What Is Black Liberation Theology?

At its most basic, Black liberation theology is a contextual theology that centers its focus on liberating Black people from historical and ongoing oppression—namely, the multi-layered, criminally zealous, racially motivated, and dehumanizing oppression of Black Americans by myriad generations of white Americans. Black theology envisions a Black God and Black Jesus who are completely aligned with and sympathetic to Black people’s ongoing struggle.

Black liberation theology also offers a framework through which Black Americans can reject the whitewashing of Christianity.

Origins of Black Liberation Theology

Black liberation theology grew from a long-held understanding that, in America, the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling that promised “separate but equal” accommodations for Black and white Americans was a sham; unequal segregation was the true goal, and Black Americans were effectively disinherited, disempowered, and disenfranchised. In addition, how white Americans repeatedly used the Bible to justify slavery, and all of its attendant ills, made Bible-focused Christianity less welcoming to Black believers.

As slaves, Black Americans were deemed property. Once “freed,” Black Americans were denied the promise of land, and many turned to sharecropping, an unregulated system whereby they farmed a small plot of land, and paid rent by giving shares of the crop proceeds to the capricious white landowner. Lynchings, common from 1880 to 1940, aimed to preserve white dominance and promote Black worthlessness. So-called “Jim Crow” laws—which lasted close to 100 years in the South—enforced racial segregation, and promoted vastly inferior social, economic, and educational opportunities for people of color.

Some researchers identify an early form of liberation theology among Black and womanist abolitionists. By the early 20th century, African Methodist Episcopal Church leaders spoke in favor of a social gospel informed by liberal theology and Marxism.

The idea of Black Power rose from the 1950s into the 1960s. The idea was championed by organizations as diverse as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and its Chairman, Stokely Carmichael, the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X (who rejected Christianity as a white man’s religion), and the Black Panther Party.

Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist preacher, and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, espoused non-violent resistance. But he also associated with some of the 51 signatories to the “‘Black Power’ Statement by National Committee of Negro Churchmen” that appeared as a full-page ad in the New York Times on July 31, 1966. The statement sought to impress upon readers how the failure to address racism posed a national danger. “We are faced now with a situation where conscience-less power meets powerless conscience, threatening the very foundations of our nation.”

In Section II: “TO WHITE CHURCHMEN: POWER AND LOVE” the statement reads: “We commit ourselves as churchmen to make more meaningful in the life of our institution our· conviction that Jesus Christ reigns in the ‘here’ and ‘now’ as well as in the future he brings in upon us. We shall, therefore, use more of the resources of our churches in working for human justice in the places of social change and upheaval where our Master is already at work.”

During the 1960s, James H. Cone, an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church who grew up in the segregated south, felt that his faith was being challenged by the Nation of Islam’s repudiation of white Christianity and the Black Power movement. The 1967 Detroit riots, during which 43 people (33 Black) were killed, spurred him into action.

Black Theology and Black Power, Cone’s 1969 book, followed quickly by A Black Theology of Liberation in 1970, launched the Black liberation theology movement. Cone’s publications also came soon after the Black Christian National Movement was founded in 1967 by Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., a Detroit preacher who published The Black Messiah in 1968. 

Foundational Principles of Black Liberation Theology

Cone was so impassioned when he wrote Black Theology and Black Power that he completed the book in just one month. Cone explained, “I just felt myself driven by the truth, the truth of Black history and culture and what it had to say about the nature of Black faith in the struggle for justice.”

First and foremost, Black liberation theology is a clarion call to social justice for Black Americans. As Cone declared in Black Theology and Black Power, “If the Church is to remain faithful to its Lord, it must make a decisive break from the structure of this society by launching a vehement attack on the evils of racism in all forms. It must become prophetic, demanding a radical change in the interlocking structures of this society.”

Included under the umbrella of social justice is the concept of liberation from oppression. In the 1970 preface to A Black Theology of Liberation, Cone unabashedly states, “It is my contention that Christianity is essentially a religion of liberation. The function of theology is that of analyzing the meaning of that liberation for the oppressed so they can know that their struggle for political, social, and economic justice is consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Any message that is not related to the liberation of the poor in a society is not Christ’s message. Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology.”

Black liberation theology is an active belief system that is grounded in the exigency of the present struggle to dismantle hundreds of years of white oppression. As Cone asserted in Black Theology and Black Power, “If eschatology means that one believes that God is totally uninvolved in the suffering of men because he is preparing them for another world, then Black Theology is not eschatological. Black Theology is an earthly theology!”

For generations of Black slaves, sharecroppers, and churchgoers who were told to pin their hopes on finding a reward in heaven, Black theology places itself firmly in the present day. The words Liberation Theology tie directly to an ethos of lifting oppression wherever it lives as taught in the gospels. 

In Black Theology and Black Power, Cone asserts that Black liberation theology asks, “What does the Christian gospel have to say to powerless black men whose existence is threatened daily by the insidious tentacles of white power?” He goes on to describe Black theology as “permeated with black consciousness”—a “ghetto theology.” It is a theology through which Black Americans can see themselves and recommit to the struggle for justice.

Cone addresses the issue of redemption in his 2011 book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Orbis Books). “The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation,” Cone explained, “but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross.” He continued, “What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair, as revealed in the biblical and Black proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection.”

The Future of Black Liberation Theology

In 1989, four New York City seminaries organized a conference to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power and encourage church leaders to bring Black theology from academic circles into the pews of modern Black churches and bridge the disconnect between the pulpit and the parishioners. Though Cone did not attend (much to the chagrin of the organizers), he agreed to a phone interview with a New York Times reporter.

“The Black church,” Cone observed, “has produced outstanding preachers…but the church hasn’t produced theologians of equal quality. Without strong theology, preaching becomes entertainment, and there is a tendency to make church life center around the preacher.” 

Rev. Dr. J. Deotis Roberts, another pioneer of Black theology who knew Cone and attended the event, praised the evolution of a “new Black ecumenism” that included perspectives of Black women and biblical scholars. Three prominent women theologians had already made the case for womanist theology earlier in the decade: 

• Rev. Dr. Katie Cannon wrote a book chapter “The Emergence of Black Feminist Consciousness,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (1985); 
• Rev. Dr. Jacquelyn Grant, who studied under Cone, penned an article in the Spring 1986 Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center titled “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Experiences as a Source for Doing Theology”; and
• Dr. Delores Williams’ seminal article, “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Voices,” was published in the March 2, 1987 issue of Christianity and Crisis.

At the same time, Roberts decried ways in which progress for Black people had stagnated. “Racism itself,” he claimed, “has become more insidious. If our people are to survive, it will be largely due to how well the Black church carries out its mission.” 

Dr. Roberts’ emphasis on hope and acknowledgment of the intractable quality of racism in America, undergird reasons why Black liberation theology remains essential. Dr. Esau McCaulley, associate professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College, quoted in a 2023 article, noted that Black theology “is a transformational, ecclesial tradition…that is willing to listen to and enter into dialogue with Black and white critiques of the Bible in hope of a better reading of the text.”

Dr. Jemar Tisby, a contemporary Christian historian who has written about Cone, has authored several books. In The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Zondervan, 2019), Tisby asserts, “History demonstrates that racism never goes away; it just adapts.” He also characterizes many American churches as practicing “a complicit Christianity rather than a courageous Christianity.” 

In a country still rife with religious, institutionalized, and deeply embedded racism, Black theology offers a crucial framework for holding fast to hope and faith without losing sight of justice struggles that persist.

Conclusion

Championed by James Cone, Black liberation theology rose to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is a theology tethered to the plight of Black Americans intent on fighting against oppression and following Christ’s model of working to lift up the downtrodden. 

Since Cone’s ground-breaking publications, many other theologians have carried forward the study and practice of Black Liberation Theology. 

• Dr. Anthony Reddie is the professor of Black Theology and director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture at Regent’s Park College in Oxford, England. He is also the editor-in-chief of Black Theology: An International Journal and has authored numerous books, articles, and book chapters including Theologising Brexit: A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique (Routledge, 2010), and the republished Is God Colour-Blind? Insights from Black Theology for Christian Faith and Ministry (SPCK, 2020)
• Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley is the Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College in Illinois. His books include Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (IVP Academic, 2020), which won several book awards, and How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South (Convergent Books, 2023). He is also a contributing writer for the New York Times. 
• Dr. M. Shawn Copeland is a womanist theologian and a professor emerita of systemic theology at Boston College. She was the first African American to serve as president of the Catholic Theology Society of America. Her books include Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Fortress Press, 2020) and Knowing Christ Crucified: The Witness of African American Religious Experience. (Orbis Books, 2018). 
• Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney is the Right Rev. Sam B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Texas and a womanist theologian. Her publications include Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel (Fortress Press, 2008) and Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (Westminster John Knox Press, 2017)
• Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale University Divinity School, won the 2015 Grawemeyer Award in Religion for The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale University Press, 2010). He has also authored After Whiteness:  An Education in Belonging (Theological Education between the Times) (Eerdmans, 2020)

This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Black Liberation Theology at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities

United’s erudite professors and alums can offer many suggestions for Black liberation and womanist theologians to follow and books to read. In fact, for the past 62 years, United has been steadfastly committed to promoting social justice and working toward social transformation.

As Dr. Demian Wheeler, a United faculty member who teaches Black liberation theology courses, shares, “Rigorous and empathetic dialogue helps us remember that privilege and power shape the way we see things. It helps us remember that we are fallible, limited human beings with incomplete, partial, and historically conditioned perspectives. It helps us remember that all theology is contextual theology.”

He adds, “Cone’s Black theology arose out of the need to make sense of Christianity in a white racist society, a society that has attempted to systematically strip black people of their very dignity, being, and humanity.”

Nearly every United degree program—from the MA to the MAL to the MDiv—includes a requirement to take coursework in Ethics and Justice. That means most students can learn more about Black and womanist theology. The DMin in Social Transformation also invites students to study theologies of liberation. Even our 15-credit Certificate in Ethics and Justice includes an option to study Black and womanist theology.

If you found this blog informative, please share it with others. If you feel called to seminary, contact our admissions team to explore United’s 30+ seminary degree programs today!

We appreciate your willingness to explore Black liberation theology and its mission to dismantle white supremacy and create true freedom for all Black Americans.

¹ “This Far by Faith,” PBS, accessed November 2024, https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey_5/p_2.html.

² APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.) Cone, J. H. (2018). Black Theology and Black Power. Orbis.

³ APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.) James H. Cone. (2010). A Black Theology of Liberation—Fortieth Anniversary Edition: Vol. Fortieth anniversary edition. Orbis.

⁴ APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.) Cone, J. H. (2018). Black Theology and Black Power. Orbis.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Peter Steinfels, “Conference on Black Theology Unites Scholars and Pastors,” The New York Times, October 29, 1989. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/29/us/conference-on-black-theology-unites-scholars-and-pastors.html

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Chris Meehan, “Black Theology Offers Hope,” Christian Reformed Church, February 1, 2023. https://www.crcna.org/news-and-events/news/black-theology-offers-hope