James H. Cone (1938–2018)

The author's meditations on considering lynching and the lynching tree as a means by which to view the crucifixion of Jesus in the Black American experience.

The author described the horror of lynching: the actual event, the pretense about justice but the real purpose involving constant terrorization of the Black community, the tolerated violence, and the acquiescence of society in general to such things for generations. He draws the parallels between lynching as extrajudicial humiliation and show more degradation designed to terrorize the oppressed and reinforce the power of the oppressor and the experiences Jesus suffered on the cross.

The author analyzes Reinhold Niebuhr, so beloved as a theologian, and yet how he distanced himself on the issue of lynching and racial justice with a milquetoast disapproval without doing any concrete action to resist the status quo. He shows how Niebuhr was not significantly influenced by the Black Christian tradition in America the way that, say, Bonhoeffer was; the whole section reads as a great lament.

It is hard to put the experience of this book into words. Every white American Christian should read it and grapple with it, wrestling with how so many professed Jesus and yet participated in lynchings, and how so many want to hallow America's past as times in which America was a "Christian nation" and people tried to "honor God"...and yet lynchings were pervasive in the latter part of the 19th and the first two thirds of the 20th centuries, and they were either participated in or tacitly not condemned. It proves very difficult to countenance the proposition such could be considered a "Christian nation," and anyone who would try to maintain such a pretense and consider this some "unfortunate exception" tells on themselves.

For generations white Americans had the opportunity to serve Black people as if they were Jesus (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). Instead, they often lynched Him. The horror is real. The horror is awful. What kind of people do we prove to be if we can't handle it and try to look away and pretend otherwise? show less

An incredibly detailed and rich examination of the relationship between American Christianity and the scourge of lynching. The author interrogates White Christianity's unwillingness to engage with or even acknowledge the evil that was perpetrated in their own communities often by members of their own churches. Whether complicit or actively participating in the murder of Black people, the White church was quick to forget these events and not revisit them, as if ignoring them would absolve the show more guilty.

But this book does not stop at the White church but also delves into what the Black church made of such rampant evil which targeted them and their loved ones. How did those living in fear of lynching reconcile this great injustice with the just God they believe in? How have the cross and the lynching tree come to affect the faith of Black people all across the country? What is the legacy of this great generational suffering and how has it altered the practice of the Christian faith?

There is truly so much in this book. I read it with my mother, who found it very revealing and disturbing. Of course it is extremely revealing and disturbing to myself as well although I had a somewhat better grasp of the history. I learned about lynching in school and at university, but I'd never seen it addressed in a religious context. Although I'd been attending church for my entire life, I've never heard a sermon on the topic or even had it acknowledged, much less felt the weight of complicity and guilt that the White church still bears. It's a lot to reckon with, and I read this book slowly, meditating upon it and rereading chapters frequently. I won't say that I've absorbed all that I have to learn from this book, but it's given me eyes to see at least the borders of my own blindness. show less

In his conclusion, Dr. Cone writes that the 'lynching tree frees the cross from the pieties of well-meaning Christians.' Reading The Cross & The Lynching Tree requires an inversion of logic, one that requires seeing Christ's teaching that 'he who will save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for (His) sake will find it.' The Cross, like the lynching tree, was an instrument of terror designed to cow an oppressed people into submission and living with its reality liberates people show more from being silenced by the fear of it. Cone's teaching is a tremendous work of both scholarship and heartfelt preaching. show less

Summary: A reflection on the parallel between the cross and the lynching tree, the perplexing reality that this has been missed within the white community, and how an understanding of this connection and the meaning of the cross has offered hope for the long struggle of the African-American community.

James H. Cone makes an observation in this book that "hit me between the eyes." He puzzles why White Christians in America have failed to see the connection between Jesus, who was "hung on a show more tree" and the thousands of blacks, usually innocent of any crime who were lynched, all across the United States, often accompanied by the cutting of body parts as souvenirs, riddling with bullets, violent abuse, or burning--all done as a spectacle often attended by a town (Colson Whitehead offers a vivid description of all of this in a scene in The Underground Railroad).

I discovered that I was not alone to being blind to this obvious parallel. Cone discusses the life and work of Reinhold Niebuhr, an influential figure on presidents as diverse as Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama, with his theory of moral realism. He is one of my heroes, going back to college days when I wrote papers on him in a philosophy of history course where I was first introduced to his thought. Cone observes Niebuhr's silence about this connection when lynching was a reality, and that unlike Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish theologian, he never actively advocated against the injustices epitomized by the lynching tree.

Cone explores the use of lynching as a form of social control in the post-Reconstruction South, and other places determined never to let blacks think they were equal to whites. He explores the theology of the cross, and the identification with Christ in the civil rights struggle, of bearing a cross, reflected in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., who came to a point of accepting that he would likely die, but that death could be redemptive for his people. The cross had a power that was liberating--from fear, from the loss of dignity. It offered hope--a resurrection, a crown.

Cone moves from Black spirituals to the literary works of James Weldon Johnson (who wrote the words to "Lift Every Voice and Sing", the "Black national anthem") to W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes. He speaks of the Black Christs, both men and women, who shared the fate of Christ, who was also lynched. And he writes movingly of the work of Black women who walked the way of Christ, as did Fanny Lou Hamer in voter registration or Rosa Parks.

Most chilling in this book are Cone's references to "Strange Fruit," a poem by Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allen) brought to public attention by the jazz singer Billie Holliday:

"Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the trees and blood at the root,
Black body swing in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

The juxtaposition of fruit, trees, Southern breezes and poplars with blood, black bodies, and hanging vividly underscore the horror of lynching, and how it had become a commonplace at one time in our country.

Cone raises a question I've heard many whites raise, "but wasn't that a past that is best forgotten?" He responds by asking what has happened to the hate, the indifference, and denial that made lynching possible? These have not disappeared (truth that the years since this book was written has borne out). He contends that only the remembering and retelling of the story of these injustices and honoring those who stood against them can bring healing.

He concludes:

"The lynching tree is a metaphor for white America's crucifixion of black people. It is the window of that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land. In this sense, black people are Christ figures, not because they wanted to suffer but because they had no choice. Just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary, so black people had no choice about being lynched. The evil forces of the Roman state and of white supremacy in America willed it. Yet God took the evil of the cross and the lynching tree and transformed them both into the triumphant beauty of the divine. If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy with repentance and reparation there is a hope 'beyond tragedy.' "

This is a powerful book because of its profound reflections on the cross and how we've made our black citizens bear it, and the profound spirituality that has emerged from it. The question is will we see what we've been blind to, or in suppressing the truth, become blinder yet, leaving the door open to new terrors. I long that our nation will see and hear and confront our national sin. I wonder if we will, but this book challenges me to always live in hope--even if what is standing in front of me is a cross--or a lynching tree. show less