There has been quite a bit of controversy recently over the statements of Obama’s pastor and mentor, Jeremiah Wright. Wright has, among other things, said that blacks should not sing “God bless America” but rather “God damn America,” has referred to the U.S. as the “U.S. of KKK-A,” has said that the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus as a genocidal weapon against blacks. When questioned about his religious beliefs on the Hannity and Colmes television program, Wright responded by indignantly asking Sean Hannity how many books by James Cone Hannity had read. To which the honest response would have been: who is James Cone?
James Cone, it turns out, is one of the leading intellectual lights of black liberation theology, which Wright claims as the basis for his church’s doctrines. He is also apparently the author of such charming statements as the following:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
It would be difficult to find a clearer statement of the nationalist urge to subjugate God to the interests of a particular ethnic or cultural group. Whatever one thinks of the merits of Wright’s criticisms of America (and on at least some points, such as his repeated condemnation of the Hiroshima bombing, I am in substantial agreement), they are not expressions of anti-nationalism, but of a different nationalism that is no less pernicious for being associated with a historically persecuted group.
The AIDS thing is really strange.
The quote that you say “apparently” comes from James Cone seems (in the article you link to) to be a tendentious summary of his position by one William Jones.
Here is an excerpt from a speech by James Cone. Take it for what it’s worth.
at the following url:
http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2007/11/james_cone_the_cross_and_the_l.html
—–
One has to have a powerful religious imagination to see redemption in the cross, to discover life in death and hope in tragedy.
“Christianity,” Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “is a faith which takes us through tragedy to beyond tragedy, by way of the cross to victory in the cross.”
What kind of salvation is that? To understand what the cross means in America, we need to take a good long look at the lynching tree in this nation’s history — “the bulging eyes and twisted mouth,” that “strange fruit” that Billie Holiday sang about, “blood on the leaves and blood at the root.” The lynched black victim experienced the same fate as the crucified Christ.
The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, usually reserved for hardened criminals, rebellious slaves, and rebels against the Roman state and falsely accused militant blacks who were often called “black beasts” and “monsters in human form” for their audacity to challenge white supremacy in America. Any genuine theology and any genuine preaching must be measured against the test of the scandal of the cross and the lynching tree.
“Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock…. Rather, he died like a [lynched black victim] or a common [black] criminal in torment, on the tree of shame” (Hengel). The crowd’s shout, “Crucify him! (Mark 15:14), anticipated the white mob’s shout, “Lynch him!” Jesus’ agonizing final cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) was similar to the Georgia lynching victim Sam Hose’s awful scream, as he drew his last breath, “Oh my God! Oh, Jesus.”
In each case, it was a cruel, agonizing, and contemptible death.
The cross and the lynching tree need each other: the lynching tree can liberate the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians.
The crucifixion was a first-century lynching.
The cross can redeem the lynching tree, and thereby bestow upon lynched black bodies an eschatological meaning for their ultimate existence.
The cross can also redeem white lynchers, and their descendants, too, but not without profound cost, not without the revelation of the wrath and justice of God, which executes divine judgment, with the demand for repentance and reparation, as a presupposition of divine mercy and forgiveness. Most whites want mercy and forgiveness, but not justice and reparations; they want reconciliation without liberation, the resurrection without the cross.
As preachers and theologians, we must demonstrate the truth of our proclamation and theological reflection in the face of the cross and the lynched black victims in America’s past and present. When we encounter the crucified Christ today, he is a humiliated black Christ, a lynched black body.
Christ is black not because black theology said it. Christ is made black through God’s loving solidarity with lynched black bodies and divine judgment against the demonic forces of white supremacy. Like a black naked body swinging on a lynching tree, the cross of Christ was “an utterly offensive affair,” “obscene in the original sense of the word,” “subjecting the victim to the utmost indignity.”
In a penetrating essay, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about “the terrible beauty of the cross.”
“Only a tragic and a suffering love can be an adequate symbol of what we believe to be at the heart of reality itself.” The cross prevents God’s love from sinking into sentimentality and romanticism. “Life is too brutal and the cosmic facts are too indifferent to our moral ventures to make faith in any but a suffering God tenable.”
The gospel of Jesus is not a beautiful Hollywood story. It is an ugly story, the story of God snatching victory out of defeat, finding life in death, transforming burning black bodies into transcendent windows for seeing the love and beauty of God.
The church’s most vexing problem today is how to define itself by the gospel of Jesus’ cross as revealed through lynched black bodies in American history. Where is the gospel of Jesus’ cross revealed today? Where are black bodies being lynched today?
The lynching of black America is taking place in the criminal justice system where nearly one-third of black men between the ages of 18 and 28 are in prisons and jails, on parole, or waiting for their day in court. One-half of the two million people in prisons are black. That is one million black people behind bars, more than in colleges. Through private prisons, whites have turned the brutality of their racist legal system into a profit-making venture for dying white towns and cities throughout America. One can lynch a person without a rope or tree.
The civil rights movement did not end lynching. It struck a mighty blow to the most obvious brutalities, like the lynching of Emmett Till and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan.
But whenever society treats a people as if they have no rights or dignity or worth, as the government did to blacks during the Katrina storm, they are being lynched covertly.
Whenever people are denied jobs, health care, housing, and the basic necessities of life, they are being lynched. There are a lot of ways to lynch a people. Whenever a people cry out to be recognized as human beings and society ignores them, they are being lynched.
People who have never been lynched by another group usually find it difficult to understand why blacks want whites to remember lynching atrocities. Why bring that up? That was a long time ago! Is it not best forgotten? Absolutely not!
The lynching tree is a metaphor for race in America, a symbol of America’s crucifixion of black people. It is the window that best reveals the theological meaning of the cross in this land. In this sense, black people are Christ-figures, not because we want to be but because we had no choice about being lynched, just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary. Jesus did not want to die on the cross, and blacks did not want to swing from the lynching tree. But the evil forces of the Roman State and white supremacy in America willed it.
Yet God took the evil of the cross and the lynching tree upon the divine self and transformed both into the triumphant beauty of the divine.
If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy, with repentance and reparation, there is hope beyond the tragedy — hope for whites, blacks, and all humankind — hope beyond the lynching tree.
G Alkon,
Bravo.
And if anyone doubts that this evil is still with us to the degree you suggest, I utter to words: New Orleans.
And what happened to all those initiatives that Mr. Bush promised in regards to the racial divide, whenever he finally managed to make it to the national microphone: one week into the disaster?
Since the Asia Times piece does list the text as Cone’s, and since wider-ranging articles often quote the words of many authors, I figured I’d see if I could get this following attributed via google: “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.”
The search string returned a reference from a Google Book selection of Religion in America Since 1945: A History, by Patrick Allitt. The selection does indeed attribute that quote to Cone:
http://books.google.com/books?id=cj93geX4a4wC&pg=RA1-PA114&lpg=RA1-PA114&dq=%22black+theology+refuses+to+accept+a+god+who+is+not+identified+totally+with+the+goals+of+the+black+community+if+god+is+not+for+us+and+against+white+people+then+he+is%22&source=web&ots=Cq7rQRF_cq&sig=oMGi8SCoTW-igmli6GG3vU-itz8&hl=en#PRA1-PA114,M1
So it appears that these are indeed Cone’s words.
Darwin,
Thanks for the legwork.
Mark, the words are Cone’s not mine.
Darwin, thanks for finding the quotation. Cone did say it, and I’m glad to know that.
Putting the quote from Asia Times next to the quotation that I’ve posted, the meaning is clear.
Blacks are oppressed, and God must be on the side of the oppressed. That is the burden of Cone’s whole production. No God can be against a community in need and he is defining blacks as oppressed and in need
Now look — this is not very subtle theology.
But the implication of BA’s post — that Cone is a sort of Farrakhanesque “whites are devils” preacher — is off the mark.
When Cone says “white” he means the American government, the power-structure, etc., and when he says “black” he means blacks-insofar-as-they-are-still-being-lynched.
That is perhaps simplistic, though again I don’t think it’s my place to say.
But the identification of the black American community, historically, through slavery, with Christ, is the burden of what he is saying.
He’s doing a redux of liberation theology (thus “black liberation theology”).
Cone is a brilliant and challenging theologian. It’s easy to see how people can get worked up over the things he says, but I would not want to make a judgment of his theology based on one quote alone, especially one dug up by someone who did so intentionally to discredit the notion of black liberation and black theology. It is, of course, vital to read the authors in question before making sweeping comments about them and what they “apparently” said or believe. Try reading some Cone, then blog about him.
I somehow missed the Reverend calling for his congregants of Chicago to form or join a separateblack nation.
Can you help me here?
I would hate to be accountable for everything said by some theologian that my pastor draws. Heck, I don’t expected to be held accountable to everything I hear directly from my pastor.
Now, if you will excuse me, I’m off to read a delightful Holy Week devotional put out by the Armenian Catholic Church which compares the suffering of Christ with the suffering of the Armenian Nation.
Katherine,
I guess if you made such a hateful racist your mentor and pastor for 20 years you would be influenced (as Obama obviously has) and could certainly be judged for it. As will Catholics who support a baby-murder endorsing candidate like Barack Obama.
God Bless,
Matt
Mr. Cone:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC18Aa01.html
“Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love. [1] “
You read what you do not understand and understand not what you read.
Please refer to G.Alkon’s apropos post in another thread today.
A translation:
“Cone is a brilliant and challenging theologian.”
He is very creative in the ways he rejects historical Christianity and embraces racial nationalism.
“It’s easy to see how people can get worked up over the things he says,”
Yeah, he’s a little crazy.
“but I would not want to make a judgment of his theology based on one quote alone,”
This quote is really bad. I can’t even think of a way to defend it. Oh, the argument of last resort for all offensive remarks: it may have been taken out of context.
“especially one dug up by someone who did so intentionally to discredit the notion of black liberation and black theology.”
Maybe the quote is less damaging if the motives of the person who found it are impugned.
“It is, of course, vital to read the authors in question before making sweeping comments about them and what they “apparently” said or believe.”
This quote is really, really bad. Let’s distance Cone from it by implying he only ‘apparently’ said it or ‘believes’ it. A broader appreciation is necessary; surely some of his writings aren’t this crazy.
“Try reading some Cone, then blog about him.”
Let’s just stop discussing this now. You, go read some more, I am sure some of his writings are less offensive than this really-difficult-to-defend quote.
Meant in a spirit of playful satire Michael I. There is just not a good way to defend this quote. You did the best you could.
Eddie. I appreciate the little humorous deviation.
Now that you have had a nice laugh, besides the quote, how much James Cone have you read?
Michael,
I’m normally pretty open to the “you should read an author before dismissing him” argument, but it’s got its limits. The quote that Blackadder has highlighted in his post, and the further ones highlighted in the linked Asia Times article and in the Religion in American Since 1945 book are pretty seriously appalling, and it’s had to understand how context or greater appreciation of Cone’s oeuvre would make a whole lot of difference in that.
Perhaps as someone used to the excesses of liberation theology you find the us-versus-them and God-must-destroy-our-enemies rhetoric more congenial then some, but really, what proper place can there be in theology for ” Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.” and arguing that if God will not do this “we had better kill him”.
One might allow that Cone is a powerful prose stylist, though of a rather bludgeoning sort, and provides some powerful images in regards to racial suffering. Many bad writers present some good parts and images. (Sartre? Nietzsche?) But even if it is conceded that Cone has some good things to say, this does not change the fact that his overall outlook seems to include some very disturbing and wrong ideas — and that one is right to be cautious about a presidential candidate who has chosen to steep himself in them for 20+ years.
The cross can also redeem white lynchers, and their descendants, too, but not without profound cost, not without the revelation of the wrath and justice of God, which executes divine judgment, with the demand for repentance and reparation, as a presupposition of divine mercy and forgiveness. Most whites want mercy and forgiveness, but not justice and reparations; they want reconciliation without liberation, the resurrection without the cross.
I thought the civil war and decades of affirmative action (with no end in sight) was penance and reparations?
Of course, the self-destructive lifestyles (as pointed out by that “white supremacist” Bill Cosby) has nothing to do with the current predicament.
and if you are the descendant of white immigrants who came after slavery was abolished and lynchings were ended, are you exempt?
And didn’t New Orleans have a black mayor when Katrina hit? What was he doing? Was every elected official in Louisiana white?
When Rita threatened Houston, our mayor issued the evacuation – there was no waiting on the feds.
I posted a long, substantial speech by Mr. Cone.
I offered a suggestion as to how that speech might shed light on Cone’s quotation (taken out of context in Asia Times and in the book where it appears).
The long speech is serious, whether or not one agrees with it.
It has nothing at all to do with Black nationalism — though it can help us understand why he would say God “must” be with the blacks.
The usage of “blacks” in this context is like his usage of “black” in the claim “Jesus was black.”
He means — Jesus was among the poor and outcast.
That may well be how he is using “black” when he talks about God being on the side of “blacks.”
I don’t know–I ‘m not a Cone scholar and I don’t have access to a library at the moment.
But given the substantial text I’ve posted, the interpretation of Cone as a “black nationalist” is implausible — at the very least. Lumping him with Farrakhan is uncharitable — at the very least.
In response to my suggestions, Darwin and J Jones et al merely point to the same quote, taken out of context.
The usage of “blacks” in this context is like his usage of “black” in the claim “Jesus was black.”
He means — Jesus was among the poor and outcast.
That may well be how he is using “black” when he talks about God being on the side of “blacks.”
You are exactly right. “Black” and “white” mean more than skin color to Cone. They are descriptors of power relationships.
G. Alkon,
I did read the extended quote you posted, and it struck me as filling out a picture of Cone as having a strongly black liberational theology bent. It was in reference to your quoted sectio that I described Cone as being a writer of powerful prose. It is indeed powerful. But while that clearly shows a certain side of his thinking, the quote threatening to kill God is clearly a part of his thinking as well. They both come from the same pen. And so while we must note from your quote that he is not incapable of writing an emotionally charged description of the nature of suffering as experience by blacks in America — that does not take away from the presence of the other quote.
I’m not denying that the man is serious or that one may place (and indeed he may place) some correct interpretations about God’s upholding of the downtrodden on his words. However, that doesn’t detract from what seems to me an intentional framing of his ideas in terms of racial strife.
The question we must ask ourselves is: Is it fundamentally the right Christian approach to defeat strife with strife? Is that the message of the Cross?
My imagination inclines me to think that Cone’s invocation “to kill God” means only to destroy those false conceptions of God that have served as ideological dressing for a refusal to address more squarely the issue of the dignity of all peoples as created in God’s image and died for on the Cross, alonf with what is their due in term’s the the Christian social message.
Could you possibly thinl he implies an invective to kill God?
“Now that you have had a nice laugh, besides the quote, how much James Cone have you read?”
I (partially) concede the point. I have not read any James Cone besides the quote, and I have no intention of doing so unless an obligation arises. This is a blog, not a seminar. Further reading would undoubtedley yield a more nuanced appreciation, but what I have read is offensive enough to warrant criticism.
Even if ‘white’ means rich, and ‘black’ means poor, as G. Alkon insists, it is still an abuse of theology; a type of crude, anthropocentric hate theology. Do you disagree?
Is it fundamentally the right Christian approach to defeat strife with strife? Is that the message of the Cross?
So you are willing to apply this logic to the question of america’s war on terror, then?
Mark – I think you are right about what Cone means when he talks about “killing God.” I do think it’s sad you have to make that point explicit. It seems fairly obvious to me, and I think you’d agree.
Even if ‘white’ means rich, and ‘black’ means poor, as G. Alkon insists, it is still an abuse of theology; a type of crude, anthropocentric hate theology. Do you disagree?
Yes, I disagree with you.
A guiding principle for textual dialogue, particularly between confessedly Christian readers and writers, I believe, is a hermeneutics of trust and love. By this I mean I fundamental willingness to consider the possibility that the autor’s writing may be a channel to shed further light on Christian reality, from his/her particular life persective and the angles he/she brings as a well conversant academic.
This does not mean we are to overlook what cannot ultimately “be squared” with the Christian kergyma and divine/human truth. It does require, however, at the very least a rejection of the television pundit’s desire to immediately discredit at any cost, for the seek of argumentative spectacle and potical maneuvering. The latter is the worst form, I believe, of what I call, following others, the hermeneutics of uncharity and suspicion. It has no place in the lives of Christian intellectuals who follow the Pauline incentive, “Test everything, and hold fast to what is good.”
My imagination inclines me to think that Cone’s invocation “to kill God” means only to destroy those false conceptions of God that have served as ideological dressing for a refusal to address more squarely the issue of the dignity of all peoples as created in God’s image and died for on the Cross, alonf with what is their due in term’s the the Christian social message.
Could you possibly thinl he implies an invective to kill God?
I spend rather more time hanging out (intellectually speaking) with Dawkins type atheists than with liberation theologians, so perhaps some will think I’m taking an overly literalist approach to the phrase. I took it to mean, essentiall, “If God may not be seen as supporting our race against those who have historically oppressed us, then we must reject him and scorn him. How, indeed, could a God exist who does not take our side against others.”
So no, I didn’t take it as literally “killing” in a Pullman sense, but rather, “We must reject the idea of God if he isn’t on our side.”.
Now, first off, this strikes me as a rather disrespectful way to talk about God, if you believe him to exist. (And if not, why be a theologian.) God clearly is “big enough” to be above issues of race, and so insisting that he accept one’s racial agenda or else be rejected reads to me as a rather over-arching pride.
It also strikes me as suggesting a troublesome view of our more general relationship with God as savior. Even taking “black” to mean “oppressed” and “white” to mean “oppressor” (and really, what is racism if it’s not conflating race with characteristics which are actually extrinsic to it), it seems to me that thinking in terms of “the destruction of the enemy” turns salvation into a war between two groups of persons, when it is indeed a war within each individual person. At root, salvation is not a matter of making sure that the poor triumph over the rich in a temporal sense, but rather that each person triumphs over pride, greed, wrath, etc.
Is it fundamentally the right Christian approach to defeat strife with strife? Is that the message of the Cross?
So you are willing to apply this logic to the question of america’s war on terror, then?
Absolutely, yes. Though not necessarily in the political sense that you’re looking for.
Strife in itself can certainly never be a goal for a Christian. And following from that, one’s just goal can never be simply to defeat or destroy a specific group or nation. The most that a war may attempt with any justice to achieve is to end some specific temporal situation: remove the Taliban from power, end the Baathist regime, keep North Korea from destroying South Korea, prevent the Confederate states from seceding, etc. But strife must never become directed at the person (defeat Afghans, defeat Iraqis, etc.) rather than the injustice one is seeking to end.
So no, I didn’t take it as literally “killing” in a Pullman sense, but rather, “We must reject the idea of God if he isn’t on our side.”
And Cone’s obvious point is that God does exist, and that God is on the side of the oppressed. He insists that we must reject understandings of God that put God “above” real struggles which only serve to have a God that blesses the status quo.
God clearly is “big enough” to be above issues of race, and so insisting that he accept one’s racial agenda or else be rejected reads to me as a rather over-arching pride.
God is not “above” the issue of race. God is Emmanuel, “God with us.” Would you similarly claim that God is “big enough” to be “above” whatever suffering you have experienced in your own life? Is God not with you in that suffering?
At root, salvation is not a matter of making sure that the poor triumph over the rich in a temporal sense, but rather that each person triumphs over pride, greed, wrath, etc.
Here we can point to a fundamental difference between conceptions of salvation. For Catholics, and for liberation theologians, salvation is both an individual and social reality. Thus, among other things, salvation is a matter of right relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Not a triumph of one over the other, but indeed a demolishing of oppressive relationships followed by reconciliation. For many Protestants and indeed much of liberalism, and apparently yourself, salvation is for individuals and not a matter of relationships.
He insists that we must reject understandings of God that put God “above” real struggles which only serve to have a God that blesses the status quo.
This is, in a sense, the most interesting part of your response, in that it underlines what seems to me to be one of the key problems with what pieces I’ve read by liberation theologians: the idea that if God does not struggle “on the side” of the opprossed then he is somehow “blessing the status quo”. I suppose this is what people are talking about when they describe liberation theology as fusing a Christian notion of salvation with a Marxist idea of class struggle. And yet this strikes me as highly problematic. If one were to say that God is on a “side”, it is clearly the side of caritas — not the “the rich” or “the poor” or “the whites” or “the blacks”.
Certainly, God does not bless the “status quo”, because the status quo represents a world full on sin in which many people hate and/or hurt others. But it seems in-apt to me to envision God as engaged in stuggle at one’s side against one’s “enemies”. God is calling both the oppressed and oppressors to holiness — but that’s different from being “on the side” of the “oppressed” class in struggling against the “oppressor” class.
Would you similarly claim that God is “big enough” to be “above” whatever suffering you have experienced in your own life? Is God not with you in that suffering?
Very much so. If God were not above my sufferings, how could I rise above them by reaching up towards him?
If I have a bad relationship with my brother and believe that he has deeply wronged me and caused me much suffering, I should not envision God as being on my side in fighting against my brother. I should see God as above the quarrel, imaging how each of us should relate to the other.
Here we can point to a fundamental difference between conceptions of salvation. For Catholics, and for liberation theologians, salvation is both an individual and social reality. Thus, among other things, salvation is a matter of right relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Not a triumph of one over the other, but indeed a demolishing of oppressive relationships followed by reconciliation. For many Protestants and indeed much of liberalism, and apparently yourself, salvation is for individuals and not a matter of relationships.
I gather that no St. Blogs argument is complete without someone accusing his opponent of being a crypto-Protestant, so I suppose I should thank you for getting this out of the way.
Certainly, salvation involves relationships since we are called to a proper relationship with God and with neighbor.
However, it is as individual persons that we are judged by God upon death, not as members of groups such as “rich”, “poor”, “American”, “Mexican”, “black”, “white” or “brown”.
That is why it seems to me that all this business of classes, whether economic or racial, is a distraction when it comes to our relationship with God and with each other. If the goal is for each of us to relate to each other as persons, not as members of identity groups, then why form a whole theology based around identity groups?
DarwinCathoilc,
“Very much so. If God were not above my sufferings, how could I rise above them by reaching up towards him?”
You’ve got it all wrong here.
You overlook the essential fact that the Christian God turns man’s religious quest literally upside down.
Finite and sinful man tries to re-connect (religire) with his God. The God of Jesus Christ does the foolishly divine/divienely foolish thing and condescends to man. He becomes one of us, God-with-us, Emmanuel.
This is, in a sense, the most interesting part of your response, in that it underlines what seems to me to be one of the key problems with what pieces I’ve read by liberation theologians: the idea that if God does not struggle “on the side” of the opprossed then he is somehow “blessing the status quo”. I suppose this is what people are talking about when they describe liberation theology as fusing a Christian notion of salvation with a Marxist idea of class struggle. And yet this strikes me as highly problematic. If one were to say that God is on a “side”, it is clearly the side of caritas — not the “the rich” or “the poor” or “the whites” or “the blacks”.
The idea of God taking the side of the oppressed is not an invention of liberation theologians. It’s rooted firmly in scripture. I’m not sure what it might mean for God to be “on the side of caritas.” Scripture plainly says that God is on the side of the oppressed.
Now, I do agree that this can be problematic in that it can be too binary or reductionistic. I doubt your critique of the option for the oppressed is based in any way on the insights of postmodernism, but postmodern theologies would say that rather than being “on the side of the oppressed,” God stands “against oppression.” This view takes into consideration that most people and/or groups in the world are both oppressor and oppressed in one way or another. There is no clear divisions between oppressed and oppressor, and many early liberation theologies are therefore too simplistic. Nevertheless, the central insight is true.
If God were not above my sufferings, how could I rise above them by reaching up towards him?
Yet there is an entire theme in Christian tradition of God suffering with those who suffer. I think this is what Mark is getting at too.
Yes.
In Christ Jesus there is the convergence of the Son of Man and Suffering Servant of the OT. In his majesty, he takes on suffering,but not some suffering abstractly; no, his glory shines through his suffering innocently all of the real sufferings (sinful and innocent) of humanity. The unidentifiable Suffering Servant is the disfigured Jesus Christ, and his loving and free humiliation reveals to us in its humanity the full nature of divine glory.
DC,
It is true to say that God is beyond everything, including our suffering. But God’s being is distinct from all beings, in that they are limited by what they are not, whereas he is not. Otherness is in God. And his full imminence in the world does not in any way compromise his absolute divine transcendence.
I doubt your critique of the option for the oppressed is based in any way on the insights of postmodernism, but postmodern theologies would say that rather than being “on the side of the oppressed,” God stands “against oppression.” This view takes into consideration that most people and/or groups in the world are both oppressor and oppressed in one way or another. There is no clear divisions between oppressed and oppressor, and many early liberation theologies are therefore too simplistic.
I would question whether this is a specifically postmodern take. Definitely, I would agree with it. I suspect it could be found in medieval and earlier writers, though, not merely postmodern ones.
It is true to say that God is beyond everything, including our suffering. But God’s being is distinct from all beings, in that they are limited by what they are not, whereas he is not. Otherness is in God. And his full imminence in the world does not in any way compromise his absolute divine transcendence.
I think this is partly what I was reaching for talking about God being “above” our sufferings and divisions. Thinking of periods of suffering in my life, what I primarily recall is a sense of pain descending like fog. Something that enmires one in oneself and what one is experiencing at the moment. During times when I’ve felt that that suffering was being caused by a specific person, much of that fog is, in all honestly, anger and hatred.
Clearly, God has suffered with us, and suffered more deeply than any of us can ever do, and in that sense and in the sense that God is in us, he is certainly with us in our suffering. But while being with us, he is not befogged by it or consumed by any of the uncharitable feelings that suffering often causes in us.
It’s such an unusual and pleasant occurrence to have the remaining disputants on a thread like this reach what seems to be general agreement, but as I was thinking about the above I couldn’t help circling back a bit to what originally bothered me about the “black liberation theology” idea: If we take it as Michael suggests that the “oppressed” and “oppressors” in a liberation theology are not necessarily two distinct groups of people, then what exactly is one to make of a racial liberation theology? Wouldn’t it then have to be admitted that in the terms of a properly understood liberation theology that “blacks” and “whites” are not necessarily wholly distinct groups, and that blacks are white to some, and whites are black to some? And if that’s the case, what the heck would be the point of evening having a racial liberation theology?
Come of that, if liberation theology in general must hold that rather than being “on the side of the oppressed,” God stands “against oppression” doesn’t that rather take the teeth out of the whole “liberation” part of the liberation theology — since it makes salvation a matter of defeating vice, rather than one class defeating another?
On the bright side, perhaps there’s a good multi-cultural lesson one can take. I recall reading in a book by an Islamic scholar a while back about “greater jihad” and “lesser jihad”. The greater jihad is the struggle to overcome sin and injustice internally. The lesser jihad is the external struggle against source of unbelief and injustice in the wider world.
Could one apply the same distinction to liberation theology?
DC,
I entirely see your point and agree with your personal insight. Similar thoughts have gotten me through personally trying times and enabled me to hand myself over to God and be more charitable during those difficulties.
If we take it as Michael suggests that the “oppressed” and “oppressors” in a liberation theology are not necessarily two distinct groups of people, then what exactly is one to make of a racial liberation theology? Wouldn’t it then have to be admitted that in the terms of a properly understood liberation theology that “blacks” and “whites” are not necessarily wholly distinct groups, and that blacks are white to some, and whites are black to some? And if that’s the case, what the heck would be the point of evening having a racial liberation theology?
I think the fact that more recent liberation theologies understand that things aren’t so simplistic (one class vs another class) does not necessarily mean black theology (or feminist, or womanist, or mujerista, or Latino theologies) are irrelevant. It only means that there are overlapping relationships of power and oppression; that things are more complicated than we want to make them out to be. Racism isn’t the only kind of oppression that there is, but racism is indeed a real oppression, and because of this black theology is important.
Come of that, if liberation theology in general must hold that rather than being “on the side of the oppressed,” God stands “against oppression” doesn’t that rather take the teeth out of the whole “liberation” part of the liberation theology — since it makes salvation a matter of defeating vice, rather than one class defeating another?
I don’t think it takes the teeth out of it at all, nor do I think the change in perception means a reduction of salvation to “a matter of defeating vice.” Salvation is just as integral/holistic as earlier liberation theologies understood it. The teeth are still there, but liberation-salvation is seen to be more complex than it once was.
[...] although I have decided to take a hiatus from blogging there, I had to post some comments in the combox of Blackadder’s recent post there which profoundly distorts the main ideas of black theology, [...]