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This Far by Faith . James Cone | PBS

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James Cone was born in Fordyce, Arkansas in 1939 and grew up in the small town of Bearden. There he experienced the life-affirming community of the black Church alongside the soul-crushing reality of white racism. Through sermons, songs, and prayers that called on God's concern for their well-being, the Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church taught Cone "how to deal with the contradictions of life and provided a way to create meaning in a society not of [his] own making." Bearden, Arkansas had a population of 400 blacks and 800 whites. The whites in Bearden, as Cone explains, "tried to make us believe that God created black people to be white people's servants." White racism led to "separate but equal" schools, segregated movies and restaurants, beatings and arrests, and political and economic inequality. Cone continually questioned how the whites in his town could consider themselves good Christians, and devised - "but never enacted out of fear" - plans to disrupt their Su

This Far by Faith . James Cone | PBS James Cone was born in Fordyce, Arkansas in 1939 and grew up in the small town of Bearden. There he experienced the life-affirming community of the black Church alongside the soul-crushing reality of white racism. Through sermons, songs, and prayers that called on God's concern for their well-being, the Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church taught Cone "how to deal with the contradictions of life and provided a way to create meaning in a society not of [his] own making." Bearden, Arkansas had a population of 400 blacks and 800 whites. The white

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