some whites will ask, ‘Does black theology believe that Jesus was really black?’ It seems to me that the literal color of Jesu is irrelevant as are the different shades of blackness in America. Generally speaking, blacks are not oppressed on the basis of the depths of their blackness. ‘Light’ blacks are oppressed just as much as “dark” blacks. But as it happens, Jesus was not white in any sense of the word, literally or theologically. Therefore, Alber Cleage is not too far wrong when he describes Jesus as a black Jew; and he is certainly on solid theological grounds when he describes Christ as the Black Messiah.

James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 20th Anniversary Edition, 122-123.

Here is where Tillich comes into play: “Jesus is black” is a symbol - a concrete reality that points or mediates something transcendent. Jesus was a Jew severely oppressed by the Romans. However, if Jesus were in 1970 USA when Cone wrote A Black Theology of Liberation, Cone is saying that Jesus would be black, not white. It was blacks who underwent (and arguably still do) the oppression, sexual humiliation and lynching that are all too similar to Roman occupation and crucifixion.

See? Not that hard. People quoting just need to care to read.

So the implications that follow from such a statement are, that the white church is not following Jesus and in fact, the white person needs to become ontologically black - not in skin per se, remember this is symbolism, but in action (praxis). I’ve heard Cone mention that Dietrich Bonhoeffer would fit the description of an ontologically black while a literal white man. Blackness is not relegated to skin pigmentation, its deeper than that (although those with dark pigmentation find they are oppressed because of their skin in America).

Now, one might say, this merely looks like moving one’s social location, and indeed it is that, but more. Cone has made the argument in class that liberation theology is not responding to the question of believer/unbeliever, but instead oppressed/oppressor. Therefore, the “white church” or “white god” takes on a whole new meaning. And quite honestly, it should. When the white authorities look the other way, or involved themselves, in lynching on Saturday and then on Sunday went to church all dressed up, one would think that would cause quite a stir - to be the oppressor and yet identify as if one is Jesus, the one who was oppressed? That is the wrong kind of scandalous. To such a life style that lives so blindly, liberation theology and the suffering of Jesus is rightly a scandal, a scandal as the cross should be. The status quo is the white god that kills to keep populations down. What kind of Christianity is that? Is that actually Christianity at all?

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan of J. Kameron Carter’s critique of Cone and I think the move that Carter makes puts out a more fruitful ecclesiology. He has a book coming out soon, but for any of you anxious to see some other work, check out Carter’s article “Christology, or Redeeming Whiteness: A Response to Jame’s Perkinson’s Appropriation of Black Theology”:

This brings us to an alternative scriptural interpretation of the meaning of baptism and, thus, an alternative for understanding Perkinson’s claim that the problem of racism “is as deep as the body one inhabits.” That alternative is this: Baptism is induction into a different mode of being in the world, one that surpasses the mode of being whose nodal points are the hegemonic and the counterhegemonic. Christ, under this alternative, does not symbolize the existential possibility of receiving the other into oneself so that one no longer lives hegemonically. He does not symbolize how whites can be “redeemed” by expanding their existential horizons so that “black pain and power [might be] at work” in them. For, in actuality, this is not immersion into the other at all. It is the other being subsumed into the constituting “I,” an “I” that has chosen, in an egalitarian gesture, to expand its borders from being a “mom and pop” store to being a shopping mall. Inhabiting or being received into Christ’s actual body in such a way that one lays no claim to naming oneself and, therefore, in which one holds nothing of oneself back in self-possession-this is what baptism represents in this second alternative. Baptism in this second alternative involves handing oneself over to God in Christ so as to receive oneself back as gift. This is the deeper meaning of Christ’s baptism, which cannot be severed from the event of the Cross.

For those of you who do not know much on Black Liberation Theology, heres a little post for you. If you want to see more on Cone’s thought, rather than just the book suggestions below, see this post.

I remember an interview of Dr. Wright a few years back where he cites James Cone and Dwight Hopkins as the church’s chief theological influences. Funny enough, Sean Hannity said he’d gone to seminary, which by any standard after seeing the interview, his seminary failed him (or he failed himself) because he displayed an appalling lack of understanding to say the least. (Edit: I’m told he went to a “minor seminary” which apparently means a Catholic high school. If this is true, he seems to think some theological training back in high school is good enough? Either way, minor seminary or graduate school, he is woefully out of his element.)

Now, for James Cone, where to start? He basically started, as an academic pursuit, Black Liberation Theology and has written numerous books. However, it might actually be best to start with Dwight Hopkins’ Introducing Black Theology of Liberation. An introductory text will always be helpful. I would also suggest giving the Cone interview on Bill Moyer’s Journal a watch. I find myself from time to time revisiting it. Its a terrific interview.

You want to go straight to the source and read Cone’s books? Well there is, to name a select few: A Black Theology of Liberation, Black Theology and Black Power, God of the Oppressed, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare, Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998.

Personally, I think Risks of Faith to be one of the most accessible books in the short list. It has been required in two different classes by two different professors here at Union and for good reason, it is actually a collection of articles spanning Cone’s career and makes a great little package. Martin and Malcom is essentially Cone’s theology in one book. Anyone reading Cone needs to go through God of the Oppressed - you just shouldn’t even try to get around it. A Black Theology of Liberation is the beginning construction of, you guessed it, Black Liberation Theology. Black Theology and Black Power again, this needs to be read if you’re reading Cone. This was his first book and it was from here that he launched towards the project of Black Liberation Theology.

I suppose if one were to read one book (which really shouldn’t be done, shame on you), I’d go with A Black Theology of Liberation. It is a seminal work, the beginning of his constructive work, etc. If one is going to read BTL, some concepts, theology, and theologians you need to understand or be aware of are: Paul Tillich and his idea of symbolism, Jürgen Moltmann and Hope Theology, Reinhold Niebuhr and his anthropology and conceptions of power, Karl Barth, W. E. B. DuBois, Rudolf Bultmann, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King Jr. to name a few.

Below is one of the foundational turns that Cone makes in BTL. Jesus was black.

If Jesus is the Suffering Servant of God, he is an oppressed being who has taken on that very form of human existence that is responsible for human misery. What we need to ask is this: ‘What is the form of humanity that accounts for human suffering in our society? What is it, except blackness?’ If Christ is truly the Suffering Servant of God who takes upon himself the suffering of his people, thereby reestablishing the covenant of God, the he must be black.

…But some whites will ask, ‘Does black theology believe that Jesus was really black?’ It seems to me that the literal color of Jesus is irrelevant as are the different shades of blackness in America. Generally speaking, blacks are not oppressed on the basis of the depths of their blackness. ‘Light’ blacks are oppressed just as much as “dark” blacks. But as it happens, Jesus was not white in any sense of the word, literally or theologically. Therefore, Alber Cleage is not too far wrong when he describes Jesus as a black Jew; and he is certainly on solid theological grounds when he describes Christ as the Black Messiah.

James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, 20th Anniversary Edition, 122-123.

Read more on what it means for Jesus to be black here.

Cone is also working on, soon to put it out, a book on lynching and, as indicated in the Moyer’s interview, drawing connections between lynchings of blacks and the crucifixion of Jesus. It should be an interesting work and very helpful. As far as I can see, it will not be so much a change in Cone’s work as it continues his project as he fleshes it out.

For all that Cone has done, he is not without his critics. Of the critics I have read, I think perhaps the most interesting is J. Kameron Carter of Duke’s Divinity School. He is putting out a book quite soon called Race: A Theological Account.

Rumor has it that Prof. James Cone of Union Theological Seminary will be on CNN soon. Apparently he wasn’t on earlier because classes come first, or so fellow students say. I like him, even if I don’t like R. Niebuhr much.

The subsumed, or sometimes overt racist overtones (heres to looking at you Limbaugh - asinine is too charitable a word), coupled with the media’s profound ignorance of Black Liberation theology has put out some amazingly ill informed content to put it kindly. Pretty much a bunch of sound bites and the most superficial punditry nonsense. Journalism here sucks, especially when it comes to theology. This kind of reminds me of the whole William’s fiasco not too long ago.

So keep a look out on CNN by TV or internet, because Cone should be on soon and finally help bring some clarity to this whole fiasco.