Religion & Violence

I am at a conference on religion and violence at Trinity Institute. Trinity is prestigious in the Protestant world - in fact the “Rector Street” subway stop in Manhattan references the Rector at Trinity. The massive buildings that make up Trinity Church hover over Wall Street.

The room is filled with theologians and religious intellectuals. I am wishing that I paid more attention in my religion coursework at my Catholic schools. Words like “pantheistic” and “dominion” and “declivity” are sending me to dictionary.com.

Now here is featured speaker James Cone, pre-eminent liberation scholar and theologian. You imagine immediately that Cone never moderates the truth. He is speaking about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. One of Cone’s books explores the two theologies, contrasting efforts to liberate whites from their feeling of superiority and to liberate African Americans from their feeling of inferiority.

Cone is telling us that injustice itself is violence, and that we can’t get rid of violence unless we transform the social structure that creates violence. He urges us to learn how to “unpack tricky language” and take on pulling the wool off so that the world can see violence as it is.

One way that Cone “unpacks tricky language” is to resist historical inaccuracies and amnesia. He reminds us that in the sixties King wasn’t revered by the mainstream media as he is today. He reminds us that segregation started in the church.

Cone took aim at religious leadership: “If you live in a racist society, and if you aren’t preaching against racism in that society, then you are not preaching the gospel. And I think that most white churches are not preaching the gospel.”

Cone delivered a message of hope. He quotes Frances Grimke, “Justice may sleep but it never dies”.