Cone, James H. 1938–

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James H. Cone 1938–

Theologian, educator, author

“Always my attempt is to understand the meaning of faith, the meaning of God, in a world that is broken,” theologian and religious writer James H. Cone revealed to Nessa Rapoport in a Publishers Weekly interview. Regarded as the father of black theology, Cone has devoted his professional life to the study of religious faith from an African viewpoint. In 1970 he wrote A Black Theology of Liberation, a groundbreaking, influential work that links the study of Jesus Christ’s life with the African-American experience. Cone presents the position of blacks in American society as symbolic of the oppressed poor around the globe, and his theories reportedly served as an inspiration to the organizers of Latin American liberation theology. Furthermore, his vision of Christ as a social revolutionary stimulated the formation of a comprehensive black theology in South Africa.

Born August 5, 1938, in Fordyce, Arkansas, Cone grew up in the segregated town of Bearden. Both of his parents were social activists. Charlie Cone, his father, filed a lawsuit against the Bearden School Board to desegregate the schools during the early 1950s. Although threatened with lynching, the elder Cone maintained his activism. This fierce display of independence, combined with the nurturing closeness of friends and family, provided assurance for young James. As he disclosed to Rapoport, “No person has influenced me more than my father in his courage, sense of self, and the clarity of his commitment to end racial injustice.” Cone’s mother also inspired him: “[She] gave me the gift of speech and faith. She was a public speaker in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is where I discovered my own voice.”

In 1958 Cone began his graduate training at Garrett Biblical Institute (which later became Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary) in Evanston, Illinois. Studying at black colleges as an undergraduate, Cone was surprised by the severity of racial prejudice he encountered in the midwestern town in general and at Garrett during his graduate study. He learned that black students rarely received any grade above average. Racism was apparently not considered a theological problem by the majority of the teachers of religion there. Influenced by one particular professor at the seminary, however, Cone decided to enter Garrett’s doctoral program. He was the school’s only black Ph.D. student during this period.

At a Glance…

Born August 5, 1938, in Fordyce, AR; son of Charlie (a social activist) Cone; married (wife died). Education : Philander Smith College, B.A., 1958, L.L.D., 1981; Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, B.D., 1961; Northwestern University, M.A., 1963, Ph.D., 1965. Religion: Christian.

Theologian, educator, author. Philander Smith College, Little Rock, AK, assistant professor, 1964-66; Adrian College, Adrian, Ml, assistant professor, 1966-69; Union Theological Seminary, New York City, professor of theology, 1969—.

Member: American Theological Society, Society for the Study of Black Religion, American Academy of Religion, Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.

Awards: Edward Waters College, LL.D., 1981.

Addresses: Office —Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway, New York, NY 10027.

Cone realized his potential as a writer while formulating the tenets of a new black theology. In 1968 he wrote his manifesto, “Christianity and Black Power,” a commanding work in the field that unites Christian belief with the black power movement of the 1960s, which strove for racial equality through a consolidation of the political and economic power of African-Americans. The next year, Cone found a way to vent the smoldering anger he felt at his own treatment as well as that of his enslaved grandparents: he published a book entitled Black Theology and Black Power.

Cone also began his teaching career at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1969. The next year he wrote his milestone work, A Black Theology of Liberation. Rapoport called the book “a searing reappraisal of Christianity from a black perspective,” and an Ebony reviewer postulated that Cone’s writing had “changed forever the way the gospel was viewed in America.”

Cone researched material for ten years to write Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. Published in 1991, this work followed in the tradition of Cone’s previous books on the transformation of society. In it, he contends that the distance between the philosophies of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X was narrowing as their lives ended. According to Cone, after viewing the conditions of urban ghettos, the Reverend King, who advocated nonviolent resistance, was moving in the direction of Malcolm X’s militant black separatist views, which called for blacks to fight against racism “by any means necessary.” Conversely, Cone theorizes that by the time of his assassination in 1965, Malcolm X had shifted toward King’s perception of nonviolent direct action as a means to integrate blacks and whites in American society. In a piece for the New York Review of Books, George M. Fredrickson deemed Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America “a major contribution to the discussion of race and ethnicity in modern America.”

Although supportive of Malcolm X’s canon of black militancy throughout his career, Cone appears in the 1990s to endorse King’s vision of “beloved community.” He wrote in Martin & Malcolm & America: “The beloved community must remain the primary objective for which we are striving. On this point Martin was right: ’For better or worse we are all on this particular land together at the same time, and we have to work it out together.’” As Rapoport summarized, Cone’s “struggle to reconcile the many contradictions he sees—between being Christian and being black; between being American and being black; between faith and suffering; between his life at Union [Theological Seminary as a distinguished theological professor] and the street life of Harlem—[is what] continues to fuel him.”