Cone, James Hal

(b. 1938)

   Theologian.

   Cone was born in Arkansas in the United States of America and was educated at Garrett Theological Seminary and at North Western University. Subsequently he has taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Cone is a prominent expounder of black theology. Black theology in the United States has arisen out of the experience of slavery, oppression and exploitation. Cone is concerned with the interface between God’s Word as revealed in Scripture on the one hand and the black experience on the other. As he himself puts it, ‘Black theology seeks to analyse the satanic nature of Whiteness and by doing so to prepare Non-Whites for revolutionary action’.

   James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970);

   G.S. Wilmore and James H. Cone, Black Theology: A Documentary History 1966–1979 (1981).