Pondering the Birth/Death of Jesus, the Slave

During the Christmas season, we sing/hear many hymns/carols. In the New Testament, though, there are few hymns. Philippians 2:6~11 is most likely one of those hymns, and there Jesus is referred to as a doulos, the Greek word for slave.

“The Christ Hymn”

The words of Philippians 2:6~11 are often called “the Christ Hymn,” and they are a significant summary of the nature of Jesus Christ’s existence. Verses 6~8 emphasize Jesus’ humiliation and verses 9~11 highlight his exultation.

Even though most English versions of the Bible translate the word doulos (in v. 7) as servant, its primary meaning is slave. And Jesus, the slave, ends up being crucified, which according to Black theologian James Cone is the equivalent of slaves and, later, their descendants during the Jim Crow years being lynched.

Those of us who grew up in evangelical churches, and those who are evangelicals today, see the first three verses mainly as linked to Jesus’ death on the cross as the means of providing atonement for sinful human beings.

Be that as it may, Jesus was crucified as a common criminal by the usual Roman means of capital punishment. Moreover, the Jews of Jesus’ day knew that the Hebrew Bible states that “anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23).

The last half of “the Christ hymn” emphasizes the inexplicable exaltation of the crucified Jesus. Certainly, both Jesus’ humiliation and his exaltation must be recognized and affirmed. Most of us, though, perhaps fail to grasp the full impact of the ignominy of Jesus’ being “lynched” as a dissident slave.

“The Gospel according to Mary Brown”

In July, a youngish blogger in California posted a long and thought-provoking blog article titled “The Cross and The Lynching Tree by Dr. James Cone.”

On pages 6-7 of his post, the blogger introduces W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The Gospel According to Mary Brown” and provides this link to the “Xmas 1919” issue of The Crisis magazine with, scrolling down, to Du Bois’s brief three-page story.  

Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 and long served as the founding editor of The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP.**

In that 101-years-ago issue of The Crisis, Du Bois took the conventional Jesus story and brought it to his Black readers living in the Jim Crow South. He replaced Jesus with Joshua, a black baby born to a single mother (Mary Brown) sharecropping in the rural South.

That re-telling of the narrative about Jesus was consistent with a central point Du Bois had made in his The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and other essays. He condemned “white religion” as an “utter failure.”

As Cone points out in his book mentioned above, for Du Bois, true Christianity is defined by “the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and the Golden Rule.” But, Du Bois emphasized, “the white church’s treatment of blacks was “sadly at variance with this doctrine” (Cone, pp. 103-4).

As we celebrate Christmas this year—in ways far different from usual because of the covid-19 pandemic—let’s celebrate not only the birth of Jesus as the Savior but also the one who came “to liberate the oppressed” (Luke 4:18, CEB).

In Du Bois’s story of Joshua, “the White Folk” were offended by what he said. They complained, “What do you mean by this talk about all being brothers—do you mean social equality?”

And they also said to Joshua, in Du Bois’s words, “What do you mean by saying God is you-all’s father—is God a nigger?"

These White Folk finally brought Joshua before a judge from the North—but he “washed his hands of the whole matter.” The White crowd then seized Joshua and lynched him.

Since in our land today 100 years later there are still problems of discrimination and oppression because of race and/or class, perhaps this is the “Christmas story” we need to hear and to ponder this week. What do you think?

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** My 9/15/18 blog post was written in honor of Du Bois (1868~1963).

What To Do about a White Jesus?

Earlier this year I wrote about removing Confederate statues, and my previous post was about toppling statues of the Franciscan missionary Junípero Serra. But now I tackle an even harder question: what should be done about the statues—and stained-glass windows—of a white Jesus?

The Popularity of a White Jesus

By far, the most famous painting of Jesus is Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ.” Sallman (1892~1968) completed that painting in 1940, and in the 80 years since, some say it has been reproduced a billion times. 

News stories this year about Sallman’s painting have been titled “How Jesus became white” (see here, for example), but there were a multitude of paintings and stained-glass windows depicting a white Jesus long before 1940.

From the late 16th century until the early 20th century, Raphael’s “The Transfiguration” (1520) was the most famous oil painting in the world, and Jesus is clearly “white” and with blond hair. (See Anna House’s 7/17/20 essay, “The long history of how Jesus came to resemble a white European.”)

The Problem of a White Jesus

Eminent Black theologian James Cone highlighted the problem of a white Jesus in his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011): “The White Christ gave blacks slavery, segregation, and lynching and told them to turn the other cheek and to look for their reward in heaven” (p. 115).

Partly for reasons noted by Cone (1938~2018), according to a June 22 Newsweek article, Shaun King, an American writer, civil rights activist, and co-founder of the Real Justice PAC, has insisted that “White Jesus statues should be torn down.”

King (b. 1979) also asserted that stained glass windows and other images of a white Jesus should be destroyed, insisting that they are “racist propaganda” and “a gross form of white supremacy.”

In his hard-hitting 2019 book Dear Church, Lenny Duncan, a Black Lutheran pastor, writes about how he and other Blacks have been hurt by the prevalent symbol of “a white Norwegian Jesus” (p. 68).

Kelly Brown Douglas, Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Seminary in New York, writes in the October 7 issue of The Christian Century about “Struggling with Black faith in America.”

Dean Douglas says that as a girl, the Jesus of her Sunday school lessons ”was always pictured as White. This fact alone made me skeptical of his love for me.”

Further, she writes, “How could a White Jesus ever care about me, not to speak of caring for poor Black children? And how could I, a Black person, ever have faith in a White Jesus?”

Douglas goes on to say that as she was “experiencing an agonizing crisis of faith,” she was introduced to Cone’s book A Black Theology of Liberation (1970)—and the content of that book was definitely liberating for her.

“I could be Black with a love for Jesus without contradiction, because in fact Jesus was Black like me,” she realized.

What To Do about a White Jesus?

Since the summer of 2019, I have served as the chair of my church’s Worship Committee. Most of this year has been hard because of not being able to have in-person worship services.

Unexpectedly, our committee was confronted with the problem of what to do, if anything, about the large stained-glass window in our sanctuary. It quite clearly portrays a white Jesus, as you can see in this picture: 

Our church building was acquired from the Methodists, and when it was remodeled in the early 2000s the stained-glass window was re-done—but there was no change to the Scandinavian appearance of Jesus.

We continue to wrestle with the question, What should be done about the White Jesus in our stained-glass window?

What advice would you give me and my committee?

“On the Pulse of Morning”

January 20, 1993, was a big day for the woman who was born in 1928 and named Marguerite Ann Johnson.

You probably don’t know her by that name, for she was introduced as Maya Angelou before reading one of her poems at Bill Clinton’s inauguration as POTUS on that January day 22 years ago today.

Angelou was the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961. Also, she was the first woman as well as the first African-American to do so.

The poem Angelou recited at President Clinton’s inauguration was titled “On the Pulse of Morning.” It ended with these words:

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister’s eyes,

And into your brother’s face,

Your country,

And say simply

Very simply /

With hope –

Good morning.

It was a very suitable poem for the new President from Hope, Arkansas.

Marguerite was born in St. Louis but mostly spent her early years, from age three to twelve, living with her grandmother in Stamps, Ark., a small town not far north of the Louisiana border.

Reading about the indignities she suffered as a little black girl in Arkansas helps us to understand Martin Luther King Jr’s passion for changing unjust laws, for he was just a year younger than Maya.

The town of Stamps is about 65 miles southwest of Bearden, Ark., where black theologian James Cone was reared. And even though he was born ten years after Maya, the violence against African-Americans in Arkansas, and elsewhere, led Cone to write his most recent book, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” (2011).

In 1940, after Bailey, Maya’s brother, saw the body of a black man who had been lynched, “Momma,” their grandmother, decided to take the two children to their mother, who then lived in California.

Bailey, a year older than his sister, is the one who gave Marguerite her new first name. When they were small, he referred to her as “my-a sister” and then the nickname Maya stuck. Around 1953, after she became a night club performer in San Francisco, she took the name Angelou for her stage name.

Angelou’s most widely-read book is “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” (1969). It is her autobiography from the age of three, when she and Bailey were sent to Arkansas, until she was 17. I just finished reading it for the first time last night. It is a beautifully written book, and definitely one well worth reading.

Maya had a wide variety of experiences between the age of 17 and when she was 64 in January 1993. Among other things, by then she was a nationally known author and poet. And in 1991 she had become a professor at Wake Forest University.

Her memorial service was held at WFU’s Wait Chapel on June 7 last year, ten days after her passing at the age of 86.

It is amazing how people can rise from humble circumstances to great heights. That fact is clearly seen in the outstanding life Maya Angelou. It was also true for Bill Clinton, who was born just about 30 miles north of Stamps.

Amazing Maya Angelou left the world many good poems and other words worth considering well, such as these from her book “Celebrations” (2006):

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.

The Importance of Contextual Theology

This posting is a continuation of what I wrote last time about the Justice Summit at William Jewell College last weekend. One of the most impressive people I met at the Summit is Robert Francis, who lives in Bates County, MO.

I had heard of Robert; a year or two ago he had spoken in a Chapel service at Jewell that I was unable to attend. So I was happy to meet him. When visiting with Robert, I asked if he is part of a Christian community. He said that he and other Native Americans like him were followers of Jesus but were not necessarily Christians.

Robert’s name card indicates that he is a Consultant/Helper with the Mid American Indian Fellowships (MAIF), and that organizational name is followed with the words, “following Jesus in the context of our Native cultures.” In a 2006 document available on the Internet, Robert writes about how a MAIF Council meeting in Springfield, MO, decided to work toward establishment of a land-based center for indigenous cultural immersion and restoration.

In the same paper, Robert says that the “overarching purpose” of MAIF is the decolonization of colonized peoples. This is in contrast to what missionaries have done through the years, he claims. Selective reading of the Gospels allowed Christian missionaries “to neglect Creator-Son’s primary work of decolonization.”

Robert’s work is a good example of both contextual and liberation theology. From the late 1970s I began teaching about the importance of contextual theology in my Introduction to Theology course at Seinan Gakuin University’s Department of Theology.

One of the best Asian examples then was Waterbuffalo Theology (1974) by Kosuke Koyama, a Japanese missionary to Thailand. And in that connection I also began to talk about the contextual liberation theologies of James Cone, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Rosemary Radford Ruether.

And just this morning I finished reading one of the most challenging books I have read for a long time: American Indian Liberation (2008) by George E. “Tink” Tinker. A member of the Osage Nation, Dr. Tinker is an ordained Lutheran minister and has since 1985 been a professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver.

Just like the Black Theology of Cone, the Indian Theology of Tinker is highly critical of much traditional (White) theology. But both are contextual theologies that those of us who are not Black or “Red,” as well as those who are, need to take very seriously.

(Here is a picture of Dr. Tinker.)

Let's Learn instead of Being Defensive

It is hard not to be defensive. When one's ideas or, even more, when one's personhood is being attacked or criticized it is hard not to be defensive. But being defensive rarely produces positive results, and it often keeps us from learning valuable lessons.

June and I have been married for more than fifty-two years, and like most married couples we have had our disagreements from time to time. Because of those tensions, we have read and discussed several books about marital relationships. One of the most helpful books we have read is Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Loved by You? (1983; second edition, 2002) by a married couple, Dr. Jordan Paul and Dr. Margaret Paul.

One of the most helpful suggestions in the Pauls' book, and one of the hardest to put into practice, is that of substituting exploration for defensiveness. Whether between marriage partners or between other persons with whom we engage in serious interaction, they suggest that when criticisms are made, the person being criticized should seek to use that as a means of exploring what lay behind the criticism and what could be learned from it rather than seeking to defend himself or herself from the criticism being leveled.

Let's relate this matter to my posting on November 13. I have heard considerable defensiveness with regard to what Dr. Cone has written in the past and to what he said publicly at William Jewell College last week. No doubt some, or perhaps even much, of what the "defenders," of whom to some degree I have to include myself, have said is correct.

But rather than being defensive, our most natural reaction to harsh criticism, is it possible for us to use Dr. Cone's sharp words to explore more about the pain that he and generations of African-Americans have experienced? And is it possible to examine ourselves to see whether we are not still doing less than we might to help relieve some of that pain?

Whenever I hear criticism, as a spouse, as a white person, or in some other role, I want more and more to use such criticism as a springboard for exploration and learning instead of reacting defensively. Do you need to make the same resolve?

Why Listen to Dr. Cone?

James Cone is an extremist. But that is probably OK. As has often been said, some people have to go too far [to an extreme] to get other people to go far enough. And most of us middle-class white people in America have not gone far enough toward working for a just and equitable society for all people.

Dr. James Cone (b. 1938), professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York since 1970, gave two public talks at William Jewell College last week, and I was happy to be among those who heard those talks--although they were not particularly easy to listen to. He continues to be harsh in his criticism of American whites. One to one, though, he was very friendly and cordial, and you get some indication of his warmth in the picture.


In preparation for Dr. Cone's coming, I read much of his book "God of the Oppressed," first published in 1975 and re-issued in 1997 with an important preface but with few changes in the original book. In Milton Horne's "Bible study" class at Second Baptist Church we discussed Dr. Cone's book for five weeks before his coming. It is a tough book. In spite of considerable talk now about the importance of building bridges rather than driving wedges, bridge building was not was what Dr. Cone was about, especially in 1975.

Since Dr. Cone's voice is so strident, we comfortable, middle-class white people naturally ask, "Why listen to Dr. Cone?" There are some good reasons: (1) Most African-Americans in this country are descendants of people who were grossly oppressed by the insidious institution of slavery. While that doesn't excuse aberrant behavior in the present, the woeful effects of past oppression must be recognized. Listening to Dr. Cone helps us grasp some of how that oppression continues to maim many in that tradition.

(2) Many of us white people, in spite of our attitudes toward African Americans now, are descendants of those who were slaveholders. Littleon Seat was my first grandfather to live in Missouri. His father, Hartwell, was a slaveholder. Two years before Littleton was born in Virginia in 1788, two of his older brothers were killed by a young slave. (I have always wished there was some way to get more information about that incident.) When the Hartwell Seat family moved to Tennessee, they brought slaves with them. (Years ago I saw Seats Chapel, a black church building in central Tennessee that was probably formed by former slaves of Hartwell, my grandfather.) Thus, listening to Dr. Cone helps me to come to the painful realization that I have come from a family of oppressors. I, and others like me, should use that realization not as a cause for feeling guilt, but as a spur to greater efforts in working for racial justice.

(3) As I wrote before, by necessity we all are either on the side of the oppressor or on the side of the oppressed. Listening to Dr. Cone helps to clarify the chasm between the two racial groups and challenges us all to choose to be in solidarity with the oppressed.

P.S. After posting this, I received an e-mail from a Korean friend who shared the following picture taken of Dr. Cone in Tokyo in 1978 or 1979.

Dr. Cone and Rev. Wright

It seems that Dr. James Cone was Rev. Jeremiah Wright's mentor mainly through his books, particularly Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970). Rev. Wright was born in September 1941, so he is only three years younger than Dr. Cone and, thus, was not formally a student of Dr. Cone. But he learned "black theology" from Dr. Cone and that theology was central to mission statement of Trinity United Church of Christ.

In 2008, Dr. Cone was interviewed by Hana R. Alberts, and that interview was posted under the title "A Paradoxical Feeling" on March 24 on www.forbes.com. In the interview Dr. Cone explains his ideas and how they appear in Rev. Wright:

"Black liberation theory emerged out of the ministers: out of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in the late 1960s."

"So black liberation theology is an attempt to bring Martin and Malcolm together. The 'black' in black theology stands for Malcolm X. The 'theology' stands for Martin Luther King."

Also, "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."

"I think Rev. Wright is a perfect example and expression of black liberation theology. He's part of a progressive black ministerial community."

One More Thing about Dr. Cone

In January of this year I attended the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE), which was held in Chicago. I flew to Chicago on an early morning flight, and when I arrived at the meeting site, Rev. Jeremiah Wright had just begun speaking. (Actually, it was partly because of his scheduled talk that I decided rather belatedly to make the trip to Chicago and to attend the SCE meeting.)

Rev. Wright, of course, is the former pastor of President Obama; he was pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago from 1972 to early 2008. (At the time of his retirement, the TUCC had about 8,500 members; it was the largest church in the UCC, a primarily white denomination.)

I found most of Rev. Wright's presentation to the SCE very interesting--also quite powerful, but not particularly controversial. In particularly, I was interested in hearing him say that Dr. James Cone was his mentor.

James Cone at a KKK Meeting

Dr. James Cone, a professor at Union Theology Seminary in New York, came to Japan at the invitation of the Korean Church in Japan. The pastor of the Korean Church in Fukuoka City, where my wife and I lived for thirty-six years, was my good friend Glen Davis from Canada. At that time, Glen was also the president of a group of gaijin (foreigners) who met once a month for a study meeting. The name of the group was Kyushu Kenkyu Kai. (Kyushu is the name of the island on which Fukuoka, and Nagasaki, are located; kenkyu is the Japanese word for study, and kai is the word for meeting).

The Kyushu Kenkyu Kai was having its regular monthly meeting during the time Dr. Cone was in the city. Glen invited Dr. Cone to speak to the group, and he graciously consented to do so. When the time came for Glen to introduce Dr. Cone to the group, he said how happy he was to have Dr. Cone to attend our KKK meeting that evening--and then immediately realized that the initials we often used to refer to our study group had another meaning, one that was not so pleasant for Dr. Cone. Glen soon explained what KKK meant in our context, and Dr. Cone good-naturedly began his presentation.

(A few years later, our daughter Karen kept saying that she thought we should change the name of the group--which we finally did. So then for years it was known not as the KKK but the FKK, the Fukuoka Kenkyu Kai.)

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James Cone

Chapter Six of The Limits of Liberalism is "The Limits of Liberalism's Understanding of God." But before writing about the problem areas, I point out what I see as positive aspects of liberalism's view of God--such as its emphasis on the justice of God.

In connection with the justice of God, just this morning I added the following statement by Dr. James Cone: "God is the political God, the Protector of the poor and the Establisher of the right for those who are oppressed. To know God is to experience the acts of God in the concrete affairs and relationships of people, liberating the weak and the helpless from pain and humiliation. For theologians to speak of this God, they too must become interested in politics and economics, recognizing that there is no truth about Yahweh unless it is the truth of freedom as that event is revealed in the oppressed people’s struggle for justice in this world" (God of the Oppressed, revised edition, 1997, p. 57).

Cone, who was born ten days before me (in 1938), is giving the Binns Lectures at William Jewell College this fall, and I am looking forward to hearing him again. More than thirty years ago he was in Fukuoka, and I had the privilege of introducing him at a Seinan Gakuin University chapel service. Maybe later I can write up an amusing thing that happened when Dr. Cone spoke to a group of missionaries at one of their regular study meetings.