Quotes about Liberation
Those who sign on and depart the system of anxious scarcity become the historymakers in the neighborhood.
— Walter Brueggemann
Indeed our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived by the people. If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to appropriate it, for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.
— James H. Cone
The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive. There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted. I offer my reflections because I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.
— James H. Cone
Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for "pie in the sky.
— James H. Cone
The scandal is that the gospel means liberation, that this liberation comes to the poor, and that it gives them the strength and the courage to break the conditions of servitude.
— James H. Cone
The Gospel of liberation is bad news to all oppressors because they have defined their "freedom" in terms of slavery of others.
— James H. Cone
And yet the Christian gospel is more than a transcendent reality, more than "going to heaven when I die, to shout salvation as I fly." It is also an immanent reality—a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst, "building them up where they are torn down and propping them up on every leaning side." The gospel is found wherever poor people struggle for justice, fighting for their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
— James H. Cone
If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth.
— James H. Cone
The acceptance of the gift of freedom transforms our perception of our social and political existence.
— James H. Cone
Any analysis of the gospel which did not begin and end with God's liberation of the oppressed was ipso facto unchristian.
— James H. Cone
Today unbind the captive,So only are ye unbound;Lift up a people from the dust,Trump of their rescue, sound!
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
At a certain point, when there's a barrier between you and what's right, eventually you have to decide you're not going to allow yourself to be subjugated.
— Kamasi Washington