God of the Oppressed

by James H. Cone

Because the Christian answer to that question was not satisfactory to many black poets and novelists of the twentieth century, they concluded that the God of Jesus Christ was an opiate for black people. As early as 1906, in response to the slaughter of black people in Atlanta, W.E.B. Du Bois made his protest against the silence of God. Done at Atlanta, in the Day of Death, 1906. O Silent God, though Whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days…. Bewildered we are…mad with madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy Throne, we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the blood of Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this? Tell us the Plan; give us the Sign! Sit no longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely Thou too art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing?19