GOD OF THE OPPRESSED

This booming manifesto by black power theologian James Cone will vex mainstream theologians with its virtually dogmatic stances and win a resounding ""Amen"" from his struggling brethren. He contends that Christian theology speaks authentically only when it effects the liberation of the oppressed, and by this touchstone most Euro-American theology shrinks to an exercise in intellectual masturbation. Holding it impossible to be culturally white and think biblically, Cone forges a radical hermeneutic of Christian sources and issues that is rooted in the experience and traditions of the black fight for autonomy. The book throbs with the rhythmic energy of store front preaching. It's paradoxical, intemperate, repetitive, disjointed, exaggerated: its very impertinence shouts its demand for freedom from white oppression and white theology. The polemic stirs up more issues than it settles, but it rightly should spark heated debate about what it really means to preach the gospel and ""do"" theology.