Black Theology & Black Power at 50: Retrospect and Prospect

We propose a conference and interdisciplinary colloquium that will gather scholars, PhD and MDiv students, undergraduates, and church leaders from around the country, as well as members of the wider Chicago community, to trace the implicit and explicit legacy of the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone’s theology in scholarship, activism, politics, culture, and religious life. The invitation to apply for a Henry R. Luce Responsive Grant in Theology comes at an important juncture in the history of Black religious thought in America and in the history of the relationship between Northwestern University and Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Dr. Cone, a prominent Garrett- Northwestern joint PhD. Program alumnus, published his groundbreaking book Black Theology & Black Power in 1969, the year after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. Its 50th anniversary, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement and of a period of reformist interpretation of Dr. King’s legacy,is an important moment for recapturing and analyzing the tradition of radical Black Christian theological critique that Cone’s book introduced.