Rev. James Cone represented the highest level of Black revolutionary Christian consciousness in his interpretation of the Christian myth-ritual, but most importantly he put Black Christianity in a Black African context, i.e., Jesus is Black, end of discussion.
Rev. Cone advanced the theology of liberation of the oppressed, not a celebration of the oppressor who could not in his role as master transcend Paul’s dictum that servants be obedient to your masters. Another of our Master Theologians, Howard Thurman, noted his grandmother made him read to her when he returned from school, "Read the Bible, boy, but stop when you get to Paul. I don't wanna hear nothing bout servants be obedient to your masters."
We were included in the US Constitution as three-fifths of a man, not a full human being and in 2018 we are yet to achieve parity and equity with this socalled master. His woman has superseded us as a minority, yet even in her minority status her labor is not equal to his in dollar amounts.
Dr. Nathan Hare says the white woman is the white man in drag since she is a stopgap measure to keep the North American African man from usurping the master’s power. Dr Frantz Fanon said the only reason for the season of the oppressed revolutionary man is to replace the master in every way, political, military, sexual, cultural, etc.
But this cunning and vile devil returned to the US Constitution,13th Amendment,that allows involuntary servitude or slavery! Oh, Happy Day, Jesus! Let's work our Constitution and lock these niggas down as commodity on the Stock Exchange, pigs, corn, wheat, oil. Two point three million locked down, once again chattel or personal property of the State and Nation, victims crack, victims heroin, prison for mental health/drug addicts, dual diagnosed, 80/90% incarcerated, black, brown, poor white.
The happiest day in white America when the South enacted the US Constitution to re-enslave the North American African, alas, the South has never quenched their desire to re-enslave the African. Why in the hell do you think we fought the Civil War. We would've won the Civil War if Lincoln hadn't armed 200,000 niggas. When we disarmed them 200,000 niggas, we put them back in slavery in every way we could. Terrorized they asses with KKK, cept we left them niggas alone had they own land, didn't go on they land, but them sharecroppers we terrorized them, raped and lynched they asses. Them niggas on they own land we didn't fuck with, them niggas would shoot back!
Revolution is the act of replacing the ruling class with the oppressed class, no matter the wretched condition of the oppressed Fanon called The Wretched of the Earth. As per the plethora of physical and mental traumas of the oppressed, once they engage in the activity and forward motion of revolution, at this moment they begin to heal from the addiction to white supremacy, type II, Dr. Nathan Hare, and they go about regaining family mental equilibrium.
When the oppressed man truly awakens from the sleepy time tea slumber of his comatose mental condition, i.e., menticide, he is energized for the fight of his life that is not with his natural enemy the White Man but initially he must overcome, survive and transcend the hatred, jealousy and envy of his brothers and sisters, siblings, partners, wives, brothers, friends, especially those closest to him.
Guard against being deceived. Your own mind can deceive you; in your psychosis you are convinced there are people outside your door plotting to kill you, you can hear them. In your psychosis you hear your woman coming to snatch you back to reality, but that is not she you hear knocking. No one is knocking except the devil inside your head.
So called friends who claimed they would be friends to the end, in the end betrayed you. Was not the Savior god betrayed by his brother Seth? Cain and Able? As per family love, check out Godfather Part 2, your family will whack you on a boat ride.
The slave master gave us a false narrative of the Resurrection Drama. In the Kemetic or African Egyptian version based on Nile Valley religion and global versions of The Sixteen Crucified Saviors Before Christ, Kersey, we learn the Savior and his people were in harmony with the Nile Valley culture and civilization. The Nile or Hapi River is four thousand miles long, the longest river in the world. It's true name is Hapi not De Nile. One of my students said, "If we come out of De Nile and get to Hapi we shall then truly be Hapi."
The Resurrection Drama does not end with the Cross and Lynching Tree. We must fulfill the myth-ritual Kemetic version. Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension. John Coltrane said A Love Supreme. Love Supreme. Love Supreme.
Ascension: we transcend this wretched physical plane in the manner of Jesus, "I am in this world but not of this world." This world is an illusion for the deaf, dumb and blind that are to be exploited by the blood suckers of the poor.
As Sheikh Anta Diop taught us, African drama is tragi-comic, never tragedy as in the Northern Cradle tradition. The annual ebb and flow of the Hapi River that replenished crops was the foundation of the Osiris Resurrection Drama, repeated in the life of Jesus or Isa Ibn Mar'yam.
His Holiness Guruedy Bawa Muhaiyadin said, "Do not be fooled by the one billion one millions of the monkey mind. Man god/god man. Man is in god, god is in man We are indivisable, inseparable from the Divinity, we are One, there is no Me apart from Thee, Supreme, Divine Spirit in all things, see the sun, moon, stars, see mountains, streams, rivers, oceans. All is God/Allah, God/Allah is all, every step you take He is with you, inside you, your breath the air in lungs, the energy to think, love, contemplate the wonders of life. God/Allah, God in you/you in God.
We are the poor righteous teachers. Abdullah, servant of Allah. We all serve Allah/God. Did not Job serve God while he persecuted Job, yes, Job, the Negro/African/American who wants only a job. Was he not brought over here 400 years ago to do a job, i.e., build America!
This is not the slave master's interpretation of the Kemetic Savior God and his primordial, prototypical, archetypal Resurrection Drama, known in the West as the drama of Sarapis, (orchestrated 332 A.D, Nicea Conference) that blue-eyed, blond haired hippy nailed to the cross in the pervasive Western white supremacy mythology. What white man was ever nailed to the cross and suffered the lynching tree, none but the Black African, especially the North American Africans and the entirety of African victims of the Euro-American slave system throughout the Americas, i.e., North, Central, South American Africans and our Caribbean brothers and sisters.
What must be acknowledged is that the Europeans enjoyed annual myth-ritual ceremonies in which it was a festive and communal occasion to burn people for joy and happiness. This was their tradition that preceded racism in any form. The burning and lynching was one of their critical rituals and had nothing to do with racism, alas, their own kind were the victims!
It just so happened that the burning and lynching of Africans in the Americas took on racial aspects in which the intersection of racism and European myth-ritual synchronized, morphing into the picnic, i.e., pick a nigga and roast him, lynch him that became a family and communal affair in which the entire community participated, promoted and enjoyed.
The Southern media has acknowledged their role in promoting the lynching of North American Africans.. As per media, it was largely on the shoulders of journalist Ida B. Wells to make plain the horrors of the Cross and Lynching Tree. Yes, the white supremacy media was as guilty as any KKK organizations in the proliferation of North American African victims of the Cross and Lynching Tree.
We give thanks to Rev. James Cone for making it plain, especially for Christians, too often duped by White Serapis Christianity, Born Again Christianity, that allows white people to be saved by grace and thus enabled to continue in their addiction to white supremacy, including a pervasive and problematic hatred, jealousy and envy of North American African Christians. For example, no black preacher is acceptable in the white Christian Born Again circuit if he has not graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary or a reasonable facsimile.
Rev. Cone originates from the Black Abolitionist tradition, shall we begin with David Walker's Appeal, 1829, the Christian slave revolts of Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey; the Underground Railroad of Harriet Tubman, the freedom travails Sojourner Truth, et al.? Shall we conclude with such spiritual and political leaders as Noble Drew Ali, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., et al.?
Rev. Cone must be seen as an integral part of liberation theology from throughout the Americas, a critical member of the priesthood, whether Vudun, Santeria, Candomble, Catholic Church, Rasta, et al. All were about the abolition of oppression and North American African Christianity was critical, despite the reactionary priests/preachers who denounced him as they denounced Martin Luther King, Jr. as a hoodlum and thug at the National Black Baptist Convention.
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail is sufficient answer to white and black ministers but most especially phony white liberals. Alas, on this May Day, 2018, when I informed a student at my Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, across the street from the May Day Rally at Oscar Grant Plaza, when I told him the history of May Day as an international day to celebrate workers that the USA morphed into Labor Day, he said the Communists, Socialists are KKK too, in his ghetto Negro thinking mind. After all, the common Negro doesn't know the difference between Communism and Rheumatism!
On the other hand, during the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, many North American Africans chose Communism as an alternative to oppressive American capitalism. We note W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, and later Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, and Democratic Socialists such as Dr. Cornel West and a host of revolutionary black nationalists who subscribe to Marxism, including Muslims who have the unique ability to syncretize Marxism and Islam associated with Marxism. We have no problem with the Marxism analysis of society, although we may employ an Islamic analysis. FYI, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has revealed how the West encouraged fundamental Islam to be a counterweight to Communism. But, alas, we Africans have the unique ability of syncretism in all our endeavors. This is why a Haitian can attend a Catholic mass followed by participation in a Vudun ceremony without feelings of contradiction. And a Muslim, such as myself, associated with Communists from Eldridge Cleaver to Amiri Baraka, yet maintained my mental equilibrium.
The Haitian revolution used Vudun to become the first Africans in the Euro-American slave system to achieve national independence, although Palmeras in Brazil enjoyed freedom for a century!
Rev. James Cone advanced Christian liberation for North American Africans, Many have never heard of him, just as they have never heard of our beloved theologian and mentor of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Most Honorable Howard Thurman. We pray North American Africans in the Christian tradition with seek out the radical, abolitionist Rev. James Cone advanced that will take us beyond the cross and lynching tree, but firstly will help us understand the myth-ritual we cannot escape no matter how sincere we are in our return to traditional African. The Christian myth-ritual, combined with our traditional faiths in ancestor gods and the ancient dance drama expressions, often expressed in Holy Ghost Church rituals of dance and talking in tongues, call and response and other aspects of ancient myth-ritual celebrations but most beautifully expressed in Yoruba celebrations, when combined with North American African Christian myth-ritual and Islamic myth-ritual as well, will empower us in the same manner Vudun enabled the Democratic Society of devotees to rise above individuality and come together in the highest level of spiritual unity that leads to the Promised Land MLK, Jr. spoke about in his final message on the Mountain Top.
Rev. James Cone, thank you for advancing Black Liberation Theology. Let us ponder your message and consider the truth therein that we may act upon your truth and sacrifice grounded in our ancestors.
--Marvin X
5/1/18
