James H. Cone Quote

While Niebuhr agreed, he did not want to throw out the white man as white man, and asked whether there is not a leaven in the other classes that would correspond to the light of truth in the despised minority. Baldwin replied that I don’t mean to say the white people are villains or devils or anything like that, but what I do mean to say is this: that the bulk of the white . . . Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral washing of the hands, you know. . . . I don’t suppose that . . . all the white people in Birmingham are monstrous people. But they’re mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself.

James H. Cone

While Niebuhr agreed, he did not want to throw out the white man as white man, and asked whether there is not a leaven in the other classes that would correspond to the light of truth in the despised minority. Baldwin replied that I don’t mean to say the white people are villains or devils or anything like that, but what I do mean to say is this: that the bulk of the white . . . Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral washing of the hands, you know. . . . I don’t suppose that . . . all the white people in Birmingham are monstrous people. But they’re mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself.

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About James H. Cone

James Hal Cone (August 5, 1938 – April 28, 2018) was an American Methodist minister and theologian. He is best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus.
Cone's work continues to be influential from the time of the book's publication to the present day. His work has been both used and critiqued inside and outside the African-American theological community. He was the Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Columbia University–affiliated Union Theological Seminary until his death.