James H. Cone - Christian Quotes

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To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!

James H. Cone
Preaching the gospel is not easy in a church defined by the denominational interests of status-seeking clergy and laypersons. Doing Christian theology is difficult in a seminary or university determined by the academic interests of privileged professors and students. Speaking the truth can be politically dangerous in a society defined according to the socio-economic interests of the rich. 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.

James H. Cone
The Christian does not decide between violence and nonviolence, evil and good. He decides between the less and the greater evil.

James H. Cone
As ambassadors of Jesus Christ, Christians have no choice but to join the movement of liberation on the side of the poor, fighting against the structures of injustice. Faith in Jesus Christ, therefore, is not only an affirmation that we utter in Sunday worship and at other church gatherings. Faith is a commitment, a deeply felt experience of being called by the Spirit of Christ to bear witness to God's coming liberation by fighting for the freedom of the poor now.

James H. Cone
Racism is a complete denial of the Incarnation and thus of Christianity.... If there is any contemporary meaning of the Antichrist (or "the principalities and powers"), the white church seems to be a manifestation of it. It was the white "Christian" church which took the lead in establishing slavery as an institution and segregation as a pattern in society by sanctioning all-white congregations.

James H. Cone
We cannot solve ethical questions of the twentieth century by looking at what Jesus did in the first. Our choices are not the same as his. Being Christians does not mean following 'in his steps.'

James H. Cone
Any talk about God that fails to make God's liberation of the oppressed its starting point is not Christian.

James H. Cone
By focusing on Scripture, theology is granted the freedom to take seriously its social and political situation without being determined by it. Thus the question is not whether we take seriously our social existence but how and In what way we take It seriously. Whose social situation does our theology represent? For whom do we speak?... We are forced by Scripture itself to focus on our social existence, but not merely in terms of our own interests.... There can be no Christian speech about God which does not represent the interest of the victims in our society.

James H. Cone
Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology.

James H. Cone