God of the Oppressed

by James H. Cone

Unfortunately, American white “hope” theologians have been influenced too much by German and American philosophical discourse on hope and too little by the actual bearers of hope in our social existence. And if they continue their talk about hope primarily in relation to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred North Whitehead, Moltmann, and Pannenberg, while ignoring the hope disclosed in the songs and tales of black slaves, then we can only conclude that white theology's hope is a reason for despair on the part of the oppressed and thus alien to the gospel of Jesus. How can Christian theology truly speak of the hope of Jesus Christ, unless that hope begins and ends with the liberation of the poor in the social existence in which theology takes shape? In America this means that there can be no talk about hope in the Christian sense unless it is talk about the freedom of black, red, and brown people.