James Cone\'s \"Christ in Black

¶ … James Cone's "Christ in Black Theology," discuss his theological method, including his social location, theological sources, use of symbol, and his use of scripture.

James Cone practices what he himself calls a Black Theology of liberation ("Risks of faith: the emergence of a Black theology of Liberation"). As he himself wrote that what is needed is a theological method that goes beyond stating what "God is doing" and grounds the justification for religion in practice.

Cone sees the Black people as manifestation of Christianity's suffering people (the very essence of the suffering of the Cross in the lynching), as manifest of Christ as He truly is (i.e. oppression), and, therefore, as representative of what Christianity is really supposed to be .

What James Cone does is to construct a theology that is solidly rooted in the lives of the Black community. The experience of the Black people, he asserts, is not simply folk tradition but intrinsic value to the Christian experience, and his theology asserts that race, culture, and religion intersect and that this intersection should be taken seriously.

As theology in its general sense, he sees Christianity as captive to hegemonic forces of racism and capitalist exploitation. Christianity likes to allege its universalism, but, as Cone emphasizes, there is no universal humanity but only oppression, and this oppression exists even in the name of Christianity. Cone's is truly a contemporary interpretation very much in the American experience, which sees individuals who call themselves Christians distinguishing others according to race and economic situation. The true Christian, according to the way I understand Cone, is he/she who manages to deal with her oppression in a creative manner thus transcending her challenges in a manner that accords love rather than evil.

We see this from the text. All christological symbols are connected to the Black people and to their oppression under the White. 'Sin' for instance, is the attempt by the Black to occlude his color and try to become White. "Sin represents the condition of estrangement from the source of one's being" (196). Christ is the essence of Christianity, but a white Christ is someone whom the Black people cannot identify with because White is synonymous with oppression: "If Christ is White and not Black, he is an oppressor and we must kill him" (199). The suffering Christ as evocative of the suffering Black, still oppressed under the hegemony of a racist supremacy, and the Cross-is an expression of the lynching.

All reverts back to the Black experience: use of scripture, theological sources, Christological symbolism -- all is interpreted and used to serve as shrill cry of liberation form White Christianity and articulation of Black theology.

Jesus is ultimately an interpretation of man's mind. White people fashion Christ according to their interpretation and experience (generally as a mild, easy-going man who manifests long-suffering love and mercy). Jesus however -- claims Cone -- was far more than that. Distorted by the White race, he was in reality symbol of Oppression "whose earthly existence as bound up with the oppressed of the land" (202). Jesus was one with the poor and the outcast. He was born in a stable, and his affiliation, mission, and sympathy has always been with the poor.

There are many people who are Christian in name ("The history of Christianity. is a history of human enslavement" (208)), but the true Christian is the one who is helpless and vulnerable for thus was Christ and to that man was his sympathy directed. In a sense, therefore, Cone, is refashioning Christ to reflect the Black experience and asserting that the Black Christ -- the oppressed Christ -- has a special connection to people who are Black and in contemporary America this refers to exploited and Black people.

Discuss the theological method of U.S. feminist theologians as presented by Elizabeth Johnson: What is the central question being addressed? Who is the audience? What are some of the sources used to enflesh the question and articulate the revelatory answer? How does she use traditional Christian symbols? How would you evaluate her theological position?

Johnson's theological platform is similar to that of Cone's, but, instead, focuses on a feminist agenda. Her frustration lies with God, for instance, still being alluded as 'He' by both by the Old Testament and by Jesus, for instance. The connotation, therefore, is that men (since God is portrayed as masculine) are more godlike than women.

For Johnson, cultural biases amongst biblical scribes and interpreters as well as commentators and traditionalists of the Catholic Church have resulted in women's diminished role in western religious traditions in general, and in the Catholic Church in particular.

In "She who is..," Johnson focuses on God as metaphor and symbolism of Christological perversion of gender equality. Man, in other words, uses the icon of God to promote himself and demote women by imbuing the Divine figurehead with masculine descriptivism and attributes.

In her book, Johnson conjoins both faith and feminism where as Johnson says she wrestles with the "central symbols of the Christian tradition." Johnson's discussion enters around God. Her opening question is our need to talk about God: after all, God is often associated with oppression, and God has been used as opiate to diverge form reality. However, talk about God shapes our highest values and directs the way we see the world as well as being "inseparable from solicitude for all creatures, and in particular for human beings" (14). The ultimate question, rather, is how we perceive and talk about God and here Johnson condemns the image of God as absolute male monarch arguing that we should better perceive Him in male and female terms.

Johnson proceeds to argue that God can be glimpsed from within female experience and alarming though it may sound God is revealed in all presence, therefore, "women's awakening to their own human worth can be interpreted at the same time as a new experience of God" (62).