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James Cone and the Problem of a Black Ethic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Preston N. Williams
Preston N. Williams
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

James Cone is without question the leading proponent of Black theology in America. His books, articles, and lectures have exercised great influence inside and outside the black community. Thus far, however, Cone has not explicitly stated his theological ethic, although much of significance for ethics is embedded in his works. It will be our purpose in this short essay to stimulate him and others to articulate the ethical aspects of his theology. Our aim, then, is to set forth what we believe to be the ethic implicit in his first two books, Black Theology and Black Power and Liberation: A Black Theology of Liberation. Our essay will be critical in nature and will attempt to deal with theoretical questions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , October 1972 , pp. 483 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1972

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References

1 Cone, J. H., Black Theology and Black Power (New York: The Seabury Press, 1969)Google Scholar; A Black Theology of Liberation. (Philadelphia & New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1970).Google Scholar

2 Gustafson, J. M., Two Approaches to Theological Ethics, Union Seminary Quarterly Review XXIII, No. 4, (Summer 1968), 337.Google Scholar

3 Cone, J. H., Black Theology and Black Power, i.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 48.

5 Ibid., 38.

6 Ibid., 29.

7 Cone, J. H., A Black Theology of Liberation, 44–45.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., 17–22, 208.

9 Beach, W. and Niebuhr, H. Richard, (eds.), Christian Ethics (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1955), 34.Google Scholar

10 Cone, J. H., A Black Theology of Liberation, 104, 105, 199–203, 210, 243.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 195.

12 Cone, J. H., Black Theology and Black Power, 151.Google Scholar

13 Cone, J. H., A Black Theology of Liberation, 99.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 33.

15 Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), Chapter 2.Google Scholar

16 Source 19 Howard 393

Roger B. Taney: Dred Scott v. Sandford.

[Cone also thinks this case to be significant. See his Black Theology and Black Power, 9–10.]

17 Ibid.

18 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).

19 Banfield, E. C., The Unheavenly City (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 85–87.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 211–12.

21 Ibid., 219; Liebow, E., Talley's Corner (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), 222–31.Google Scholar

22 I find Banfield's class-ification distasteful and pejorative because he feels lower-class culture to be pathological. Ibid., 54. His view is a subtle form of racism despite his protest and apparent desire to find solutions to current problems.

23 Declaration of Independence.

24 R.S.V. 25:35, 36.

25 King, M. L. Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 217.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., 217.

27 Elkins, S. M., Slavery (New York: Grosset and Dunlop, 1963), 130–31.Google Scholar

28 Fullinwider, S. P., The Mind and Mood of America. (Homewood, Illinois), 27–28, 238–39.Google Scholar