Abstract
The objective of this essay is to investigate the public function of Christian theology in the (politico-theological writings and hermeneutics of James H. Cone. It is also to articulate a critique of white American theology. In Cone’s work, Christian theology is expressed as a public discourse and testimony of God’s continuing emancipative movements and empowering presence in society with the goal (1) to set the oppressed and the vulnerable free, (2) to readjust the things of the world toward divine justice and peace, and (3) to bring healing and restoration to the places in which volitional (human) agents have inflicted pain, suffering, oppression, and all forms of evil. This essay is an attempt to imagine creatively with new hermeneutical lenses and approaches—anti-imperial, liberative, and postcolonial—the task of Christian theology as public witness to carry out the emancipative agenda and reconciling mission (salvation, healing, hospitality, wholeness, reconciliation, and peace) of God in contemporary societies and in our postcolonial moments. The basic argument of this essay is twofold. First, it contends for the essential role of liberation theology as a public witness in redefining Christian theology in general. Rather than being a “special interest” or merely political theme in theology, it suggests that black liberation theology has a special role to play in “freeing” Christian theology from racism, oppression, and imperialism. Second, by promoting some new understanding of Cone’s work and applying it in some new context, this article is deploying Cone’s public theology to critique or awaken dominant white theology to a new way of thinking about the whole field of theology in the 21 st century.
Highlights
White Christianity and White Theology: The belief in the white version of Christianity and white articulation of Christian theology is prominent among both white American Christians and white American theologians; it is connected to the ideology of the divine election of America as a white and Christian nation, and that the “white church” and the theological reflections done by white religious thinkers are the best models to imitate and to think theologically and Christianly
The five underlying factors outlined above would lead to a web of complex relations: the emergence of various protest and cultural-political movements throughout American history, from the eighteenth to the first-half of the 20th century, the creation of African American Christianity (“The Black Church”), what we may call “Black religious tradition,” as a counterreligious movement to White Christian hegemony during the time of slavery; subsequently, the development of the Civil Rights Movement, the social-political and moral activism of Martin Luther King, Jr., the emergence of Black Power Movement, and the birth of Black Theology could be traced historically to the 1960s—an era in which Blacks proclaimed their humanity in the midst of cultural despair, white terror, and existential alienation
The task of Christian theology is to analyze the meaning of hope in God in such a way that the oppressed community of a given society will risk all for earthly freedom, a freedom made possible in the resurrection of Jesus
Summary
By providing three main examples, the second part of the essay demonstrates the bankruptcy of white American theology and Cone’s constructive criticisms to white theological discourse. It showcases how an “other worldly” Christianity consistently dehumanizes the black other, and mangles Christian theology itself into a mere cover for human oppression. The third part discusses the task of Christian theology in the quest for human flourishing It demonstrates how Cone’s project of black liberation affirms the humanity and agency of the oppressed and has the potential to redefine Christianity for all people as this-worldly, engaged, situated, and attuned to the healing of suffering in the present, rather than Christianity as other worldly ideology covering racism, oppression, and imperialism
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