We must demand that Union Theological Seminary (UTS) repudiate the teachings of white-hating, Jew-hating theology professor James Hal Cone, who teaches at UTS. Cone's theology was one of the primary inspirations of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s incendiary sermons. Cone is a staunch defender of Malcolm X and once wrote, “Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man the devil.”
Background: When you read the quotations from Cone’s work that I have placed in the body of the e-mail, I believe you will be as shocked as I was that a man who writes such things is employed as “Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology” at a reputable seminary. UTS has posted a response to the Jeremiah Wright affair on its website. The response contains not a word of criticism of either Wright or Cone and links to an article about Wright that praises him as a modern-day prophet.
Below I’ve placed instructions on how to send the e-mail below to the UTS President of the Faculty and the UTS contact address. Thanks for doing your part.
Subject: Repudiate James Hal Cone and Jeremiah Wright!
Body: The theology of UTS professor James Hal Cone has gotten much attention recently, since Rev. Jeremiah Wright has named Cone’s works one of the inspirations for his religion of anti-white paranoia. To remind you, Wright preached that the US government invented AIDS to kill off non-whites and once called his country the “US of KKKA.”
When I read the writings of Cone, I was shocked to discover that there were professors employed at reputable institutions of higher learning who unabashedly promoted hatred of whites and urged blacks to commit violence against them. Cone has defended Malcolm X’s view that whites are the devil and that blacks are within their rights to assault and even kill whites in the name of black liberation. When I visited the Union Theological Seminary website, it sickened me to see that your only response to the Wright affair has been to post a link to Melissa Harris-Lacewell’s uncritical apology for the minister’s galling words.
Cone’s writings are responsible for Wright’s libels on whites. It is incumbent on UTS, as a Christian institution, to publicly repudiate Cone’s words, as well as those of his wild-eyed followers.
Here are some quotations from Cone’s 1968 book Black Theology and Black Power that outraged me:
“Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man the devil.”
“Whiteness, as revealed in the history of America, is the expression of what is wrong with man. It is a symbol of man’s depravity. God cannot be white even though white churches have portrayed him as white. When we look at what whiteness has done to the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers… The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us.”
“Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”
In the 1975 essay “Revolution, Violence, and Reconciliation,” Cone legitimated black violence against whites: “The divine election of the oppressed means that black people are given the power of judgment over the high and mighty whites.”
Cone never apologized for these writings. In fact, his militant anti-white attitudes continued into the era of affirmative action and the welfare state, when whites spent trillions to rescue blacks from poverty and bring them into the American mainstream. His 1992 book Martin & Malcolm & America is an uncritical glorification of Malcolm X. Cone whitewashes Malcolm X’s incitements to violence against whites as a “commitment to self-defense.” Cone also says that Malcolm X “complemented and corrected” Martin Luther King’s philosophy of non-violence.
Surely one of the crucial tasks of Christians is to work towards racial reconciliation. I can guarantee you, however, that there will be no such reconciliation as long as preachers of hate like Cone and Wright are dignified with the titles of “professor” and “reverend.”
Sincerely,
Instructions for sending: Click here to open an e-mail message addressed both to Prof. Joseph C. Hough, Jr., the UTS President of the Faculty (
[email protected]), and to the UTS contact address (
[email protected]). If you cannot open an e-mail message by clicking a link, open it manually and paste the addresses in. Then paste the message above into the subject line and the body section of the e-mail message, edit as you like, and send.
http://inverted-world.com/index.php/activism/activism/tell_union_theological_seminary_to_repudiate_white_hating_professor_james_h/
Topic: Repudiate James Hal Cone and Jeremiah Wright! (Read 2435 times)