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Prof. James Cone
NPR's "Fresh Air"

March 31, 2008

Rev. Gay Byron '99

Rochester Democrat Cronicle

March 27, 2008

Prof. James Cone
Forbes Magazine

March 24, 2008

Dwight Hopkins '84
& Prof. James Cone

PBS/Tavis Smiley Show

March 21, 2008

Rev. James Forbes '62

and Prof. James Cone

Newsweek/Washington Post

March 19, 2008

Prof. Gary Dorrien

Associated Press

March 18, 2008

Melissa Harris-Lacewell

The Root

March 17, 2008

Black Liberation Theology in Media Spotlight

Scholars from the Union Community Offer Insight

Black liberation theology has been drawn back into the national spotlight in recent weeks by the media firestorm surrounding comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ, and minister to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Clarification of the meaning of this theology and its importance for black Americans was offered by members of the Union community through a variety of media outlets, including in this week's "Week in Review" section of the Sunday New York Times.

Professor James Cone on WNYC's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross
In a March 31, 2008 interview with Terry Gross for NPR's "Fresh Air," Professor Cone explains black liberation theology's roots in 1960s civil-rights activism, drawing inspiration from both the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, as "mainly a theology that sees God as concerned with the poor and the weak." He explains that at the core of black liberation theology is an attempt, he says "to teach people how to be both unapologetically black and Christian at the same time."

Listen to the interview in its entirety.

Hear the follow up interview with alumnus Dwight Hopkins '84.

Learn more about Professor Cone.

Rev. Gay Byron '99
One of Professor Cone's former students, the Rev. Dr. Gay Byron, M.Div. '97, Ph.D. '99, the Baptist Missionary Training School Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School, also wrote an essay explaining black liberation theology. She explained the context of sermons by Jeremiah Wright, from which snippets have been widely quoted by the media. Dr. Byron's essay appeared in Rochester's Democrat Chronicle on March 27, 2008. In essay she states the following:

Having studied with Cone in the early '90s, I am well-acquainted with the theological positions he asserts. His numerous publications construct a compelling view of God who is on the side of the oppressed. Thus, he reads the Bible through the eyes of the marginalized, and for the purpose of providing a word of hope to the downtrodden and disenfranchised. This message of liberation has been adopted by religious leaders throughout the world, especially those in Latin America, Asia and Africa, and by ministers throughout the United States such as Wright and the Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood of Brooklyn and the Rev. John Walker in the Rochester area.

Read the entire article.

Learn more about Rev. Byron.

Professor James Cone in Forbes Magazine
In a March 24, 2008 interview with Forbes Magazine, Professor James Cone provides a lengthy explanation of the history and meaning of black liberation theology in light of the Jeremiah Wright controversy. He explains that it grew out of the theology of Martin Luther King and the social activism of Malcolm X and that its purpose is to speak to the black experience. Cone says in this interview:

And so black liberation theology was an attempt to make the gospel accountable to the black community, who were struggling for a more just society in America.

What you have in Jeremiah Wright is someone trying to bring together Martin and Malcolm. He's a Christian preacher in a white church, by the way. He is speaking to the hurt in the African-American community. The suffering.

You know, when King spoke to the black community, he spoke with language very similar to Jeremiah Wright.

Read the entire article.

Learn more about Professor Cone.

Professor Cone and Dwight Hopkins ‘84 on The Tavis Smiley Show
Professor James Cone and Union alumnus Dwight Hopkins ‘84 were recently interviewed by Tavis Smiley for his PBS radio program. Download and listen to the March 21, 2008 interview.

The Rev. James Forbes & Dr. James Cone for Newsweek/Washington Post

The Rev. Dr. James Forbes '62, a Union alumnus and board member, and Dr. James H. Cone, Union's Charles A. Briggs Professor of Theology and father of black liberation theology, were among those quoted in an article in the March 19, 2008 edition of Newsweek that also was posted as a column in "On Faith" on the Newsweek/Washingtonpost.com website. The following are excerpts from their comments in the article:

The Rev. James Forbes, the recently retired longtime pastor of Riverside Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side explained that, broadly speaking, there has been a historical division in the world of black churches. One group thinks you should work hard, keep quiet and get ahead; the other thinks that you need to agitate and provoke to make progress. Forbes puts himself in the first camp but supports Wright's efforts. "Some of us wish we had the nerve that Jeremiah had," he said. "We praise God that he's saying it, so the rest of us don't have to." Does Wright ever cross a line? "I think if a person is a prophet and he's not seen as ever crossing a line, then he has not told the truth as it ought to be told."

In 1969, the theologian James Cone wrote Black Liberation Theology, the book that so influenced Jeremiah Wright. Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, sees a straight line from the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr., through Wright to Obama himself. Indeed, in 1964, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, King spoke movingly about -- what else? -- audacity and hope. "I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow...I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."

In Obama's rhetoric, "the fierce urgency of now comes from his church," explains Cone. "His emphasis on hope-hope has been the most dominant theme with black people because without hope you die. What that church represented for Obama is hope for black people." Cone sees in Obama a prophetic, King-like figure. " He represents what America wishes was true. I think the vast majority of Americans want a society without racial conflict and racial oppression. Obama strikes a note in that hope and that wish."

Learn more about Professor Cone and Rev. Dr. Forbes.

Learn more about the history of black liberation theology at Union.

Professor Gary Dorrien for the Associated Press
Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics was interviewed for an Associated Press story entitled, "Obama Pastor: Message Shaped by the Past." Here are his quotes from the article that ran over the national wire on March 18, 2008.

While Trinity United Church of Christ is more Afrocentric and slightly more political than most black churches, "even conservative black churches talk about racism in a way that many whites would find wounding or offensive," said Gary Dorrien, a religion professor at Columbia University in New York.

"Most white Americans have a very limited capacity for dealing with black anger or acknowledging their own racial privileges," Dorrien said. "Wherever white people are dominant, whiteness is transparent to them. In black church communities, dealing with that problem is an every-week issue."

Read the entire article.

Learn more about Professor Dorrien.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell on The Root

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a seminarian at Union and associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University, wrote an article entitled "Our Jeremiah" for the online publication The Root. In the March 17, 2008 article, she explains that she had been a member of Trinity when she lived in Chicago.

"For African Americans, evil takes the very specific and identifiable form of white supremacy, first through enslavement, then through Jim Crow and lynch mob rule, and into what many today experience as seemingly intractable racial inequality. Black Americans struggle to reconcile the sin of racism with the idea of a loving and powerful God. Different churches resolve this issue in various ways. In churches like Trinity UCC, black folks read the Bible with an eye on what it has to say about experiences of bondage and oppression."

Read the entire article.

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