Black Theology for Christian Higher Education--An Extended Review

After providing an overview of both books, I will provide a short challenge to Cone's work and a discussion of how Black liberation theology and Black power should transform Christian Higher Education. In this milieu, Cone was galvanized by Black culture and the historic and revolutionary ideals of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) tradition and its founders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, who opposed racial subjugation within the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Chapters 4 and 5 of Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody highlight Cone's response to criticisms of his work by those in the Black intellectual community, particularly Black religion scholars, Black humanists, and Womanist theologians. Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody provides personal, and at times vulnerable, insight into the scholar whose life work, beginning with Black Theology and Black Power, was to engage in theology "as faith seeking understanding"3 within the context of Black dehumanization in the United States.