God of the Oppressed

In my last blog, the topic was "Oppression in the New Testament." In this blog, I wish to call attention to two books on oppression that should be read in tandem. Chronologically, James Cone's God of the Oppressed (1975) comes first. Cone is a black liberation theologian who is deeply in touch with oppression/injustice both experientally and theologically/biblically; I know of no white evangelical theologian who seriously grapples with oppression biblically and historically so God of the Oppressed is a rare read.

I have misplaced my notes on God of the Oppressed, but as I recall Cone once wrote that when he was attending Garrett Seminary during the Civil Rights Movement, his theology profs had little to say theologically about the movement. Their existing theology was not relevant. Most current white theology is still (2014) not engaged with oppression/justice issues.

I recommend that you go online and read this 2010 review of God of the Oppressed by J.R. Woodward; he begins his review with this accurate sentence: "If you want to have your mind blown, then read this book." In my opinion all white evangelicals need to have their theology blown, because white theology does not consider, in depth, oppression/justice issues. According to Woodward, Cone combines scripture, systematic theology and the oppression of black people in his approach. For Cone, Jesus identifies with the poor and with blacks.

I would also highly another book by Cone, Martin and Malcolm in America: A Dream or a Nightmare?

Originally written in Spanish in the late 1970s and translated into English in the early 1980s, I recommend that you read the Hebrew scholar, Thomas Hanks' book God So Loved the Third World: The Bibical Vocabulary of Oppression. In Hebrew, Hanks find 555 refernces to Hebrew roots with the meaning of oppression. This book did wonders for me in terms of understanding the importance of the biblical teaching on oppression; don't skip over oppression in your rush to understand the biblical teaching on justice. You will end up with a shallow understanding of justice.

Only after you have read the two books by James Cone and the one by Hanks, are you ready to engage the Spring 2013 issue of Reflections published by Yale Divinity School entitled "The Future of Race." To begin, I would say to Yale Divinity School: Congratulations to you and Shame on you.

Congratulations on spending a year discussing America's unsolved and seemingly unsolvable race/racism/ethnocentrism/oppression problem. You even read the best and most current book on the subject, The New Jim Crow. And you published a booklet on your deliberations entitled The Future of Race.

Shame on you for not doing a better job, for not providing a biblical solution to end the suffering of America's oppressed poor. I recommend that you remove the word "divinity" from your title and replace it with Enlightenment. To be fair, I am not sure that any other seminary in America, even the ones that claim that the Bible is perfectly inspired, would have done any better in providing a comprehensive biblical solution or even a comprehensive analysis of the problem.

After many years of existence, Yale Divinity School should be doing better. As good as The Future of Race was in some ways, in the end it was sounding brass and tinking cymbal. It will do little to end racism, ethnocentrism and oppression and replace it with raconciliation and justice.

How could this happen? 50 years after King, 40 years after Cone, 30 years after the beginning of mass incarceration in America?

Tragic! Unforgiveable!

In my next blog, I will examine Martin Luther King's nonviolent social ethic through the writng of William D. Watley