Hitchhiker's Guide to Religion
Black Church

James Cone

Architect of Black Liberation Theology

Black Church Systematic theology, the Black experience as theological source, the cross and the lynching tree
Attribute Value
Combat
ATK 90
DEF 80
SPR 92
SPD 70
INT 99
Rank Theologian / Professor at Union Theological Seminary / Founder of Black Liberation Theology as an academic discipline
Domain Systematic theology, the Black experience as theological source, the cross and the lynching tree
Alignment Holy / Liberation
Weakness Early work (1969-1975) was deliberately confrontational and criticized for inadequately engaging Black women's experience -- a critique he accepted and which shaped womanist theology's emergence
Key Act Born 1938 in segregated Bearden, Arkansas. PhD from Northwestern (1965). Published *Black Theology and Black Power* (1969) in response to the 1967 Detroit uprising and the failures of white American theology. Taught at Union Theological Seminary for fifty years. Late masterwork: *The Cross and the Lynching Tree* (2011), arguing that Christians cannot understand the cross without confronting American lynching
Source Cone, *Black Theology and Black Power* (1969); *A Black Theology of Liberation* (1970); *God of the Oppressed* (1975); *The Cross and the Lynching Tree* (2011); *Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody* (2018, posthumous)

“The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, shameful events, instruments of punishment reserved for the most despised people in society.” — Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree


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Combat Radar

ATK DEF SPR SPD INT
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