James H. Cone - God Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

View all James H. Cone Quotes
To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!

James H. Cone
The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism.... The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition. This is the essence of the Biblical revelation. By electing Israelite slaves as the people of God and by becoming the Oppressed One in Jesus Christ, the human race is made to understand that God is known where human beings experience humiliation and suffering... Liberation is not an afterthought, but the very essence of divine activity.

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
By becoming poor and entrusting divine revelation to a carpenter from Nazareth, God makes clear where one has to be in order to hear the divine word and experience divine presence.

James H. Cone
If the church... does not make God's liberation of the oppressed central in its mission and proclamation, how can it rest easy with a condemned criminal as the dominant symbol of its message?

James H. Cone
Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

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
God is black.... There is no place in black theology for a colorless God in a society where human beings suffer precisely because of their color. The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition.

James H. Cone