James Cone

Abstract

Abstract James Cone (b. 1938), a long time professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York, is widely regarded as the most prominent and influential African American theologian of the twentieth century. His groundbreaking writings in black liberation theology in the late 196os and early 1970s, and beyond, have been foundational for all subsequent work and reflection on theology and ethics from African American perspectives. James Cone clearly sees himself as a theologian grounded in the Bible. Reflecting on the social and political contexts that shaped the writing of his first book, Black Theology and Black Power (1969), contexts of the suffering and oppression of African Americans in such cities as Detroit, Watts, and Newark in the middle to late 1960s, Cone writes: Of significance here is that Cone views the Bible as the primary source for theological reflection, and that he characterizes this view as instinctive or natural, a reflection of the prominent role the Bible has played in the African American church tradition in which Cone was reared. Elsewhere, Cone refers to his “assumption that Scripture is the primary source of theological speech.” Indeed, for Cone, “that Christian theology must begin with Scripture appears selfevident Without this basic witness Christianity would be meaningless. This point seems so obvious to me that it is almost impossible to think otherwise.”