More on Cone and "Revolutionary Violence"

Despite having now devoted 3 posts to the subject (see here, here, and here) I'm not quite done with James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power. I am especially not done with his wrestling with the role of violence in revolutionary struggles.

I have already discussed this subject at length, but this morning, in the closing pages of the book, I read an even more thorough argument concerning the role of violence in the revolutionary struggle for Black Power. It is first interesting to note that, despite the appearance given from some earlier readings on the subject, Cone does not that the subject of violence poses some real problems for his equating of Black Power with Christianity:

Our chief difficulty with Black Theology and violence... arises from the New Testament itself. The New Testament picture of Jesus seems to suggest that he was against violence as a proper redress. He certainly never resorted to violence. In fact, he seems to have avoided the term "Messiah" as a personal designation because of the political (violent) implications. Also his constant references to love and turning the other cheek seem to indicate that the Christian life cannot be one characterized by an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." ... Can we then, by strength of the imagination or clever exegesis, interpret his command to turn the other cheek to mean a turning of the gun?

Cone, then, is aware that the Christian argument against violence rests on something much more compelling that just the comfort of whites or the perpetuation of oppression. It rests on the very words and actions of Jesus of Nazareth. How, then, in the face of Jesus' powerful witness against violence, does Cone justify the Christianizing of violence in the struggle for Black Power? By once again attacking the assumptions of those who question the appropriateness of revolutionary violence:

The real danger of these questions is the implied literalism in them. Like the fundamentalist who stressed the verbal inspiration of Scripture, this view suggests that ethical questions dealing with violence can be solved by asking: "What would Jesus do?" We cannot solve ethical questions in the twentieth century by looking at what Jesus did in the first. Our choices are not the same as his... and thus we are placed in an existential situation in which we are forced to decide without knowing what Jesus would do. The Christian does not ask what Jesus would do, as if Jesus were confined to the first century. He asks: "What is he doing? Where is he at work?" And even though these are the right questions, they cannot be answered once and for all. Each question has its own problematic circumstances which force the believer to think through each act of obedience without an absolute ethical guide from Jesus... Therefore, simply to say that Jesus did not use violence is no evidence relevant to the condition of black people as they decide what to do about white oppression.

There is a great deal here that I can affirm, especially Cone's rephrasing of the question concerning violence. I agree that we - in a social, cultural and historical context far removed from first century Palestine - cannot decide what to do today merely by copying step for step the actions of Jesus of Nazareth. This is as absurd as imposing the laws of ancient Israel on present day America. That which was of God, and therefore effective, at one point in history does not, simply by virtue of its being ordained by God in a single place and time automatically become a universal fit for all places and all times.

However, I disagree with his assertion that Jesus' refusal to use violence to help the Israelites break free from oppression under the Roman domination system does not speak powerfully against the use of violence in the struggle for racial equality in America. First century Jews were an oppressed people, a violently oppressed people. Yet, in the face of this violent oppression, Jesus explicitly forbids the use of violence as a tool for resisting oppression. He did this, I suspect, not because he failed to see the innate violence in oppression, but rather because he saw nonviolence as the most powerful tool for fighting oppression. And, that his nonviolent method of resistance has been translated effectively to a wide variety of setting throughout history speaks powerfully to its enduring effectiveness as a resistance strategy.

To assert that one cannot simply copy the actions of Jesus should not be to say that one should do things that Jesus would never have approved of, in his name. Rather, to assert that one cannot simply copy the actions of Jesus should be an invitation to act creatively while resisting nonviolently. As both Walter Wink and Marcus Borg have noted, to take Jesus' instruction to turn the other cheek so literally that in all occasions of assault one simply turns their other cheek to be struck again is to miss the creative power of that strategy. It is offered not as a hard and fast rule, but as an example of how one can resist violent oppression with creative nonviolence, by refusing to allow their basic humanity to be stripped by the Powers.

I suspect that Cone's failure to recognize this stems from his framing of the issue of nonviolence in resistance. In the face of the violent nature of oppression, he argues:

The Christian does not decide between violence and nonviolence, evil and good. He decides between the less and the greater evil. He must ponder whether revolutionary violence is less or more deplorable than the violence perpetuated by the system. There are no absolute rules which can decide the answer with certainty. But he must make a choice. If he decides to take the "nonviolent" way, then he is saying that revolutionary violence is more detrimental to man in the long run than systematic violence. But if the system is evil, then revolutionary violence is both justified and necessary.

If Cone has correctly framed the answer here, then I suspect that we must conclude, in the end, that violence is indeed "both justified and necessary." But, must we really choose between affirming the violence of oppression and affirming the violence of revolution? Only if we fail to see the revolutionary power of nonviolent resistance.

The Christian who has faith in the methods of Jesus - and that faith is not a blind faith, but is instead supported by the success of nonviolent revolutions throughout the twentieth century - is not forced into the false dichotomy proposed here. Rather, the Christian who has faith in the methods of Jesus is free to choose the third way of creative, nonviolent resistance.

Response to Cone's Theological Defense of Violence in the Name of Black Power

Last Wednesday I noted reading this powerful passage from James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power:

The black man's response to God's act in Christ must be different from the white's because his life experiences are different. Christian love is never fully embodied in an act. Love is the motive or the rationale for action. The attempt of some to measure love exclusively through specific actions, such as nonviolence, is theologically incorrect. Christian love comprises the being of a man whereby he behaves as if God is the essence of his existence. It means that God has hold of him and his movement in the world. But this does not take away the finiteness of man, the existential doubt in making decisions in the world. To accept Christ means both self-acceptance and neighbor-acceptance with the existential threat of nonbeing. What existentialists call non-being is never removed from man's existence. Thus the love of self and the love of neighbor, which constitute the heart of one's being in God, never escape the possibility of self-annihilation and destruction of the neighbor. The violence in the cities, which appears to contradict Christian love, is nothing but the black man's attempt to say Yes to his being as defined by God in a world that would make his being into nonbeing. If the riots are the black man's courage to say Yes to himself as a creature of God, and if in affirming self he affirms Yes to the neighbor, then violence may be the black man's expression, sometimes the only possible expression, of Christian love to the white oppressor. From the perspective of a Christian theologian seeking to take seriously the black man's condition in America, what other view is possible?

It seems that the mistake of most whites, religionists included, is their insistence on telling blacks how to respond "as Christians" to racism, insisting that nonviolence is the only appropriate response. But there is an ugly contrast between the sweet, nonviolent language of white Christians and their participation in a violently unjust system. Maybe the oppressor's being is so warped by his own view of himself that every analysis made by him merely reveals his own inflated self-evaluation. Certainly as long as he can count on blacks remaining nonviolent by turning the other cheek and accepting the conditions of slavery, there will be no real pressure to confront the black man as a person. If he can be sure that blacks will not threaten his wealth, his superiority, his power in the world, there will be no need to give up his control of the black man's destiny.

Having chewed these words over and over again in my mind, I'd finally like to post a response. This is not the knee jerk response that I would have posted last week, as someone committed to nonviolence. Rather, this is, I hope, a patient and charitable response, a response that stems in part from a deep recognition of my own need to repent for my participation in an ongoing, dehumanizing power-structure that still robs blacks and other minority groups from access to all of the trappings of white privilege that I enjoy.

In this passage Cone makes a sharp and useful distinction between two kinds of violence:

1. The violence of the oppressors, and

2. The violence of the oppressed, in response to their violent oppression.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of most forms of pacifism that I have seen is that they, in condemning all manifestations of violence, fail to make the proper moral distinction between these kinds of violence. The violence of power - whether it is found in physical beatings, lynchings, murder, bombs being dropped on villages, or in the perpetuation of dehumanizing ideas and values, or the economic exploitation of the poor and marginalized - is a categorically different kind of violence from the violence of those who would violently shake off the shackles of their oppression. If we cannot clearly articulate that distinction, then we have nothing of value to say to those who are being ground under by the wheels of oppression.

Cone rightly calls the white church on our hypocrisy on this matter. He sees us preaching nonviolence in the 1960s the way that we once taught obedience to slave masters - as a way to keep blacks from rising up and demanding to be treated as human beings. Cone sees whites imposing nonviolence as a primary moral and spiritual duty, all the while benefiting from a fundamentally violent and oppressive system of domination.

I think, however, that Cone - while perhaps accurately diagnosing the motives that many whites had in extolling to blacks the value of nonviolence - failed to appreciate the power of nonviolent resistance. Nonviolent resistance is not exactly the same thing as nonviolence. While both nonviolence and nonviolent resistance teach that nonviolence is (at the very least!) preferable to violence, nonviolent resistance does not teach the oppressed that their primary moral and spiritual duty is to nonviolence. Rather, nonviolent resistance - Jesus' response to the Roman domination system; the Satyagraha of Gandhi in the face of British colonial rule in his native India and apartheid in South Africa, where he once practiced law and then began his career opposing power; the "civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, Jr., etc. - teaches the oppressed that, first and foremost they are called to resistance.

Nonviolent resistance tells the oppressed that they are human beings, and should demand to be treated as such. (We have already seen here how that plays out in some of the teachings of Jesus. See, for example, how "turning the other cheek" can be seen not as a form of submission, but rather as a nonviolent yet potent demand to be seen as an equal, a human being with all the rights and respect that entails.) Then, and only then, does it tell them that the way to go about asserting their fundamental humanity is through nonviolence.

In nonviolent resistance, in other words, nonviolence is not a moral norm, but a tool - the most powerful tool - for resisting oppression. In Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, Walter Wink notes the overwhelming success of nonviolent revolutions in the twentieth century, saying:

If we total all the nonviolent movements of the twentieth century, the figure comes to 3.4 billion people, and again, most were successful. And yet there are people who still insist that nonviolence doesn't work!

Wink attributes the persistence of the delusion about the power of violence and the impotence of nonviolence to a number of causes. First, because as a culture we are "so preoccupied with power politics and wars," our history books are full of stories of wars rather than with the success stories of nonviolent movements. Additionally, he notes the negative nature of the word "nonviolence":

It sounds like a not-doing, the putting of one's energy into avoiding something bad rather than throwing one's total being into doing something good... "Nonviolence" is identified by many as the injunction to be submissive before authorities.

But the nonviolent resistance that Wink and others advocate is neither passive nor submissive. It is not simply the refusal to act violently, but the commitment to act creatively. It is the "third way," the path between "fight" and "flight."

Wink makes a sharp distinction between the kind of nonviolence that Cone repudiates and the kind of nonviolence that Jesus calls us to. He also acknowledges, with Cone, that this understanding of nonviolence as a tool for resistance is not the understanding of nonviolence that most Christians have:

Most Christians desire nonviolence, yes; but they are not talking about a nonviolent struggle for justice. They mean simply the absence of conflict... What they mean by nonviolence is as far from Jesus' third way as a lazy nap in the sun is from a confrontation in which protesters are being clubbed to the ground.

In the face of this common Christian understanding of nonviolence, it is easy to see why Cone - writing in 1969, as cities are being burned to the ground by race riots - would dismiss Christian appeals for nonviolence in the face of the threat posed to white supremacy by Black Power. Such appeals can easily be heard as a longing for a time when things were less complicated; when blacks "knew their place" and didn't rise up demanding to be seen as human beings. After all, the riots are accomplishing something. They are giving voice to the cries of the oppressed, and forcing the oppressors to see them and hear them. As such, as far as Cone is concerned, they are doing the work of God.

God's fundamental concern, made manifest in Christ, is for the poor and oppressed, the marginalized, the victims of power. In twentieth century America, those poor, oppressed, marginalized victims of power are black. The race riots of the late 1960s - which give rise to Cone's Black Theology and Black Power, and shape the theology in it - can be seen as the rise of those oppressed blacks, who now demand that the whites who tried to steal their humanity turn and face them as fellow humans.

The question we must ask, though, is this: Is violence in general, and riots in particular, the best way for the victims of power to assert themselves? I know that Cone would bristle at the notion of a white man asking that question. Who am I, one who carries the face of the oppressor, to pass judgment on the way that the oppressed revolt against the power that favors me? Who am I to tell slaves (and Cone sees the state of blacks in the late 1960s as a perpetuation of slavery) how to (or not to!) rebel against their captors?

I can't answer that question, though I can honor the concern that gives rise to it. It is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for the oppressed to trust someone who looks like their oppressor. I recognize that many who have counseled nonviolence have had ulterior motives. I affirm that when slaves were taught the Gospel, they were taught the Gospel of submission to authority rather than the Gospel of the release of captives. I recognize that that Gospel of submission persisted long after slavery was formerly ended, as a way to keep blacks captive to an oppressive social structure.

But, in doing so, I also assert the power of nonviolence as a form of resistance, and as the form of Jesus' resistance. The way of Christ - and Cone is here associating Christ with Black Power - is the way of nonviolent resistance, and not rioting in the streets. This is not - as most whites might have asserting in the face of Black Power - because the way of Christ is the way of submission to domination. Rather, this is because the way of Christ is the most effective way, the way that best ensures the success of resistance.

That assertion - that Jesus' third way of nonviolent resistance is the most effective way to fight oppression - is, of course, an article of faith. But it is not an entirely unsupported article of faith. History is full of examples of successful, nonviolent revolutions, even if those examples are not always as neat and clean as the few mentions of them we find it books. And, of course, Cone is not entirely opposed to having faith in the way of Jesus. In fact, in offering us a theological defense of Black Power, Cone confesses a deep and abiding faith in Jesus as Christ. His understanding of Jesus as Christ shapes his view of Black Power. Why, then, does he have less faith in the third way of Jesus?

In the end I think it is because he is suspicious of those who preached nonviolence to him, whether they be white oppressors or the black pastors that he sees as taking the bribe of relative success under the white domination system. And, while I can see and understand that suspicion, I think that it blinds him to the power of nonviolent resistance. As such, seeing only two options for blacks in the late 1960s, submission or uprising, he chooses uprising.

I wonder what he would choose today...

Non-Violent Resistance in the Teachings of Jesus

Before I actually get to the substance of this post, I'd like to start with a brief personal note. As some of you know, I am going back to school. It is now officially official. I haven't checked my email in over 24 hours, because I spent all day yesterday in new student orientation. Today, at 11 am EST, I have my first class. I am officially an MAR (Masters of Arts in Religion) student at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I've signed up for 15 credit hours this semester, which is a pretty heavy load, but nothing I can't handle, I don't think. Most of my classes, at least at the outset, don't seem worth mentioning. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised by them, but at the moment I'm just taking them because they are required - the seminary equivalent of basic requirements, 100 level classes. But there is one class that looks exceedingly promising: Resistance and Reconciliation.

Having just signed up for that course, and having just joined the Christian Peace Bloggers Blog-Ring, I thought I might jot down here, before I leave for campus, a few observations of non-violent resistance in the teachings of Jesus.

That Jesus taught non-violence is not exactly new, though by their behavior some Christian could learn a refresher course in it. As my dad wrote in one of his songs, shortly after explaining how as a PK growing up he had to go to church 4 or 5 times a week:

But I must have been sleeping in
When Jesus taught us to kill

But it takes many Christian by surprise when they realize that the non-violence that Jesus taught was neither passive nor meek. In fact, it was radical and revolutionary, such a strong form of resistance that it got him killed by the authorities. If Jesus had been safe, and if his non-violent teachings had been as domesticated as the must have seemed when they were used by whites to teach slaves not to rebel, or when they are used today to support a growing empire, it is highly improbable that anyone would have been threatened by him at all, much less threatened enough to publicly execute him.

But Jesus was crucified. And, as Marcus Borg writes, we can safely assert that Jesus was crucified because of the sins of the world, even if it is not literally true that he was crucified for the sins of the world, as a kind of substitutionary atonement. Jesus was killed because of the sins of the world, because Jesus opposed the sinful powers of the world that exploited and oppressed the poor. But Jesus opposed those powers not with power, not with revolutionary violence, but with the wisdom of non-violent resistance.

In our cultural context, with Christianity as the dominant thought-world, (what I mean is that, in the West, everything responds to Christianity - it shapes our thought when we agree with it, and it shapes our thought when we disagree with it) the teachings of Jesus often become conventional, domesticated. After all, we have been reciting them to each other for almost 2000 years. But, in his own cultural context, Jesus' teachings were radical, and seen in their context they can retain their power in our own context. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in Jesus' teachings on non-violent resistance.

Two of the most commonly quoted teachings of Jesus concern going "the extra mile" and turning "the other cheek." These have often, and rightly, been interpreted metaphorically and applied broadly to all kinds of situations. In our conventional wisdom now, going "the extra mile" means going out of your way to accommodate someone who is being difficult, in the hopes that such an extravagant gesture will shame and perhaps help shape them. If we "go the extra mile," perhaps the person that we "go the extra mile" for will be impressed with our witness, and be somehow touched, somehow moved, into becoming a more positive person.

Sometimes there is also a measure of constructive pride in going "the extra mile." Sometimes it means doing something that, strictly speaking, isn't required, motivated by the pursuit of excellence. In either event, going "the extra mile" has become conventional, part of what is expected of a Christian; part of one's Christian witness.

The same is true of turning "the other cheek." It is again interpreted metaphorically, and applied broadly. And, again, I see nothing wrong with this - you should know by now my opinion of the religious value of metaphorical interpretation. So, to "turn the other cheek" means to patiently endure an insult. It means to not allow harsh comments to get you down or make you angry.

Both of these teachings, however, in becoming conventional wisdom, have lost their subversive power. They are no longer seen as revolutionary, as dangerous. Of course, this is not true in all cultural context. Gandhi, for instance, based his method of non-violent resistance on these and other teachings of Jesus. His Satyiagraha, his "spirit power," was based on his interpretation of these and other teachings of Jesus. And, he used these as a kind of moral force to shame the British into seeing their own barbaric cruelty, and granting Independence to India.

In the same way, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others applied the methods that Gandhi learned from the teachings of Jesus to the struggle in America for Civil Rights. Non-violent resistance became again a revolutionary way to shame violent oppressors into realizing the barbaric cruelty of their position; into seeing the basic humanity of those they are exploiting. It became the most efficient path to freedom. To fight violence with violence, power with power, was to fight a losing fight. But to resist violence with peace was to undermine the moral authority of the violent and to shame the oppressor.

This is very much more like what Jesus probably had in mind, but it too fails to totally capture the potency of Jesus' teachings in their own context. We can certainly understand how these teachings might have gotten Gandhi and King killed, but that still doesn't show us exactly why they and others like them got Jesus killed. To understand that, and, as such, to understand the potential potency of these teachings, we have to better understand what they might have meant when Jesus taught them.

Marcus Borg's newest book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, has an entire chapter devoted to resistance in the life and teachings of Jesus. In it he outlines how Jesus' teachings and activities would have been seen by the religious and political authorities of his day, who were the power structure in what he calls a Domination System. At the outset of that chapter Borg argues that "the way of Jesus was both personal and political."

It was about personal transformation. And, it was political, a path of resistance to the domination system and advocacy of an alternative vision of life together under God. His counteradvocacy, his passion for God's passion, led to his execution. The way of the cross was both personal and political.

Seen in this light, Jesus' teachings, including and especially the ones concerning turning "the other cheek" and going "the extra mile" can be seen as radical ways to help bring down the Roman occupation, as well as the native collaborators with the occupation that were mainly comprised of the religious authorities.

Matthew 5:39b has Jesus say, "But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Of this Borg notes:

The specification of the right cheek and the awareness that people in that world used their right hand to strike somebody provide the key for understanding the saying. How can a person be hit on the right cheek by a right-handed person? Only by a backhanded slap (act it out and see for yourself). In that world, a slap with the back of the hand was the way a superior struck a subordinate. The saying thus presupposes a situation of domination: a peasant being backhanded by a steward or official, a prisoner being backhanded by a jailer, and so forth. When that happens, turn the other cheek. What would be the effect of that? The beating could continue only if the superior used an overhand blow - which is the way an equal would strike another equal. Of course, he might do so. But he would be momentarily discombobulated, and the subordinate would be asserting his equality even if the beating did continue.

Matthew 5:41 has Jesus say, "and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile." Borg says that this statement "refers to a known practice of imperial soldiers."

Soldiers were allowed to compel peasants to carry their considerable gear for one mile, but no more. The reason for this restriction was that soldiers had been abusing the option by forcing peasants to carry their gear all day (or even longer). The result was not only popular resentment, but peasants ending up a days journey (or even more) from home. And so the restriction was introduced, and soldiers faced penalties for violating it, some of them severe. In this setting, what are you to do when an imperial soldier requires you to carry his gear for a mile? Do it - and then keep going. This situation, [Walter] Wink [a scholar, and author of Engaging the Powers, The Powers That Be, and Jesus and Non-Violence] suggests, is almost comical - imagine an imperial soldier wrestling a peasant to get his gear back while the peasant says, "No, no, it's fine. Let me carry it another mile."

That we understand these metaphorically is, of course, appropriate. Any teaching that is so far removed from our historical, cultural, and social setting cannot be taken entirely literally if it is to be in any way meaningful to us. Additionally, it is hard to imagine that these teachings, even in their original setting, were to be taken as hard and fast rules to be applied to any situation without some metaphorical interpretation. Walter Wink argues, for instance, that it is very hard to imagine the literal practice of turning the other cheek to work for very long without the superiors picking up on it, and saying something like, "Oh, its the old 'turn the other cheek' trick," and adapting their behavior accordingly.

However, to properly understand these and other teachings metaphorically, we have to also understand what they might have meant when Jesus first taught them. Understanding that, we see that they are much more powerful, and much more subversive, than our conventional wisdom will allow them to be.