Contrasts and Fragments: An Exploration of James Cone's Theological Methodology

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2009 by Cumming, Ryan P

James H. Cone's work Black Theology and Black Power, considered by many the first major work of black theology in North America, still garners relatively little sustained attention from white North American theologians. In the opening section of this paper, I offer several reasons for this neglect of Cone (and black theology, in general). I then explore the work of Edward Schillebeeckx and David Tracy, both of whom offer lenses to examine Cone's theological method that ameliorate the ingrained tendencies which lead to widespread white neglect of black theology. Schillebeeckx's category of "negative contrast experiences" and Tracy's concept of "fragments" as sources for theology also provide an opportunity for readers to uncover the foundations of Cone's often challenging rhetoric while demonstrating the significance of Cone's contributions to theology as a discipline.

Since the publication of James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power in 1969, the field of black theology has grown exponentially. Black theologians have forcefully articulated the role which their experiences and insights as blacks must play in their theology and have demanded attention to these experiences and insights from their white counterparts. This challenge, however, has not been met by most white theologians. For example, Theological Studies, widely-regarded as foremost among American Roman Catholic theological journals, did not offer a comprehensive discussion of black theology until its special issue on the contributions of black theology in 2000, with the exception of two articles by John J. Carey in 1972 and 1974. ' Despite then-editor Michael A. Fahey's designation of this lack as "shameful avoidance,"2 only five articles since 2000 have dealt with race relations in America; of these, only two dealt explicitly with black theology.3 In similar fashion, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics has also published only two articles dealing with black theology and/or race issues in the same time period.4 The particular voices of black theologians have been granted little more than token acknowledgment by the white theologians who are at the helm of academic journals and departments.

"Shameful" is only one way to describe the silence of white theologians in the face of black theology. Invoking Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, jr., Cone indicts this silence as sinful, quoting the formers poignant observation: "Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: God will not hold us guildess. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."5 Jamie T. Phelps, another prominent black theologian, agrees with this assessment and similarly compares white theologians' sdence on race to German theologians' silence in the face of the gruesome excesses of the Nazi regime/1 This is especially troublesome given white North American theologians' willingness to engage Latin American liberation theologians on issues of class and feminist theologians on issues of gender. "However," Cone writes, "when the time came to talk about theology and racism, [white theologians] initially could not believe that [black theologians] had the audacity to engage them in a serious intellectual discussion about theology and its task."7 In his 200.1 article "Theology's Great Sin: Silence in the Face of White Supremacy," Cone offers four realities "that have contributed and continue to create this silence"; the most relevant for my purpose is his argument that "whites do not talk about racism because they do not have to talk about it."8

In terms of day-to-day survival, Cone is right; whites do not need to talk about racism. We do not need to deal with racist employers who refuse to hire us; racist police who are absolved by the public conscience for excessive force against our white brothers and sisters; or racist academicians who flippantly reject our experiences as unsuitable sources for our scholarship. Of course, such a claim Hies in the face of the repeated charges of "reverse discrimination" that often echo from the white public. These charges, however, reveal more than they conceal. Whites are rarely so aggrieved by "reverse discrimination" to feel the need to fight against it, and this is due to the very fact that We don't have to. It seems that racisms ability7 to infect our daily lives as white people and to inhibit our progress toward selfhood is wholly inefficacious, since few, if any, reasonable whites ever feel the need to stand in protest against it. Claims about the supposed "universality" of oppression, of the malevolence of so-called "reverse discrimination," subtly display the true nature of racism as socially unidirectional, its tendrils extending from the lofty throne of white privilege and socially, politically, economically, and existentially choking the very breath of black personhood and existence. Racism's power to inhibit our collective strivings toward truth and the Christian ideals of fellowship and neighbor-love require dial we confront racism (though always as the oppressors and never as the "reversely discriminated" oppressed), lest these ideals remain nothing more than abstractions. In terms of authentic being, racism constricts oppressor and oppressed and necessitates confrontation by whites, though its dissimulation leads us to believe and act as if it did not require such a response on our part.