James Cone asks a powerful and convicting question in his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree: How can we miss the deep and profound parallels between the cross and the lynching tree? Racial violence in America, he argues, will continue to exist until we reckon, as a church and a nation, with this deep connection. Cone, one of the main founders of black liberation theology, had to wrestle with an identity that was simultaneously black and Christian growing up during the Civil Rights era in the South and spent his life working out a theology that was accordingly both black and Christian.
In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, he fleshes out the parallel. There are a few things to keep in consideration while assessing this book. First: it’s not a theological treatise or devotional. He takes a tone far closer to that of an academic (which he was, and a heavyweight one at that) than a spiritual authority or Christian believer or sociocultural critic, though he makes points that are relevant to all these positions. So his claims are not meant to be taken as dogmatic statements but rather as thought-provoking ideas that readers should bring an open mind to (meaning, don’t read this like you would, say, Charles Spurgeon.) As such, I wouldn’t extrapolate all Cone’s personal beliefs solely out of this book (I wouldn’t dare, having only read this one.) There were certain theological statements that didn’t seem to match up to Scripture for me, but this book isn’t the place to interrogate him on those statements; that would be missing the point.
And yet, it would also be wrong to think of it strictly as an intellectual exercise. His intended audience is American believers, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be addressed as such. Given the deep historical link between American government and Christianity, I’ve been trying to work out an idea that American believers, especially when addressed as such, are doubly responsible as American citizens and Christian believers simultaneously, and are responsible to be fully alert to the responsibilities of both. It means we are accountable to God and to one another as Christians and as citizens called to the highest standards/witness in each.
That said, that elicits a question I’ve been struggling to articulate about Scripture and its applicability. Ken Wytsma touched on it in the last book I read too. I think that we focus on the central message of Scripture (the message of forgiveness and salvation) to the exclusion of practically everything else, except maybe for a few pet issues. It’s like – reading Hamlet over and over again, and feeling no need to read the rest of Shakespeare’s body of work. Or maybe more strongly: that Hamlet is all you need to know to qualify you to speak on Shakespeare (and Measure for Measure is apocryphal.) Does that make my point, or is it too obscure? This makes it easy to dismiss things like social justice issues out of hand as being unrelated to matters of faith (and explains, I think, why some of us get so up in arms about the idea that it is.) Personally, I think that’s the answer to Cone’s question.
Cone, I expect, is controversial because he doesn’t let us get away with it. By framing the book the way he does, he inseparably links responsibility in faith and citizenship and forces us to think through the repercussions of the Cross through black American history. That’s what makes the book so powerful – and made this white girl cringe more than once.
Cone sets up an interesting dialectic between black and white Christianity, showing how the Cross’ paradoxical inversion of the world’s value system (where the weak are the strong, and where redemption is achieved through brokenness) was an unbreakable affirmation of the value of black life. Jesus’ suffering redeemed the world, providing an unshakeable source of hope that black suffering then also had some role to play. Jesus had solidarity with them in their suffering, and his resurrection gives black lives meaning beyond history. The actions of white Christians against them, to the point of legal murder, bespoke a false, unbiblical Christianity that sought out power at any cost rather than emulate Jesus’ sacrifice of it.
Cone spends some time reflecting on Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the preeminent white theologians of the time and someone whose theology, on the whole, Cone appreciated very much. Nevertheless, he elucidates Niebuhr’s less than stellar track record on race with a degree of clarity and grace that I (this wasn’t the point, but hey, I’m trying to learn to do this in grad school myself) was really convicted by. Against it, he juxtaposes the story of Martin Luther King, and the sacrifices he made living out his calling. He brings out King’s deep cross-centeredness and his hope of the value of sacrificial suffering for his people.
Writing about the black artists who celebrated and elaborated on Christ’s deep kinship with the suffering black people, Cone brings up the idea of a religious imagination (and in fact Makoto Fujimura in yesterday’s Trinity Forum was just speaking about the necessity for the same. For believers, a religious imagination is the necessary counterpoint to rationalism.) Intriguingly, it was the artists, not the religious leaders, who established the parallels of Christ and his suffering to the black people: Countee Cullen, W.E.B. DuBois, Robert Hayden, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and others. It was convicting to see this rich understanding of Jesus codified into their poetry – and devastating to see white believers dismiss it offhand.
Cone takes the same tactic with what he calls “the womanist challenge.” Giving due respect to black women, Cone takes us through accounts of the faith of black women amidst the burdens they bear – watching sons and husbands get emasculated and lynched and doing their best to hold families together, wrestling with profound faith amid profound doubt and anguish simultaneously, and stepping up to advocate for black rights politically and intellectually. Ida B. Wells, Billie Holliday, Fannie Lou Hamer–all these women were titans.
He ends with discussing Delores Williams, a womanist black theologian who asserts something I can’t in good conscience agree with, but still find much value in thinking about. She doesn’t think Jesus accomplishes salvation by dying in our place, but shows us redemption through a ministerial vision of righting relationships (149) – which I take to mean, giving the poor back their dignity. Similar to what he did with Niebuhr, Cone grants the notion a thorough consideration, writing that he finds “…nothing redemptive about suffering in itself. The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat…as revealed in the biblical and black proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection” (150). However, he also pulls back a bit, saying that he more closely agrees with more cross-centered theology.
While I don’t think that idea holds biblically, I think the value in granting serious consideration to it is this: if God really is omnipotent, then yes, he could have chosen to work redemption another way. Why didn’t he? What does that mean for his followers? For black Christians, whose lives have historically been marked by suffering? We don’t have to adopt it, but seriously wrestling with its implications can be a way of God extending grace to us and causing us to really reckon with what we believe and why.
I particularly appreciated the conclusion of the book, which sounds more like a believer grappling with the Word of God. He writes, “The Christian gospel…is a transcendent reality that lifts our spirits to a world far removed from the suffering of this one,” and a paragraph later, “And yet the Christian gospel…is also an immanent reality–a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst” (155). Each, he argues, needs the other to keep it in balance. To see the redemption in the cross requires both that powerful religious imagination as well as “the imagination to relate the message of the cross to one’s own social reality, to see that ‘They are crucifying again the Son of God’ (Heb. 6:6).
“The cross needs the lynching tree to remind Americans of the reality of suffering–to keep the cross from becoming a symbol of abstract sentimental piety…Yet the lynching tree also needs the cross, without which it becomes simply an abomination” (161).
Disagree, if you wish, with Cone’s theology – I did in places. But grant him no less serious a consideration because of that. What he calls out we need to be accountable to, not just as believers but also as American citizens.
At the Still Point 