innovation when searching for a solution to an injustice that Catholic social teaching has not been able to adequately address.
On the other hand, “What We Have Seen and Heard” was informed by African American Catholic sources, with final editorial control in the hands of the African American Catholic bishops. Black Catholics were its target audience, for whom the bishops saw a meaningful role in the field of racial justice and evangelization. Additionally, it asserted that African American spirituality had significant value that could augment traditional European Catholic thought. As the letter’s primary purpose was evangelization, its analysis of racism itself was not in-depth. Nevertheless, “What We Have Seen and Heard” displayed a pronounced break with the traditional paradigm found in Catholic racial justice and is more representative of what will be found in the second section.
The Sustained Use of Black Agency and Experience
James H. Cone
Almost every current Catholic theologian who writes about racial justice is deeply influenced by the work of James H. Cone, who professes a need and urgency for African American sources and black agency. Cone is considered to be the founder of black liberation theology and his thought is still prominent today. Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power was the first book in the world published on liberation theology in 1969, and his thought has continued to develop over the past forty years.64 The section will begin with Cone’s critique of white churches and Eurocentric theology, followed by his thesis on the necessity of African American sources and black agency within a theological framework of racial justice.
In 2000, Cone was invited by Theological Studies, the flagship journal of U.S. Catholic theology, to write an article about racism and the Catholic Church. As Shawn Copeland observed, this was only the second time in twenty-five years that an entire issue of Theological Studies was dedicated to a “specific paradigm shift in theology”; the previous instance was a 1975 issue of the journal devoted to feminist theory.65 At the beginning of the article, Cone frankly states that white Protestant churches, along with the Catholic Church in America, are “racist institutions whose priests, ministers, and theologians seem to think that White supremacy offers no serious contradiction to their understanding of the Christian faith.”66 He perceives a reality that he also detected when he wrote an article about Catholic racism almost twenty years earlier—that white Catholic theologians are “virtually silent” about the issue of racism and its permeation of society.67 This omission in white theology, Cone contends, illustrates the disdain that white theologians have for black thought and weakens all subsequent theological conclusions to a level that is racist and irrelevant.68 White theology’s silence regarding racism and its omission of black voices results in the dehumanization of blacks. Furthermore, Cone remarks that it is difficult for African Americans to take the many excellent social justice teachings of the Catholic Church seriously when those teachings are so neglectful of racism. He specifically comments on the “contradiction” required of black Catholics in order to remain in a racist Church. Black Catholics who want to affirm their blackness must “refuse to accept European values as the exclusive definition of the Catholic Church,” even though those values have been and still are the modus operandi for constructing Catholic belief and practice.69
In light of the poor track record of white churches with eliminating racism, Cone insists that whites have no role to play in deciding if the elimination of racism has been suitably addressed. That role is reserved for blacks, who endure the evil of racism. Another problem with white European theology is its assumed objectivity and universalism. Cone argues that Jesus was not a universal human being, but an oppressed Jew.70 Cone maintains that Jesus did not come to be everything for everybody, but primarily as a liberator for the oppressed. To illustrate this point, Cone frequently cites Luke 4:18–19,71 in which Jesus unrolls a scroll from the prophet Isaiah in his home synagogue in Nazareth, stating, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”72 Essentially, Jesus is bad news for the rich, because the kingdom of God is for “the poor alone.”73
Notwithstanding the myriad problems associated with a Eurocentric theology and white churches, Cone believes there is a role for whites in black liberation. For instance, Cone commends white abolitionists for their work to end slavery, but he is critical of their omission of black sources and the perception that black freedom could be secured through legal means alone. These weaknesses need to be rectified. Cone believes that white theologians can have a role to play in black liberation, if they are willing to reorder their theological priorities according to an African American cultural viewpoint.74
The history of African American churches is an integral source for Cone’s black theology, and the original reasons that African Americans separated from white churches are still pertinent today. Blacks separated from white churches during the age of slavery because of the unwillingness of white churches to condemn slavery as well as the outright support that was often shown for this terrible institution. In contrast, black churches were almost unanimous in their stance against slavery. Separation from white churches was concretized in the 1787 in Philadelphia, when Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and other blacks walked out of St. George Methodist Church. In 1816, Richard Allen became the first bishop for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In the South, blacks often met in underground churches to discuss their dignity and the struggle for liberation as found in Jesus Christ. In the 1770s, the first Baptist church organized by slaves was founded in Silver Bluff, South Carolina. These churches, along with other African American churches, were important institutions in working for the freedom of blacks before and after the dissolution of slavery.75 Cone asserts that the black church narrative has proven that integrated churches, during slavery and since, were essentially white churches that limited the work of liberation for African Americans and led blacks into a place of compromise. Additionally, Cone concludes that contemporary integrated churches continue to exhibit an inability to confront white supremacy by their lack of black sources and their virtual silence on the issue of racism.76
In 1970, Cone proclaimed that white theology, which is informed from a place of privilege, is inadequate to define theology. Talk about God’s work in the world can only be known from the experience, writings, and freedom struggles found among blacks.77 Cone’s argument has not changed significantly between 1970 and today, although he recently stated that his stance had softened slightly because he had received additional insights on gender and class and become more aware of the broader scope of the Bible. Despite this softening, Cone still firmly believes that “the God of biblical faith and black religion is partial toward the weak.”78 According to this perspective, black Christians must start not with the Bible but with the black experience, which Cone designates as “a black tradition of struggle.” The Bible is an indispensable source for Christian thought, but it is secondary to the black experience of oppression. It is only through the lens of oppression that the Bible can meaningfully speak to the liberation that God is enacting in contemporary situations.79
