Cone

Abstract

James Cone is broadly recognized as the founding figure of black theology, but the chapter argues that Cone’s work after the early 1970s takes a subtle secularist turn. In his earliest, most powerful writings, Cone embraces paradox. Blackness is at once empirical reality and ontological symbol. Hope is at once this-worldly and other-worldly. The agent of historical change is at once the human and God. These and many other paradoxes echo the central paradox of Cone’s work: Jesus Christ is at once human and divine. This chapter argues that Cone’s early work proposes for black theology an aesthetics of paradox that short-circuits both white supremacy and secularism. However, as the conversation about black theology expanded, and as Cone’s work itself developed, paradox was abandoned in a misguided effort at inclusiveness. As black theologians saw parallels between anti-black oppression and other forms of oppression, and as they explored the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, migration, and other issues, black theology became tethered to worldly concerns. This chapter ponders whether it might be possible for black theology to be responsive to multiple and intersecting oppressions while also embracing a decidedly theological idiom that takes paradox as its heart.