"What is the relationship," James Cone asks, "between my training as a theologian and the black struggle for freedom? For what reason has God allowed a poor black boy from Bearden to become a professional systematic theologian? As I struggled with these questions...I could not escape the overwhelming conviction that God's spirit was calling me to do what I could for the enhancement of justice in the world, especially on behalf of my people. 'My Soul Looks Back' chronicles the author's grappling with these questions, as well as his formulation of an answer--an answer that would lead to the development of a black theology of liberation. Firmly rooted in the black church tradition, James Cone relates the formative features of his faith journey, from his childhood experience in Bearden, Arkansas, and his father's steadfast resistance to racism, through racial discrimination in graduate school, to his controversial articulation of a faith that seeks to break the shackles of racial oppression. In describing his more recent encounters with feminist, Marxist, and Third World thinkers, James Cone provides a compelling description of liberation theology, and a vivid portrayal of what it means to profess "a faith that does justice". (Back cover).
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Short review: I read a couple of Cone's books in seminary. I have been meaning to pick up the Cross and the Lynching Tree for years and haven't yet. I haven't in part because I have ‘moved past' liberation theology. There are parts of it that I can't support theologically, but I think I have also dismissed other parts too easily because I have not properly understood it in context and because I have been blinded to parts of it because of my own racism.
This is not a new memoir. I would be interested to read a new memoir by Cone. He is now 81. He wrote this when he was 49 and very much mid-career. Only a few years older than I am now. It continues to be depressing to read questions that are still relevant. Like ‘how can Christianity co-exist with racism and oppression?'
Cone was born in 1936. He did his graduate work in the late 50s to the mid 60s in the height of the Civil Rights era. He was teaching and doing his early writing and theological writing in the mid 60s and 70s when the Black Power movement was breaking off from the earlier non-violent emphasis of King and Thurman.
Part of what was interesting to me was the line that Cone walked between the Black Nationalist movements that rejected Christianity as a ‘white man's religion' and the conservative Black church that was uncomfortable with the style and method of protest of the civil rights and later eras. Cone could not reject Christ and Christianity, but he also could not accept a Christianity that was complicit in dehumanizing people through racism and segregation.
His notes on how Black liberation theology has mostly rejected marxism as a theological tool of analysis was fascinating because that is precisely the point that many White theologians reject Black liberation theology.
I do wish at some point that every book I read didn't make me want to pick up an additional six. I can never get to all that I want to read.
I have about a 1000 words with some overlapping thoughts on my blog http://bookwi.se/my-soul-looks-back/
