"I didn't discard European theology but black theology began with deconstruction—that is, dismantling the oppressive, white theologies I was taught.... theologies that not only ignored black people but blinded me to the rich treasure in the black religious tradition."
—James Cone

"I had to deconstruct white theologies to destroy their effects on my mind so that I would be opened to listen to the black voices from slavery, emerging from the ashes of the black holocaust. I had to look back and recover the black heritage that gave birth to me."
—James Cone

"The black church, despite its failures, gives black people a sense of worth. They know they are somebody because God loves them and Jesus died for them. No matter what white people do to them, they cannot take their worth away."
—James Cone

"Although European thinkers helped me to get started in theology, the idea of liberation and freedom did not come from them. Already free, they did not need to advocate historical liberation. In their theologies, freedom was an abstract and philosophical principle."
—James Cone

"I had to bring them down to earth, to the ghetto, and compel their work to serve the black struggle for justice. Their theologies were not written for the African people Europe colonized; they wrote for the colonizers."
—James Cone

"As for my critics, Long, Wilmore, Roberts, and Jones also transformed my intellectual life with their challenges, questions, and critiques. Nothing helps a writer or scholar to improve his or her craft more than worthy critics, and I was blessed in this regard."
—James Cone

"Black nationalists urged me to denounce Christianity as the white man's religion. I stood my ground and responded that Jesus was not white but a dark-skinned Hebrew who died fighting for the freedom for his people. We could learn a lot from Jesus."
—James Cone

My dialogues with Black Panthers and black nationalists strengthened my faith as a Christian. They were my “self-interrogation,” to use the language of Rowan Williams: “When it is God that we are talking about, the need for such self-interrogation becomes more urgent
—James Cone

"The cry of black blood that I heard more than fifty years ago is still crying out all over America today...Yet black people will not be silent..Black Lives Matter! God hears that cry, and black liberation theology bears witness to it."
—James Cone

Amen, amen, and amen again!

At one point in life, I called James Cone everything but a child of God. I had learned from others to hate him, without even reading him. The irony. Yet, when I was wrestling deeply with my wounds being Black and Christian, it was Cone that God used to keep me going. The irony.