Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
James Cone didn't just write about Black Liberation Theology. He invented it — in five weeks, in a rage, holed up in his brother's AME parsonage in Little Rock after Detroit burned.
Week 5 of Theology for Troublemakers takes on the most consequential and contested figure in twentieth-century American theology. Gary Dorrien knew Cone personally — as a colleague, a mentor, and a friend — and this lecture is as close to the inside story of Black Liberation Theology as you're going to get. From the electrifying early books that made Cone famous, through the bruising critiques of Gayraud Wilmore, Charles Long, and Cecil Cone, to the womanist challenge that produced his greatest late work, The Cross and the Lynching Tree — this is the full arc of a theological life that changed everything.
In this live Q&A, Gary joins Tripp & Aaron to push on the questions Lecture 5 raised:
— What did Cone actually mean when he said God is Black — and why does it still matter?
— How did the critiques of Wilmore, Long, and Cecil Cone force Cone to go deeper rather than retreat?
— What was really at stake in the debate between Cone and the womanist theologians over the cross?
— What's the difference between Martin's Christianity and Malcolm's Blackness — and why did Cone insist we need both?
— And what does it mean for theology that there is now a BC and an AC — before Cone and after Cone?
This is the conversation for anyone who has ever wondered why the church so rarely sounds like the gospel it preaches.
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Want to go further? Theology for Troublemakers is a full course with Gary Dorrien — one of the leading voices in Christian social ethics, professor at Union Theological Seminary, and author of the landmark Black Social Gospel trilogy. The course covers the social gospel, Reinhold Niebuhr, democratic socialism, community organizing, and more.
Join the class at homebrewedclasses.com
James Cone didn't just write about Black Liberation Theology. He invented it — in five weeks, in a rage, holed up in his brother's AME parsonage in Little Rock after Detroit burned.
Week 5 of Theology for Troublemakers takes on the most consequential and contested figure in twentieth-century American theology. Gary Dorrien knew Cone personally — as a colleague, a mentor, and a friend — and this lecture is as close to the inside story of Black Liberation Theology as you're going to get. From the electrifying early books that made Cone famous, through the bruising critiques of Gayraud Wilmore, Charles Long, and Cecil Cone, to the womanist challenge that produced his greatest late work, The Cross and the Lynching Tree — this is the full arc of a theological life that changed everything.
In this live Q&A, Gary joins Tripp & Aaron to push on the questions Lecture 5 raised:
— What did Cone actually mean when he said God is Black — and why does it still matter?
— How did the critiques of Wilmore, Long, and Cecil Cone force Cone to go deeper rather than retreat?
— What was really at stake in the debate between Cone and the womanist theologians over the cross?
— What's the difference between Martin's Christianity and Malcolm's Blackness — and why did Cone insist we need both?
— And what does it mean for theology that there is now a BC and an AC — before Cone and after Cone?
This is the conversation for anyone who has ever wondered why the church so rarely sounds like the gospel it preaches.
---
Want to go further? Theology for Troublemakers is a full course with Gary Dorrien — one of the leading voices in Christian social ethics, professor at Union Theological Seminary, and author of the landmark Black Social Gospel trilogy. The course covers the social gospel, Reinhold Niebuhr, democratic socialism, community organizing, and more.
Join the class at homebrewedclasses.com
