Martin Luther King and Black Theology
...ut is it a ‘Black theology’ that he is proposing? It is of course necessary to understand what we mean by this term – best understood through James Cone’s description. There are three distinctive elements to Cone’s conception of ‘Black theology’: ontological blackness, Black experience and Black identity. MLK is clearly black and can be said to satisfy the first condition. Cone called this the “need of a theology from a particular black-skinned people in America.” In his rebuttal of all whites (even those in agreement with him) it is clear that is not just a matter of espousing ‘black values,’ but of being “black-skinned.” Although, King did not see necessarily view blackness in identical terms as Cone, he does satisfy the condition of being Ontologically black. Cone argues that “Black theology has no time for a neutral God” – colour is a necessary condition and King clearly fulfils it. The second element of Black theology is that of Black experience. As Cone put it the “rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community.” Black experience is crucial to Black theology because it is an underlying source of knowledge: “Black Theology knows no authority more binding than the experience of oppression itself.” King does satisfy this element – deriving his theological message from real Black experiences. He expresses this clearly in ‘American Dream’ when he talks of “[having] seen the dream shattered, when I saw that Mrs. Viola Liuzzio was shot down…when Reverend Reeb was clubbed to the ground by a vicious racist and later died.” Clearly he is affected by Black oppression – experience that has a profound influence on his theology. King embodies this experience (“of racism, segregation and poverty”) and it provides a staple dialectic for his theology. Cone calls him “a theologian of liberation (in the best sense) whose thinking about God was developed in his efforts to achieve freedom and dignity for the Black people.” His response may have been different to those advocated by Malcolm X and others, but it was still one drawn from Black experience. King struggles, however, to fulfil the third condition – that of promoting a Black identity. Cone criticises him for being “caught in two worlds – one was made up of white and middle-class blacks and the other was composed of poor blacks.” Because King was looking for a conciliatory approach that embraced both Blacks and Whites (hence he spoke of “my White brother along with Negroes living in poverty”), he expressly seeks to play down racial differences. Malcolm X reacted badly against his ‘I have a dream’ speech (in...