The Cross and the Lynching Tree by Dr. James Cone. “Where is the gospel of Jesus’ cross revealed today?” Six-week comprehensive Study Guide prepared by . “On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.” -Virginia Woolf. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone points. He points us to. They were lynched by white Christians. My guest, Dr. James Cone, the Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic.
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Understanding that the most oppressed among us are actually “the crucified people in our midst” changes everything. It is a book that brings home to me the same indictment today in both racism and homophobia. In hames substantial chapter, he sets up Martin Luther King, Jr. There is also an accessible history of Jim Crow lynching in chapter 1. I will probably read it again either this fall or sometime in the next year. Should be required reading for anyone who takes either ahd seriously.
It brought to my attention the need to clearly address our history in white churches. The forgiveness in Cone’s words, the forgiveness proclaimed by Jesus, should be enough to undermine our trust in ourselves and our ability to see what we are doing. ad
This book has been recommended to me for years, but it was Cone’s death earlier this year and my planned visit that moved me to actually pick it lynchong. Cone reveals deep wells and wounds of agony in US history, at times it is difficult to keep reading. But I am not a Christian, I dont even know the bible very well, and I’m not black. He opened the meaning of these works to my white eyes.
The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
His suffering was not without purpose in this same line of thought. But they do exist in their own fashion and should invite their own theological reflection. Which is first why this book must be accessible. Niebuhr was the great Christian ethicist of his day, and he never addressed lynching, despite its on-going prevalence and the orchestrated campaigns against it.
Cone brings to the forefront.
Lynching is an atrocity that needs to be remembered. Cone, I would start with his earlier works he references them often. There is no mincing of words, yet the words are somehow full of forgiveness. So I have no memories whatsoever of a short speech given by a stocky African-American woman named Fannie Lou Hamer, a woman who was pleading the case of a delegation of Mississippians, most of them black, asking for voting credentials at that convention.
I have never, ever linked or had the chance to link lynching of Black Americans with the lynching death of Christ.
The Cross and the Lynching Tree
Cone is not attempting to say that Lynching does the exact same thing as Jesus did at the cross, but he is saying that how we understand both lynching and the cross should be influenced by the other. The Church either actively takes part lyncuing its condemnation of queers or it is indifferent. It was great to hear James critique Reinhold Niebuhr from a race perspective.
Although my goal isn’t to critique Cone, these errors need to be pointed out at least briefly. Unfortunately, I would not count on many evangelicals truly hearing Cone. I really enjoyed putting up various kinds of bulletin boards. This book – unlike any other I’ve read about racism and the injustice it creates – gave me a deeper understanding of why there is an understandably deep mistrust of what is said by white people in this nation.
Now, in the book, Cone takes Niebuhr, who he otherwise would have really supported! In the book Cone mentions lynchings of non-blacks, but he never mentions the lynchings of queer persons.
On the way there is very helpful reflections on art, history, culture, blind spots and many other matters.
Sanneh holds that translatablility is central to the message of the gospel. I’ve been meaning to read this book for a while, but I’m grateful to have read in light of the BlackLivesMatter movement, the KKK marching in Charlottesville and many other placesand the open teh of white supremacy by those in power and by churches and church leadership. And find it tremendously difficult to run counter to general opinion.