Black Theology and Black Power | Chapter 2: The Gospel of Jesus, Black People, and Black Power

• The job of theology is to make the gospel meaningful for the times in which men live.
• Black theology's sole purpose is to address the oppression of Blacks with the gospel in a way that was not being done with mainstream Christianity.
• Black theology is revolutionary theology in that it believes violence is necessary to change the dehumanizing structures of power.
• This work is concerned with what the Christian gospel has to say to oppressed Blacks.
• Western white Christianity with its emphasis on individualism and capitalism cannot relate to those whose ultimate reality is being Black.
• White Christianity stifles the oppressed concern for present inequalities in favor of demanding a concern about the next world.
• A crucial question is: Is it possible to read the Bible apart from white interpretation in the context of Black power?

What is the gospel of Jesus?

• Christianity revolves around the person Jesus.
• Every theological statement must involve Jesus Christ.
• Jesus is God himself coming into existence for the sole purpose of liberation. (Luke 4:18-19) *Jesus is all-liberating.*
• Because of Jesus, man knows the full meaning of God's action in history.
• The nature of Jesus' ministry is to liberate the oppressed. (Mark 1:14-15; Luke 7:22)
• It is ironic that America prides itself on justice and yet is the biggest purveyor of injustice.
• Jesus' ministry had a preference towards the poor. (Matt. 20:16)
• Jesus had little tolerance for the elite. (Matt. 21:31)
• The kingdom is more suited to the poor than the elite due to the poor's dependence on God and the elite's dependence on this world's goods.
• God's kingdom is not just in the future but it is also now.
• When one understands the application of Jesus' message to their present condition, they will quickly see that it protests the suffering and affliction of fellow man.
• Since the gospel converts one to be on the side of the oppressed, the message of Black power is the message of Christ himself.
• Jesus isn't confined to the first century but he is now among the oppressed continuing his work of liberation.
• Just as a Christian understands the events surrounding the Exodus as God working to liberate a people, the Christian understands Black rebellion today as God working to liberate a people.
• Black people now know that freedom (whether here or later) is more important than a life devoid of it so much that they are willing to gain that freedom through death.

Christ, Black power, and freedom

• The concept of freedom is the bridge between the gospel and Black power.
• Freedom is the fulfillment of becoming what one should be.
• Jesus came in the flesh so that man might become who he is—human. (Gal. 5:1)
• Freedom is what distinguishes man from plants and animals.
• The destiny of plants and animals is carried out by nature while nature only provides man with their destiny and it is left up to them to carry it out.
• The gospel proclaims that God is with us fighting against that which would make man captive and it is important for Christianity and theology to know where God is at work so we may join his fight against evil.
• Christ came into the world to destroy the works of Satan (1 John 3:8; Luke 4:1-13; Mark 1:12; Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 3:27) which he accomplished on Good Friday and Easter.
• While the decisive battle between good and evil is already won, the war is not yet over. (2 Tim. 1:10; Eph. 1:22; Heb. 2:8, 10:13)
• Demonic forces have such a hold on racists, culture, and the structures of society that the only thing left to do is fight it.
• Christ is in the most radical aspects and persons of Black power.
• Those who enslave others enslave themselves with the bondage of racism—the bondage of unrestricted freedom to beat, rape, and kill Blacks.
• The assertion of Black freedom leads to the liberation of whites.
• The burden of authentic freedom is the realization of the humanity of all men and the responsibility of choosing how to live one's life.
• Freedom is not a gift to be taken for granted.
• The New Testament describes the burden of freedom in terms of being free from the law yet enslaved to Christ and against the world.
• Freedom in Christ tells us 3 things about Black power: 1. The work of Christ is essentially that of liberation 2. By Christ liberating the troubled, he also frees those who trouble the troubled 3. Mature freedom is burdensome and risky in that it challenges the free to shoulder the burden of being free in Christ.

The righteousness of God and Black power

• Freedom and justice goes hand in hand.
• Too much emphasis has gone into intellectualizing what God's righteousness is instead of contextualizing how to exercise God's righteousness in the life of the poor, needy, and helpless.
• It is hard for the helpless to respond to the gospel if there is no word for them in it.
• What God does is just since he is justice.
• God's righteousness refers to God's activity of justice in human history as in the Exodus. (Exodus 19:4-6)
• God chooses to be the Helper and Savior of those who are oppressed and powerless as opposed to the powerful and wicked. (Psalm 10:14; 72:12)
• Jesus came for the poor, the hungry, the mourning, and the needy. (Amos 2:6-7)
• God's righteousness is directed towards the needy and the poor since they are not dependent on the things of this world for their security—a dependence which gets in the way of absolute faith.
• God's word of righteousness to the poor and helpless is that He understands their situation and He is on their side because He has been through it.
• The righteousness of the believer consists of the fact that God is acting for them since God alone is their security.
• Being made right with Christ causes a man to be for the poor, for God, and against the world.
• Faith is characterized by responsibility for those we view as poor and wretched since God was gracious to us who were poor and wretched in his sight.
• The Christian is justified so that he can join God in the fight for justice.
• Whoever fights and risks their life for the helpless and unwanted, risks their life for God.

Christian love and Black power

• Critics believe Black power is a contradiction of the message of love which consists of the weakness and humility that Jesus spoke of.
• Even though Christianity is traditionally the oppressor's religion, Black power should not reject it and its message of love but should only reject Martin Luther King Jr.'s advocacy of loving our enemies before loving ourselves.
• Black power advocates' best response to the hate of white men should not be to hate or love them, but to ignore them.
• Some question whether Black power's perceived lack of love through ignoring is a form of the same dehumanization used by white power against others.
• Though all Black power advocates aren't Christian, the goal and the message of Black power is consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ and He is even working through the activity of Black power.
• Jesus never gave us a blueprint for identifying his work in this contemporary world and it is tempting to say that God is only active in the things that we are interested in.
• It's hard to connect Black power with Christian love since the gospel is not made relevant for oppressed Blacks but is often interpreted from a Western white perspective.
• In order to remove the barrier between Christian love and Black power, there needs to be a theological approach that takes the suffering of Black people seriously.
• Man's love for God and his neighbor is grounded in God's love for man.
• God's agape love is creative and spontaneous.
• God's love is spontaneous in that man is not worthy of God's love.
• God's love is creative in that something or someone only has worth because it is the object of God's love.
• Therefore the religious foundation for all men is that God loves all and all have worth because of that love. 
• So to suggest that some men have more worth than others is to either suggest that one has value independent of God's love our that God's love is more creative for some than others.
• God's love is expressed in terms of Him being the initiator of fellowship which is the basis for man’s response to God and to his neighbor. (John 3:16; Romans 5:8)
• Divine love can not be separated from divine righteousness and both expresses God’s desire to be for man when man can not be for himself.
• For a man to love God it means that he is so gripped by the Christ-event that he joins God in his activity on behalf of the oppressed as if Christ is in him. (Matt. 22:34-40, Luke 27:7)
• Our neighbor is all men and to obey God’s commandment to love our neighbor means we seek to meet his needs.
• To accept God’s grace means to respond creatively in love by proclaiming the Good News of freedom and actively fighting against all powers which hold men captive.
• The Black man should feel worth since his value is derived from being the object of God’s love and his Blackness is a creation of God himself.
• God is a God of power and he has given the Black man power to become and make others recognize him.
• The Black man who has responded in faith to God’s love knows that the way white society views him is inconsistent with his newly found image in Christ.
• The Black man knows in order to truly help society, he must love and accept himself and his Blackness.
• The redeemed Black man glorifies in not just the man but the Black man God made him.
• Conflict arises when the Black man loves his white neighbor enough to confront the white man as his equal.
• For the Black man to love like Christ he is prepared to meet head-on that sentimental, meaningless Christian love that lacks power, justice, risk, and cost.
• According to Paul Tillich, love depends on power because without power love would not lead to the reunion of the separated.
• The new Blacks must let whites know that true love is not “help” or charity but it is the redistribution of power to enable Blacks to fight their own battles and keep their dignity.
• Whites can’t relate Black Power to the Christian gospel because the differences in experiences between white people and Black people make them unable to connect their theological language with the life situation of Black people.
• Love isn’t measured by actions but by the motive of a particular action.
• While love of Christ means love of self and love of your neighbor, that doesn’t mean there’s no possibility to hurt one’s self or neighbor.
• Though the violence seen in riots appear to contradict Christian love, it is only the Black man’s way of expressing that he is a being and in a way his only possible expression of Christian love to his white oppressor.
• It is suspect for white religionists to insist that Blacks respond to racism with nonviolence while participating in a violent, unjust system of oppression.
• As long as the white man can count on Blacks remaining nonviolent (turning the other cheek and accepting oppression) he won’t have confront the black man as a person. After all, why yield wealth, superiority, and power if the Black man won’t threaten the white man’s wealth, superiority, and power.
• The reason most whites “loved” Martin Luther King, Jr. was because his approach was the least threatening to the preservation of white racism.

The Holy Spirit and Black Power

• God’s activity is described as the work of the Holy Spirit—a work so powerful that is necessary to describe God in trinitarian terms.
• God’s necessary manifestation of the Holy Spirit is the working of the Father and Son’s will in the lives of men.
• The Holy Spirit’s work in the world and in his people is like the wind—actively powerful yet mysterious. (John 3:8)
• The work of the Holy Spirit is not identified by moments of ecstasy or individual purification but by involvement in a world of suffering.
• The man full of God’s Spirit doesn’t waste time questioning the origin of racism but instead works to bring it to an end.
• The man full of the Spirit is willing to risk death in order to be the means by which God’s will is known in taking the side of the suffering.
• The Holy Spirit can even use activity that is not conscious of God yet against the suffering of man. (Isaiah 45, Matthew 25)
• Truly living according to the Spirit is when one’s will becomes God’s will and one’s actions becomes God’s actions.
• It is very possible that God’s will is not being done in those places where the Word is truly preached (as the traditional conservative Christians would say) but instead done where the naked are clothed, the sick are visited, and the hungry are fed.
• Unless the Christian makes the poor’s condition his own instead of just using the poor as a means to his salvation, his acts done on behalf of them are nothing in the eyes of God.
• There is no objective gauge as to whether a believer is truly doing the work of God but only the subjective experience of his relationship with God that convinces him. (Gal. 4:6)
• Black power is God’s new way of acting in America by telling the Black man that he is human and telling the white man to get used to it.
• Whites as well as some Blacks will find it hard to accept the idea that God is making Himself known through the lowliest and most undesirable of society but that is because God encounters men at a level of experience that challenges them the most.

Notes from James Cone's "Black Theology and Black Power"