SHOULD WE CANCEL? The Case of James Cone

How Culture Works When We Erase

In his 1989 preface to the 2^nd edition of Black Theology and Black Power, James Cone said something so profound, it probably needs an entire book to fully exposit the depths of what he was saying. Here’s what he said:

“The publication of the twentieth-anniversary edition tempted me to rid Black Theology and Black Power of its sexist language as I did in the revised edition of A Black Theology of Liberation (Orbis, 1986) and also insert some references to black women. But I decided to let the language remain unchanged as a reminder of how sexist I once was and also that I might be encouraged to never forget it. It is easy to change the language of oppression without the changing the sociopolitical situation of its victims. I know existentially what this means from the vantage point of racism. Whites have learned how to use less offensive language, but they have not changed the power relations between blacks and whites in society. Because of the process of changing their language, combined with the token presence of middle-class African Americans in their institutions, it is now even more difficult to define the racist behavior of whites.”

It is obvious that Cone, if he had wanted, could have erased the misogyny from his first edition for the second edition. But he chose not to. Because, in Cone’s estimation, erasing can sometimes cover-over the injustice, the oppression, make it appear that something has changed, when it hasn’t. For Cone, dealing with the abuse of an author is more than changing words, or erasing his or her books from a syllabus or speaking engagement. The abuse is part of a whole culture frame that must be revealed. To truly change a culture, to truly deal with the abuse, we must not merely erase its authors, but see the effects of the abuse, and discern that abuse, why it was allowed (or overlooked) in the first place. We must be enabled to see that abuse and its effects as it continues to this day. Dealing with the abuse of an author, or a public figure, is so much more complex than merely erasing him or her.

I support removing symbols and statues of figures who symbolize and in essence valorize the abuses of racism and chattel slavery in our country. At the same time however, these symbols, these histories must never be forgotten. The influence of these horrors, and their affects, continue to this day. And so we must do this with care. Because as Cone says, removing a statue might enable the culture we live in to say racism is over. It might allow us all to assume that its ongoing effects, extending from the history of the past from whence those statues came, is now taken care of. We “change the language of oppression without changing the sociopolitical situation of its victims.” Do you see how culture works, how meaning-making works within histories and contexts, how cultural sins perpetuate themselves in different, maybe more invisible ways, if indeed we forget from whence we came?

Erase An Author- Not So Easy - How Culture Works When You Cancel

I have seen many scholars and friends simply erase significant theologians and or pastors  because of their heinous patterns of abuse having been revealed. I have seen scholars recommend we replace abuser theologians with another theologian who says close to the same things without the baggage of the abuser. It all makes so much sense to us at the time. But, as Cone alludes to, this isn’t the way sociology of knowledge works. Erasing an author is not so easy. There’s a culture to be discerned, and the author’s relation to it.

Reading Derrida, and others, taught me a long time ago, a text requires a context in order to be understood. Every text is more than only the author’s ideas. It is a set of ideas that makes sense within a cultural context. A text requires a history to be understood and extended into various contexts. Each author achieves traction, makes sense within a history. It is entirely possible that his/her abusive behavior also made sense within a given context or history.

You cannot therefore extract a meaning from a context before you understand the context. If you extract that meaning from its context, you cannot merely transfer that into a new context without a translation that takes into account its immersion in that original context. And so, if you merely repeat the same idea, removing the author, replacing him/her with another author, you may in essence be perpetuating a context which sustains the abuse of the author, in essence perpetuating the abuse in more invisible ways. (In our doctoral Contextual Theology cohort we call this “flat epistemology”)

The Case of Martin Luther

Martin Luther was an horrendous anti-semite. His writings on “the Jews” are excruciatingly difficult to stomach. One is tempted to erase him. Never read him again. But this cannot be done. It’s too late for that.

Martin Luther is famous for the development of the doctrine of “justification by faith alone.” This doctrine teaches us that we receive pardon from God for all our sin sola fide, through faith alone, not of works. This doctrine is mainstream in evangelical circles. Billy Graham, among other revivalists of the past centuries, made salvation by faith alone the key entry point for millions of Christians. It was an important theological insight that was desperately needed at that time when parts of Roman Catholicism had been corrupted by money, indulgences, and priestly control over the sacraments.

But as Cone himself pointed out in other books, this approach to salvation individualizes salvation. It extracts salvation out of relation with our neighbors, and the social ills, and makes it about each one’s lone standing before God. But God came in Christ to heal the world, heal the world of racism. The salvation of “by faith alone” can be used to sidestep all that. It can be used to de-culturalize salvation. We can see this all the better by reading Luther’s works all over again recognizing and discerning his anti-semitism.

Luther railed against “the law” as the way of the Jews. The law became the enemy, and alongside this, so did the Jews. In a way, his sola fide opened the doors toward an extraction of our salvation out of its Jewishness. This kind of supersessionism, as Willie Jennings has argued in his book The Christian Imagination, is what led to a Euro colonialism that enabled slavery and a whole host of coercive tactics on evangelism that take Jesus, His presence, and the story of what God has done in and through Israel, out of the gospel. It all illustrates why reading Luther discerning his sinful anti-semitism is important. We can’t and shouldn’t erase “justification by faith alone,” but we should read Luther discerningly to deepen it, broaden it, connect it to its Jewishness. This is some of what happened in the New Perspective on Paul that started 50 years ago.

Let us Therefore Read With Discernment

Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Martin Luther King jr., Paul Tillich (read a serious piece on reading Tillich in light of his sordid story in ch. 5 of this book), John Howard Yoder, among many others, all made massive contributions to the furtherance of Christian life, thought, and yet carry legacies of abuse. Their contributions could not be erased if we tried. Yet, we should place them within the broader streams and make them less central. And when we read them, we must read them with great care, to recognize all of their victims, discerning carefully the lingering socio-cultural effects that in effect cover-over or perpetuate the abuse. Otherwise, the cover-ups, the abusive propensities, the social context that makes possible the abuse, the way power works to perpetuate abuse, will all continue unabated in other ways.

I am sure many readers will disagree some things in this post. Or raise other cautions. ALL GOOD!! So please engage with me here eh? What are your solutions? I’m traveling, but will nonetheless try to engage.