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Brer Rabbit Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Francesca Aran Murphy
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James Cone begins his book about The Spirituals and Blues by defining this music as ‘the power of song in the struggle for black survival’. The quality of spirituals and blues is ‘an optimism that uses the pessimism of life as raw material out of which it creates its own strength’. The use of human life at its roughest as a source of power is also the meaning of comedy. Comedy is not just a funny ha-ha plot, it is a milieu. It is a milieu over which love presides. Speaking about the earthiness of the blues, Cone observes, ‘People cannot love physically and spiritually ... until they have been up against the edge of life, experiencing the hurt and pain of existence.’ The painful, raw sounds of the blues and the spirituals venture further into the comic milieu than do Hollywood romantic ‘comedies.’

Richie Havens used to sing a spiritual called ‘Motherless Child’

      Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
      Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
      Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
      A long ways from home,
      A long ways from home.
      Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone,
      Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone,
      Sometimes I feel like I’m almost gone,
      A long ways from home,
      A long ways from home.
      Sometimes I feel like a feather in the air,
      Sometimes I feel like a feather in the air,
      Sometimes I feel like a feather in the air,
      And I spread my wings and I fly,
      I spread my wings and I fly.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 83 , Issue 974 , April 2002, pp. 188 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1 Cone, James H., The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 1997), p. 1.

2 ibid., p. 87, citing Howard Thurman's Deep River.

3 ibid., p. 114.

4 Johnson, James Weldon, God's Trombones: Some Negro Sermons in Verse (George Allen and Unwin, London, 1929), p. 20.

5 Hughes, Langston and Bontemps, Arna, ed., The Book Of Negro Folklore (Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1958), pp. 245–246.

6 Cone, James H., God Of The Oppressed (Seabury Press, 1975, revised edition, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 1979), p. xiii. My italics.

7 Watson, Andrew P., “Negro Primitive Religious Services,” in Johnson, Clifton H., ed., God Struck Me Dead: Voices Of Ex‐Slaves, (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1969, 1993), p. 10.

8 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 113.

9 Johnson, ed., God Struck Me Dead: Voices Of Ex‐Slaves, p. 59.

10 James Weldon Johnson, Gods Trombones, pp. 25–26.

11 Lynch, William, Christ and Apollo. The Dimensions of the Literary Imagination (Sheed and Ward, 1960, Notre Dame University Press, 1975). p. 109.

12 Johnson, God's Trombones, pp. 14–15.

13 “A Job for God,” in Brewer, J. Mason, ed., American Negro Folklore (Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968), p. 117.

14 Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, p. 47.

15 Johnson, Gods Trombones, p. 45.

16 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, pp. 109–110.

17 Williams, Dolores S., “Black Women's Surrogacy Experience and the Christian Notion of Redemption,” in After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions, Cooey, Paula M. and Earkin, William R., eds., (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 1991), p. 8.

18 ibid., p. 12.

19 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 23.

20 Hughes & Bontemps, ed., The Book of Negro Folklore, pp. 93–94.

21 ibid., p., 98.

22 ibid, pp. 99–101.

23 Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, p. 105.

24 Hughes & Bontemps, ed., The Book of Negro Folklore, p 96.

25 Brewer, ed., American Negro Folklore, p. 6.

26 Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, p. 75.

27 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 22.

28 Aulen, Gustav, Christus victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, trans. Hebert, A.G. (first published 1931, SPCK 1970), p. 47.

29 See the story called “Eyeball Candy” in Brewer, ed., American Negro Folklore, p. 8–9.

30 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 24.

31 Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues, p. 26.

32 Brewer, ed., American Negro Folklore, pp. 3–4

33 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 109.

34 Aulen, Christus Victor; 48–49.

35 Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, trans. Strachey, James (RKP, 1960, Penguin, 1990), p. 84.

36 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, The Glory of the Lord, A Theological Aesthetics Volume I: Seeing the Form, trans. Leiva‐Merikakis, Erasmo (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), pp. 243–244.

37 ibid., p. 245.

38 Cone, God Of The Oppressed, p. 113.

39 James Johnson's “Dry Bones,” cited in Hughes and Bontemp, eds, The Book of Negro Folklore, pp. 253–254.