If blacks had followed Niebuhr’s theology of proximate justice, there would have been no militant civil rights movement because, practically speaking, blacks had no prospect of success against the power of white supremacy.
This gets very tricky for me. I agree with the criticism of Niebuhr, I think, but I wonder how Cone responds to Afropessimism because they see the lynching tree just fine (do they see the cross?) and still believe, I think, that the U.S. cannot be rid of white supremacy and still be the U.S. Yet, not all who believe that choose passivity or resignation. They struggle, like Sisyphus, without hope of victory.
What if that's what the story of Jesus was really about? Um, I've never thought of that before.
