Lee Marsden, University of East Anglia
US foreign policy if black lives really mattered
The videoed execution of George Floyd on a Minneapolis Street on 25 May 2020 under the knee of a white law enforcement officer brought into question just how much change has occurred in terms of racial justice, parity of esteem and equal opportunities in the United States since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Racial tensions, exacerbated under the Trump administration, energised the Black Lives Matter movement and caused many in the white community to reflect on white supremacy and confront their own personal and institutional racism. As a white male academic, I too have grown more conscious of the privilege I enjoy in society and the need to confront my own privilege and prejudices, to not only be anti-racist but to seek to learn from and incorporate the ideas and teachings of those African Americans who have battled against injustice.
The legacy of slavery and systemic racism within American society has long been used as a critique of US foreign policy and a counter to the hubristic claims of leadership of the Free World and a Shining City on a Hill serving as an exemplar nation (Fantina 2013; Ledwidge, Varey and Parmar 2013; Vitalis 2015). A nation built on the genocide of the native American population nonetheless espousing universal values of freedom and liberty and the God-given endowment of unalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Rights which have been systematically denied African Americans since arriving as enslaved people at Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619 (Zinn 2015).
While a number of prominent African Americans, including Barack Obama, Andrew Young, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice and Linda Thomas-Greenfield have risen to leading positions within the foreign policy establishment they have done so embracing traditional foreign policy approaches, rather than a foreign policy forged in the black experience, designed to maximise US power and influence. While this is not intended as a criticism of the individuals involved, who have overcome significant challenges to reach these positions of influence, it does beg the question as to what a foreign policy forged in the African American experience could look like?
In this working paper I examine the work of James H. Cone on the theology of black liberation as a means of understanding racial conflict and how this could contribute in reshaping US foreign policy. The paper is divided into four sections, the first making a case for the inclusion of theology in a largely secular discipline such as international relations. Secondly, the paper then considers the theology of black liberation propounded by Cone, before thirdly, examining the criticisms made and corrections applied by Cone as his theology matures. Finally, the working paper seeks to apply Cone’s theology to US foreign policy and imagine a foreign policy that would contribute towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness beyond America’s shores. I conclude that rather than dismissing or contesting black liberation theology, as so many critics within the white church and ruling elites have done, that the work of James Cone is worthy of greater consideration and if applied to US foreign policy has the potential to dramatically change the nature of such policy placing it on the side of the oppressed rather than the rich and powerful.
Theology and International Relations
While religion has always played a role in US foreign policy, often serving the role as cheerleader for American power projection on the world stage, the discipline of foreign affairs or international relations, more broadly, has developed through the Cold War and subsequent periods as a largely secular discipline. It was not always the case. Indeed, the largely Catholic inspired Just War Theory providing justification for going to war, right conduct during war and right conduct in the aftermath of war was largely inspired by the thoughts of Catholic Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Dutch Arminian Hugo Grotius. Grotius’ writings formed the inspiration for Hedley Bull’s concept of international society and the work of the English School. Leading members of the English School including Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield’s approach to international relations was informed by their religious conviction and personal faith, before the school became increasingly secular in approach (Thomas 2001).
Christian Realists, as the name implies, allow their faith to inform their approach to international relations and the fallenness of human nature. Reinhold Niebuhr, John Foster Dulles and George Kennan among others exemplify an approach to foreign policy through a racialised Christian prism. Even Niebuhr, among the most progressive of Christian Realists while aware of the injustices suffered by African Americans showed little empathy and despite his eloquence in depicting the transformational power of the cross was unable to equate the lynching tree, in his own time, with the Black Experience (Cone 2019b: 32-63). Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy and its sponsors the Institute on Religion and Democracy continues to fly the flag for Christian. The witness of the historic peace churches including the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Church of the Brethren and the Mennonites (including the Amish) also attest to a religious dimension to early thinking on international relations. Today the Catholic Church has increasingly adopted a nonviolence rather than a just war approach to conflict, as indeed did Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement (Pope Francis 2017).
While following the Iranian revolution in 1979 and Al Qaeda’s attack on the United States in 2001 there has been increased interest in the role of religious actors in international relations and international security around issues of religiously framed terrorism, securitisation and the role of white conservative evangelicals in advocacy and supporting foreign policies pursued by Republican presidents. In this period, theology has played little role in shaping approaches to foreign policy. And yet, as a discipline there has been significant borrowing of ideas and concepts from other disciplines including sociology, economics, history, psychology, gender studies, and critical race theory. When theology is done, as in the case of Niebuhr and his modern disciples, it is white theology designed to perpetuate the status quo and maintain power and the influence of ruling elite. The remainder of the paper seeks to make a case for a black theology which can bring new perspectives to pursuing US foreign policy interests.
Black Theology of Liberation
In beginning to contemplate the value of applying a black theology of liberation to US foreign policy we are faced with a US foreign policy which despite the later appearance of African American elite actors in leading foreign policy positions has existed as a foreign policy premised on white privilege and until the 1960s specifically on a White Anglo Saxon Protestant tradition. And yet African Americans and other People of Colour have signed up to, enlisted in, and fought for a foreign policy that bears little relation to their hopes, aspirations or interests. Despite the white church’s complicity in, promotion of, and theological underpinning of slavery, segregation and racial injustice, African Americans have, by and large, maintained a Christian faith in spite of, rather than because of, their white fellow believers (Emerson and Smith 2000; Tisby 2019).
One can legitimately question whether the white church with its complicity in slavey and racism, unwillingness to countenance black faces in their congregations, emphasis on individual liberty (for white folk), anti-socialism/communism, support for capitalism and white supremacy worshipped the same God implored and exalted in the black spirituals. The black theology of liberation emerged from the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s. Following the tragic assassinations of Malcolm X (1965) and Martin Luther King Jr (1968) James H. Cone (1938-2018), a teacher of theology and religion at Adrian College, Michigan, and later a theologian at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, started to form the ideas which would lead to the emergence of a black theology of liberation in his Black Theology and Black Power (1969). This was followed a year later by Black Theology of Liberation (1970), which expanded and refined his thinking around the issue of race and Christianity in the United States.
Cone was heavily influenced by the contrasting messages of Malcolm X and Martin King – the former celebrating ‘blackness’ and the latter ‘justice’ (Cone 1991, 2020). For Cone, Malcolm X embraced and espoused blackness, the true meaning and celebration of being black rather than aspiring to be white or ascribing to white value and acceptance “by any means necessary”. The liberating potential of black power in breaking the yoke of white supremacy while also being inspired by the faith of Martin King in ‘the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice’ (King 1965).
And so even though we face difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” (King 1963).
Cone could not bring himself to dismiss Christianity as the white person/slave owner’s religion as Malcolm X had done but rather sought to combine the passion of Malcom and the faith of Martin. He revisited the scriptures to answer the age old question about why if there is a God why is suffering so disproportionate in the world, and specifically for black Americans, and if there is a God why does He allow it to happen? Was this God’s will and, if so, why would anyone desire to worship such a God? Instead, his reading of the scriptures presented a God on the side of the poor, the dispossessed and the downtrodden:
The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for prisoners (Isaiah 61:1).
Cone understood that the oppressed were black Americans oppressed by slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and lynching. The white church was complicit in that, legitimating and affecting black self-esteem, selling African Americans a white Jesus in the white church’s own image. Cone proposed a theology of liberation rather than revolution, one which would separate true Christianity from the counterfeit. In going back to the Bible, Cone saw a black experience rooted in Exodus, and the freeing of the Hebrew slaves from their Egyptian masters, the prophets railing against injustice and the people’s rejection of God, and Jesus’ ministry and death on a cross or lynching tree (Cone 2019b).
Building on the work of Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, Howard Thurman, Malcolm X and Martin King, Cone developed a black theology of liberation with revolutionary implications. Rather than accepting a white Jesus constructed and used to justify and reinforce white privilege he presented a Black Jesus on side of poor and dispossessed, identifying in their suffering, dying and rising again having overcome the sin of injustice and oppression. A ‘Jesus’ for black peoples, for the oppressed, the victimised and the dispossessed.
Rather than trusting in the inevitability that King’s dream would be fulfilled: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character’ (King 1963) Cone proposed a radical transformation. That Whites must become black – to give up their privilege, to become co-conspirators rather than allies to overthrow the system of oppression – white, free market capitalism and imperialism.
Those who want to know who God is and what God is doing must know who black persons are and what they are doing. It does not mean lending a helping hand to the poor and unfortunate blacks of society. It does not mean joining the war on poverty! Such acts are sin offerings that represent a white way of assuring themselves that they are basically “good” persons. Knowing God means being on the side of the oppressed, becoming one with them, and participating in the goal of liberation. We must become black with God! (Cone 2019a: 69).
For whites and blacks, ‘blackness’ is defined in terms of a gift of God just as in salvation the Christian turns away from their old life, thoughts and values and is enabled to live a new life in Christ then so to embracing the blackness of God reveals the true essence and character of God:
To believe is to receive the gift and utterly to reorientate one’s existence on the basis of the gift. The gift is so unlike what humans expect that when it is offered and accepted, we become completely new creatures. This is what the Wholly Otherness of God means. God comes to us in God’s blackness. To receive God’s revelation is to become black with God by joining God in the work of liberation (Cone 2019a: 70).
Critique
Inevitably, Cone’s liberation of black theology has attracted criticism including charges from white churches of being heretical. Critique has also come from within the black churches and among Cone’s own postgraduate research students many of whom have gone on to become distinguished theologians in the own right. Womanists such as Dolores Williams have critiqued black liberation theology on the basis of a gendered interpretation of the scriptures, of homogenising blackness on the basis of the black male experience without considering the black female experience doubly oppressed as black and female in patriarchal societal and black church structures.
If black liberation theology wants to include black women and speak in behalf of the most oppressed black people today – the poor homeless, jobless, economically “enslaved” women, men and children sleeping on American streets, in bus stations, parks and alleys – theologians must ask themselves some questions. Have they, in the use of the Bible, identified so thoroughly with the theme of Israel’s election that they have not seen the oppressed of the oppressed in scripture? Have they identified so completely with Israel’s liberation that they have been blind to the awful reality of victims making victims in the Bible? Does this kind of blindness with regard to non-Hebrew victims in the scripture also make it easy for black male theologians and biblical scholars to ignore the figures in the Bible whose experience is analogous to that of black women? (Williams 2013: 132).
Similar claims were applied to the LGBTQ+ experience and to other people of colour beyond the African American centric perspective applied by Cone in his earlier writings. Liberation theologians also questioned this African American emphasis, presenting the case of the liberation of all the oppressed everywhere and identifying Christ with the oppressed and against the oppressor.
To know God is to justice, is to be in solidarity with the poor person. And it is to be in solidarity with that poor person as he or she actually exists today – as someone who is oppressed, as a member of an exploited class, or ethnic group, or culture, or nation. At the same time, a relationship with the god who has loved me despoils me, strips me. It universalizes my love for others and makes it gratuitous too (Gutierrez 1983: 51).
Early writings emphasised race to the exclusion of economic factors of oppression and the value of Marxism in understanding the nature of the capitalist system and its exploitative nature. Conversations with South American liberation theologians in the mid -1970s caused Cone to consider the sagacity of class analysis in black theology. While, influenced by the fervent anti-socialism of the white church and an internalisation of the mythical American dream, Cone and other black theologian in their early writings ignored Marxism altogether and openly promoted capitalism over socialism. Cone, however, sought to incorporate class analysis into his theology:
It was at that time it became clear to me that either black theology would incorporate class analysis into its perspective or it would become a justification of middle-class interests at the expense of the black poor. Although claiming to speak for the poor, we actually speak for ourselves (Cone 1984: 94-5).
Cone expands on the value of Marxism in black liberation theology in Chapter 9 of For My People (1984). The evolution of the theology of black liberation and its ability to adapt and absorb critique has matured the perspective from its earlier manifestation to one which from Malcolm X, embraces black unity and knowledge and pride in the ‘history of African people in white America’ (Cone 1984: 203). And, from Martin Luther King, advocates integration rather than separation, respect humanity of all, including whites. Is increasingly anti-sexist, democratic and socialist while protective of individual liberties. Black Liberation Theology today represents a global vison which includes the struggles of those in the developing world, ‘a “rainbow coalition” that includes all the disadvantaged in the U.S.A., and throughout the globe. There will be no freedom for anybody until all are set free’ (Cone 1984: 204).
Black Liberation Theology and US Foreign Policy
How would this freedom impact on US foreign policy so that the US is on the right side of history at home and in the international arena? In the desire to assimilate the memory of Martin Luther King as a good American in a society still dominated by white privilege his trenchant critique of US foreign policy tends to be overlooked or down played. While Cone writes very little on US foreign policy, King’s critique has informed those of other black liberation theologians, including Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered (King 1967).
In an applied Black Theology of Liberation traditional US national interests are either superseded by, or at one with, interests of the global poor, the downtrodden, oppressed and dispossessed. ‘The Christian gospel is God’s message of liberation in an unredeemed and tortured world’ (Cone 2019b: 155). In embracing blackness there is an identification with Jesus’ mission to proclaim good news to the poor, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for prisoners (Isaiah 61: 1). For such an identification to be meaningful, repenting of past sins and making reparation is required, operating in solidarity with those who have more often been on the receiving end of US power rather than beneficiaries of it.
An approach of empathy with the struggles of the oppressed places America alongside rather than supporting such oppression or allowing markets to take their course. In embracing blackness, policy on the environment, health and human security are governed by the interests and wellbeing of those suffering the effects of global warning, pandemics, human trafficking and exploitation. America’s role as exemplar then becomes defined by its willingness to uphold those on the receiving end of capitalism’s excesses, racism, gender and sexuality-based discrimination and violence.
In being cheer leaders for a militarised US foreign policy, involved in more war than any other nation, the white church has legitimated policies which are antithetical to Jesus’ identification with the poor and downtrodden. In critiquing the war in Iraq on 13 April 2003, Jeremiah Wright sought to demonstrate that whenever America sets itself in place of God in pursuing its foreign and domestic policy it sets its face against God:
The military does not make for peace. The military only keeps the lid on for a little while. The military doesn’t make for peace, and the absence of armed resistance doesn’t mean the presence of genuine peace … War does not make for peace, war only makes for escalating violence, and a mindset to pay the enemy back by any means necessary. When your wife or your children have been crushed by the enemy, when your mother or your father have been mowed down by the military, peace is not on your mind. Payback is the only game in town …
And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no. Not “God Bless America”; God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God Damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme! (Wright 2003).
Conclusion
The heightened interest in racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd provides an opportunity for America to reflect on how closely its foreign and domestic policy ascribes to its values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In this paper I have sought to make the case for the inclusion of a theological dimension to US foreign policy. This has been done by an appeal to the theology of black liberation as espoused by James H. Cone. Black liberation theology and the work of Cone has been largely ignored or dismissed by the white church and ruling elites in American society anxious to preserve their privileged status.
Black liberation theology contends that God has bias towards the poor and dispossessed. Jesus’ ministry on earth was to proclaim good news, freedom and release to those the world despises. In the American experience, Cone has argued this is most clearly identified with black Americans enduring racism over centuries through slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and lynching. This racism is personal and institutionalised and has been manifest in the white church and capitalism in American society. The solution to this problem afflicting American society is to become black, where blackness is understood as identifying with and being as one with the suffering and oppressed.
I have argued that, just as Cone adapted his initial theology of black liberation to accommodate class, gender analysis and to internationalise the concept of liberation to incorporate a rainbow coalition of the world’s oppressed, so US foreign policy could be reenvisaged to identify with the oppressed rather than the oppressor. In doing so the United States could act in accord with God’s mission, identified in Isaiah, rather than setting itself in place of God as it pursues a national interest for the rich and powerful.
References
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Lee Marsden is Professor of Faith and Global Politics at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of seven books and edited volumes including Religion and International Security (Polity Press 2019), Lessons from Russia: Clinton and US democracy promotion (Routledge 2018) and For God’s Sake; The Christian Right and US Foreign Policy (Zed/Bloomsbury 2008). He is currently working on an edited volume on Religion in American Life with Dr Emma Long. Marsden is editor of the Routledge book series on Religion and International Security
