By Carl W. Kenney II,
The painting of Jesus hung on a wall in the hallway between my bedroom and the bathroom. The eyes of the blue -eyed Jesus glared at me as a reminder of submission. He wasn’t there to evoke images of my liberation. He was there to symbolize white supremacy.
Most black people my age remember that picture. It was part of the trinity – Jesus, President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – an earthly and heavenly king and a black man who attempted to lead black people to the Promised Land.
How can we be free when surrounded by all that white power?
James Cone’s teachings set me free. Those words hit my soul like the Holy Ghost on Sunday morning just before the B-3 organ set the church on fire.
“Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism,” Cone wrote in A Black Theology of Liberation. “The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God’s own condition.”
Cone’s words changed my understanding of Christianity. I no longer viewed it as the white man’s tool to maintain my subjugation. Cone’s words began a journey toward understanding what it means to be saved beyond a confession made after hearing a powerful sermon. I began to respect and honor the lessons of the brush arbor church. That’s where the spiritual revolution was stirred in the souls of black folks wearied by the message of the slave master’s Jesus.
“Black theology cannot accept a view of God which does not represent God as being for oppressed blacks and thus against white oppressors,” Cone preached with the power of his pen. “Living in a world of white oppressors, blacks have no time for a neutral God. The brutalities are too great and the pain too severe, and this means we must know where God is and what God is doing in the revolution.”
Cone’s work sparked my spiritual revolution. It’s a simple message with profound implications. God is on the side of black people. The role of the Church is to end oppression.
“We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile,” Cone writes. “What we need is the divine love as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject God’s love.”
This is why Dante James and I are producing God of the Oppressed, an independent documentary on the work of Cone and other black liberation and womanist theologians. We understand the difficulties of telling the truth when encumbered by multiple interests. We recognize the power of denominational concerns, the sway of the mega-Church movement and the anxieties of saying what people don’t want to hear.
“Speaking the truth can be politically dangerous in a society defined according to the socio-economic interests of the rich,” Cone writes. “Preaching the gospel, doing Christian theology, and speaking the truth are interrelated, and neither can be correctly understood apart from the liberation struggles of the poor and marginalized.”
Like the 30 pieces of silver Judas earned to betray Jesus, is it easier to forfeit the liberation of the people than to risk being crucified for telling the truth? Is it easier to preach love your enemies and turn the other cheek when the line of new members on Sunday is more important than defeating the systems that oppress black people?
Cone started a revolution that changed the way we discuss the work of the black church. Womanist theologians challenged the limits of Cone’s early work. Their scholarship reminds us of the need to expand beyond the limits of all forms of privilege. When the words of our theology fail to include the voices and concerns of women, it’s appropriate when they scream #metoo.
The picture of the white Jesus no longer hangs on the wall in the hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom. The pictures of President Kennedy and Dr. King are replaced by a new trinity that reflects my theological position.
There’s a dark skinned Jesus with beautiful nappy hair, Malcolm X holding a rifle and a picture of Assata Shakur.
With my black fist raised above my head, all power to the spiritual revolution.
CARL W. KENNEY II is a columnist with the News & Observer and Co-Producer (with three-time Emmy Award winner Dante James) of God of the Oppressed, an upcoming documentary that explores black liberation theology. He is a former Adjunct Professor at the University of Missouri – Columbia, School of Journalism, weekly Columnist at the Columbia Missourian and Freelance Columnist at The Washington Post and the Religious News Services.
God of the Oppressed, a documentary about Black Christians seeking liberation here on earth.