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A landmark in the conversation about race and religion in America. "They put him to death by hanging him on a tree." Acts 10:39 The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and "black death," the cross symbolizes divine power and "black life" God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era. In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Well, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.
"The introduction to this edition by Cornel West was originally published in Dwight N. Hopkins, ed., Black Faith and Public Talk: Critical Essays on James H. Cone's Black Theology & Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999; reprinted 2007 by Baylor University Press)."
This autobiographical work is truly the capstone to the career of the man widely regarded as the "Father of Black Theology." Dr. Cone, a distinguished professor at Union Theological Seminary, died April 27, 2018. During the 1960s and O70s he argued for racial justice and an interpretation of the Christian Gospel that elevated the voices of the oppressed.ssed.
Reveals how Christian colorblindness expanded white evangelicalism and excluded Black evangelicals In the decades after the civil rights movement, white Americans turned to an ideology of colorblindness. Personal kindness, not systemic reform, seemed to be the way to solve racial problems. In those same decades, a religious movement known as evangelicalism captured the nation’s attention and became a powerful political force. In The Myth of Colorblind Christians, Jesse Curtis shows how white evangelicals’ efforts to grow their own institutions created an evangelical form of whiteness, infusing the politics of colorblindness with sacred fervor. Curtis argues that white evangelicals deployed a Christian brand of colorblindness to protect new investments in whiteness. While black evangelicals used the rhetoric of Christian unity to challenge racism, white evangelicals repurposed this language to silence their black counterparts and retain power, arguing that all were equal in Christ and that Christians should not talk about race. As white evangelicals portrayed movements for racial justice as threats to Christian unity and presented their own racial commitments as fidelity to the gospel, they made Christian colorblindness into a key pillar of America’s religio-racial hierarchy. In the process, they anchored their own identities and shaped the very meaning of whiteness in American society. At once compelling and timely, The Myth of Colorblind Christians exposes how white evangelical communities avoided antiracist action and continue to thrive today.
Reexamines the ideology of the two most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1960s
"What is the relationship," James Cone asks, "between my training as a theologian and the black struggle for freedom? For what reason has God allowed a poor black boy from Bearden to become a professional systematic theologian? As I struggled with these questions...I could not escape the overwhelming conviction that God's spirit was calling me to do what I could for the enhancement of justice in the world, especially on behalf of my people. 'My Soul Looks Back' chronicles the author's grappling with these questions, as well as his formulation of an answer--an answer that would lead to the development of a black theology of liberation. Firmly rooted in the black church tradition, James Cone relates the formative features of his faith journey, from his childhood experience in Bearden, Arkansas, and his father's steadfast resistance to racism, through racial discrimination in graduate school, to his controversial articulation of a faith that seeks to break the shackles of racial oppression. In describing his more recent encounters with feminist, Marxist, and Third World thinkers, James Cone provides a compelling description of liberation theology, and a vivid portrayal of what it means to profess "a faith that does justice". (Back cover).
John D. Caputo stretches his project as a radical theologian to new limits in this groundbreaking book. Mapping out his summative theological position, he identifies with Martin Luther to take on notions of the hidden god, the theology of the cross, confessional theology, and natural theology. Caputo also confronts the dark side of the cross with its correlation to lynching and racial and sexual discrimination. Caputo is clear that he is not writing as any kind of orthodox Lutheran but is instead engaging with a radical view of theology, cosmology, and poetics of the cross. Readers will recognize Caputo's signature themes—hermeneutics, deconstruction, weakness, and the call—as well as his unique voice as he writes about moral life and our strivings for joy against contemporary society and politics.
“No other publication in the twentieth century has upended antiquated theological notions, truncated political ideas, and socially constructed racial fallacies like Jesus and the Disinherited. Thurman’s work keeps showing up on the desk of anti-apartheid activists, South American human rights workers, civil rights champions, and now Black Lives Matter advocates.” –Rev. Otis Moss III, author of Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World and senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ A commemorative edition of the work that inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and helped shape the civil rights movement In this beautiful gift edition of the classic theological treatise, complete with a place-marker ribbon and silver gilded edges, celebrated theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1899–1981) revolutionizes the way we read the gospel. Thurman lifts Jesus up as a partner in the pain of the oppressed and reveals the gospel as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. In this view, the example of Jesus’s life shows us that hatred does not empower—it decays. Only by recognizing fear, deception, contempt, and love of one another can God’s justice prevail. With a new foreword by acclaimed womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas, this edition of Jesus and the Disinherited is a timeless testimony of faith that demonstrates how to thrive and flourish in a world that attempts to destroy one’s humanity from the inside out. Having witnessed firsthand the depths of white supremacy and the heights of human civility, Thurman reiterates the inherent dignity of all of God’s children.