Liberation: Mary & James Cone
/During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.
This week, our series closes with Mary and James Cone—a pregnant teenager in an occupied country, and a Black theologian raised under Jim Crow—who, two thousand years apart, tell the same story: that God sides with the oppressed, not with the powerful. Her song has been banned by governments who understood exactly what it meant, and his witness insists we see the cross as God in solidarity with the marginalized.
