“Rev. Dr. James Cone’s fidelity to dignity and justice for Black people is unrelenting. He is one of the strongest deconstructors of whiteness that we have seen in America.”
These are the words of Dr. Dianne Stewart – a Union alumna and the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion & African American Studies at Emory University. A former student of Cone, she was invited to deliver the keynote address at the 5th Annual James Cone Lecture.
She was honored to do so. Revered as the founder of Black Liberation Theology, Cone was a trailblazer. According to Stewart, Cone helped pave the way for a theology that moved away from an “abstract focus on the Word of God” to a belief that “God favors the oppressed and wills their liberation in human history.” He also drove a “shift from a focus on the redemption of souls” to the “emancipation of persons from earthly suffering, caused by oppressed systems and structures of injustice.”
In doing so, he laid a foundation for decades of unprecedented scholarship that empowered and uplifted Black communities.
Stewart first heard of Cone through one of her professors – Rev. Dr. Josiah Young. Young, formerly a student of Cone, introduced the class to Black Liberation Theology. Immediately, Stewart was hooked. She knew she wanted to study with Cone. Young suggested she reach out to Cone for a conversation.
She recalled, “I was scared to death.” But Young encouraged her. He said, “Dianne, he will want to hear from you.” Sure enough, Cone asked to chat. After learning more about her interests, he encouraged her to come to Union to study.
She did just that – and Cone’s mentorship blew her away. She described him as “an intellectual, a very serious scholar, who had patterned ways of structuring his day.” She furthered, “He prepared you for everything that was going to come… I felt ready for every step I was supposed to do.”
Today, as Stewart mentors her own students, she draws from the leadership of Cone. “Cone is the one who really set me up to be the advisor that I am today.”
While at Union, Stewart also went through a difficult personal experience. She recalled, “Cone, the pastor, showed up.” He sat and talked with her. She shared, “It was that moment that I knew that this is an ordained man. This is a man of the cloth… Everything we talked about that day lifted me. It gave me the energy and spirit of resilience to do what I needed to do, even with everything else that was going on.”
So Stewart was thrilled to return to Union to celebrate Cone’s legacy. She described it as a “beautiful experience” that was “characterized by an ethos of care and the creation of a community.” The students, staff, and faculty were thoughtful, welcoming, and caring.
In her keynote, she discussed how Cone’s scholarship laid the groundwork for her own work on Black and womanist theologies. She focused on her study of the Black communities forcefully brought to the United States who had “indigenous African religions” but were met with “a very violent and anti-Black Christianity that they had to reconstruct into their religion.” She remarked that this, “deserves to be part of the broader story that we tell about the Black religious experience.”
Members of the Union community marveled at Stewart’s speech and career. “Dr. Stewart offered a brilliant lecture that demonstrated both the breadth of her own research on Afro-Caribbean religious expression and her deep resonances with Rev. Dr. Cone’s work and legacy. It served as a tremendous academic offering and as a brilliant example of what it looks like to advance the work of intellectual mentors,” said Rev. Dr. Timothy Adkins-Jones, Assistant Professor of Homiletics.
“We are so grateful to have Dr. Stewart at Union to honor Rev. Dr. Cone’s legacy. Her esteemed work exemplifies the profound impact of Cone’s theology. He re-imagined the white, male version of Christianity that pervades society and created space for traditionallymarginalized communities to create affirming, loving theologies,” said Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, president of Union. “As the work of scholars like Stewart clearly shows, we must continue to advance and expand upon the foundation Cone built.”
When asked how we could apply the lessons of Cone to today’s world, Stewart shared some apt guidance: “We cannot get to a place in this nation of justice, dignity, and authentic participatory democracy without deconstructing whiteness. We need a continued focus on truly deconstructing whiteness and its representations within political and social structures that govern our lives.”