God of the Oppressed

by James H. Cone

JESUS IS BLACK It is only within the context of Jesus’ past, present, and future as these aspects of his person are related to Scripture, tradition, and contemporary social existence that we are required to affirm the blackness of Jesus Christ. I realize that many white critics of Black Theology question “blackness” as a christological title, because it appears to be determined exclusively by the psychological and political needs of black people to relate theology to the emergence of black power in the later 1960s. That is only partly true. The phrase “Black Christ” refers to more than the subjective states and political expediency of black people at a given point in history. Rather, this title is derived primarily from Jesus’ past identity, his present activity, and his future coming as each is dialectically related to the others. But unless black theologians can demonstrate that Jesus’ blackness is not simply the psychological disposition of black people but arises from a faithful examination of Christology's sources (Scripture, tradition, and social existence) as these sources illuminate Jesus’ past, present, and future, then we lay ourselves open to the white charge that the Black Christ is an ideological distortion of the New Testament for political purposes.