Black History Month 2023 event.
A hybrid day event exploring the legacy of James H. Cone to the development of Black Liberation theology. We will explore the central ideas of James Cone's work and legacy and juxtapose his approach to Black theology and that of some of his critics and contemporaries, including ‘Womanist theology’.
The theological ideas explored in the day will engage with concepts such as Black Liberation, Black self-determination, Hermeneutics of Suspicion, White Supremacy, God of the Oppressed, Womanist theology, Black human experience. The day will show the development of Black theology from activism and lived experience to theological articulation and theory.
James Hal Cone (1938-2018) was the ‘Grand Patriarch’ of Black Liberation theology. While there has been a form of Black theology in existence since the era of transatlantic, chattel slavery of Africans, James H Cone is credited with creating the modern, systematic dimension of the discipline.
His book ‘Black Theology and Black Power’, first published in 1969, paved the way for the further, scholarly development of Black theology. His early classic texts, ‘A Black Theology of Liberation’ (1970) and ‘God of the Oppressed’ (1975), helped to define the development of a revolutionary new approach to academic theology and the task of the theologian. Cone’s indefatigable fight to expose ‘Theology’s great sin – silence in the face of White Supremacy’, was his life’s project, in which the task of theology was to align itself with the liberationist dimensions of the God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
It can be argued that the 21st-century creation of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement was the vindication of his radical approach to theology that spoke out in defence of the sanctity of Black human experience.
Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 BST on 11 October 2023.