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When he sent a manuscript of The Irony of American History to his historian friend Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Schlesinger called Niebuhr's attention to the glaring omission of the Negro: One irony deserving comment somewhere perhaps is the relationship between our democratic and equalitarian pretensions and our treatment of the Negro. This remains, John Quincy Adams called it in 1820, "the great and foul stain upon the North American Union"; a..
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James H. Cone |
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The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world's value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.
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James H. Cone |
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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 real..
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James H. Cone |
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Transvaluation of values," a term derived from Nietzsche (who derided Christianity's embrace of the weak), is the heart of Niebuhr's perspective on the cross."
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James H. Cone |
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If human power in history--among races, nations, and other collectives as well as individuals--is self-interested power, then "the revelation of divine goodness in history" must be weak and not strong."
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James H. Cone |
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Just as Martin Luther King Jr. learned much from Reinhold Niebuhr, Niebuhr could have deepened his understanding of the cross by being a student of King and the black freedom movement he led. King could have opened Niebuhr's eyes to see the lynching tree as Jesus' cross in America. White theologians do not normally turn to the black experience to learn about theology. But if the lynching tree is America's cross and if the cross is the heart..
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James H. Cone |
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To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!
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James H. Cone |
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A God minus wrath seems to be a God who is basically not against anything.
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James H. Cone |