James H. Cone 's God Of The Oppressed

Unlike DiAngelo’s White Privilege essay, a group of religious authorities under the umbrella of Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A. wrote a response letter to Dr. Reverend King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” First quoting a portion of Dr. King’s letter then responding to the quote, the group takes a Biblical stance on the racial issues that continue to preside in modern day American culture. Beginning the essay, the group differentiates between merely acting upon the symptoms of racism. “... (a) superficial kind of social analysis…” and discovering and fixing the root of the racial. By investigating the racial issues at hand and striving towards Dr. King’s dream of a community of equal opportunities for all races, then the conversation of racial inequality can begin. Realizing that fostering a multiracial community centered around radical love that forsakes “safety of our social order,” we, as the Christian body need to develop a society that eliminates the social prejudices currently penetrate into every aspect of

This book provides seven rich chapters illustrations and metaphors which bring out the core of the book. The two strengths embraced in this survey consist of: the well-crafted illustrations on the silent pictures and the masterful metaphors which capture the sermonic distinction of black preaching.

Furthermore, the chapter discussed the religion of Christianity, which is not the correct religion of a black man in America. History have shown that Christianity was used as an inferior strategy toward African Americans. In chapter 2, there is a connection between Christianity and the Jim Crow segregation. The author would go on to elaborate on the qualities of fear, as fear is produced by a dominant group who justified obedience and order. The society that a person lives in also determines their social status, as in a hierarchy. The book suggested that society is a place that enforces the oppression of colored people. Jesus was the disinherited and the oppressed, whereas he had to find a means of survival.

Kelly Brown Douglas begins by posing a series of questions, including, “Who is the Black Christ?” and “Is the Black Christ Enough?” (6-7) For Douglas, the Black Christ, “…represents God’s urgent movement in human history to set Black captives free from the demons of White racism” (3). The question of “Who is the Black Christ?” is addressed in Chapter 3. The question of “Is the Black Christ enough?” is addressed in Chapters 4 and 5, as Douglas critically examines the relationship of the Black Christ to the Black community and ends with addressing what womanist theology is and why there is a need for it in understanding the Black Christ.

This theme helps illuminate how black people came to be treated in America both when slavery existed and beyond into today’s society. The theme that black people are disposable bodies within American society. Because of the tradition of treating black people as objects or whose value strictly came from their ability to make profit, the idea of what it means to be black in America is imbedded in the danger of losing one’s body. Although slavery has ended, the racism remains as a violence inflicted on black people’s bodies. Coates is more than happy to emphasize that racism is an instinctive practice.

The society that was made by racial bias has made a “string of work camps and prisons strung across a vast country housing millions of people drawn mainly from classes and racial groups that are seen as politically and economically problematic.” (3) Loury’s explanation of how prisons work today is a fact that no should feel good about themselves. However, Loury makes people feel more shameful and guilty by saying the actions we made are connected to Christ. Loury explains that when someone has committed a crime, the normal reaction of someone will be pointing fingers, “You see that fellow over there committing some terrible sins?” (6) Loury uses Christ as an example to show the reader that no matter who he or she is, everyone is the same and has committed some sort of sin, “Well, if you have ever lusted, or allowed jealousy, or envy or hatred to enter your own heart, then you are to be equally condemned!” (6)

The author starts out by describing the harsh situation slaves were put in and how the black experience in America is a history of servitude and resistance, of survival in the land of death. The spirituals are the historical songs which tell us what the slaves did to hold themselves together and to fight back against their oppressors. In both Africa and America, music was directly related to daily life and was an expression of the community’s view of the world and its existence in it. The central theological concept, which is the prime religious factor, in the black spirituals is the divine liberation of the oppressed from slavery. Further, the theological assumption of black slave religion as expressed in the spirituals was that slavery contradicts God, and therefore, God will liberate black people. This factor came from the fact that many blacks believed in Jesus, and therefore, believed that He could save them from the oppression of slavery because of his death and resurrection. The fact that the theme of divine liberation was present in the slave songs is supported by three main assertions: the biblical literalism of the blacks forced them to accept the white viewpoints that implied God’s approval of slavery, the black songs were derived from white meeting songs and reflected the "white" meaning of divine liberation as freeing one from sin (not slavery), and that the spirituals do not contain "clear references to the desire for freedom". The extent of

“God of the Oppressed” is a history of the African American Struggle through the complex account of its author, James H. Cone. Written in 1975, “God of the Oppressed” is the continuation of Cone’s theological position, which was introduced in his earlier writings of, “Black Theology and Black Power,” (1969) and “A Black Theology of Liberation” (1975). This final account was put together and published as a response to the continuous dismissal of Black Theology. This response shows Cone’s use of personal experiences, knowledge, and faith to explain the actual God of the oppressed found in Black Theology. The importance of the chosen title is maintained through all ten of Cone’s chapters

followed. Cone frames a theology of liberation from within the context of the Black experience

“Not only did slaves believe that they would be chosen by the Lord, there is evidence that many of them felt their owners would be denied salvation” (34). Levine claimed that the slaves uses their beliefs and religion as a “means of escape and opposition” because it gave them a “serious alternative to the societal system created by southern slaveholders” (54.)

Christianity was new to most slaves who had been abducted from their native country and taken to the Americas. Some were hesitant to abandon their old traditions for the Christ their white captors taught of, but after several generations of slavery, most black slaves had succumbed to relentless preaching. However, the Christianity that took hold within the slave community was often interpreted differently, conveying different messages to pockets of slave population. The use of Christianity in slavery was a double edged sword, creating not only a tool for control, but a weapon of discontent in slave communities. Examining the works of Richard Allen and the stories of Nat Turner, create a narrative of how Christianity was applied differently to slaves.

For almost eight decades, enslaved African-Americans living in the Antebellum South, achieved their freedom in various ways—one being religion—before the demise of the institution of slavery. It was “freedom, rather than slavery, [that] proved the greatest force for conversion among African Americans in the South” (94). Starting with the Great Awakening and continuing long after the abolition of slavery, after decades of debate, scholars conceptualized the importance of religion for enslaved African-Americans as a means of escaping the brutalities of daily life. Overall, Christianity helped enslaved African American resist the degradation

While black power focuses on the political, social, and economic condition of black people, Black Theology sees black identity from a theological context. Much of black liberation theology’s foundation comes from God's deliverance of Israel from oppression under the Egyptians. According to James Cone, “the consistent theme in Israelite prophecy is Yahweh's concern for "the lack of social, economic, and political justice for those who are poor and unwanted in the society."# The dominate view of Black Liberation theologists is “God in action, delivering the oppressed because of His righteousness. He is to be seen, not in the transcendent way of Greek philosophy, but immanent, among His people." God is "immanent”” because he is present in many historical moments that focus on liberation of the poor. Its derives it beliefs from the fact that in the bible, God often enters human affairs and takes the side of the oppressed, that god is heavily worshipped where human beings experience humiliation and suffering. Because of these beliefs, blacks adopted a gospel relevant to the uplifting of blacks and ending black struggle under white oppression.# Black theology places both our past and present actions toward black liberation in a theological context, eliminating all false Gods and creating value structures according to the God of black freedom.

Christianity provided African American slaves with hope, because although they were suffering as merely human instruments of work, God was watching them and all of theirs suffering would be rewarded by him. “Slavery, with all its

The African Methodist Episcopal Church also known as the AME Church, represents a long history of people going from struggles to success, from embarrassment to pride, from slaves to free. It is my intention to prove that the name African Methodist Episcopal represents equality and freedom to worship God, no matter what color skin a person was blessed to be born with. The thesis is this: While both Whites and Africans believed in the worship of God, whites believed in the oppression of the Africans’ freedom to serve God in their own way, blacks defended their own right to worship by the development of their own church. According to Andrew White, a well- known author for the AME denomination, “The word African means that our church was