book report: The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone, 2011

Orbis books

I've known about this book for a few years, but I have not been emotionally healthy enough to read it until now. I don't think I ever really began to understand the depths of white supremacy in the evangelical church until the Black Lives Matter movement started. When I used that hashtag and advocated against police lynchings and found myself not only removed from my church's opinion in general, but actively pushed back against. Michael Brown's lynching by a policeman in 2014 was the beginning of my steep slide into depression and out of the evangelical church. Somehow, I was still surprised when 80% of white evangelicals voted for an fascist racist. I was surprised by African-Americans were not. African-Americans like James Cone, who grew up in Jim Crow Arkansas, were all too familiar with white christians who did not see the paradox of going to a lynching Saturday night and a worship service Sunday morning.  The white supremacist christians did not make the connection with the bad guys in the gospel story who lynched Christ, torturing him and hanging him from a cursed tree. (See the similarity to Henry Smith's lynching in Texas.) Why would they? We are all the good guys in our own perspectives. It is why we need the minority report, who can see plainly what we in the majority are blinded to by our fragile egos.

James Cone is not just a survivor of the Jim Crow south but also a theologian who wrestled all his life with following the same Galilean prophet as his oppressors. This is my struggle as well. My apprehension in reading this book stemmed from the dread I had of reading about lynchings in the 1900's. It's bad now, but it was so much worse then. However, part of healing involves an honest recounting of the injury. In Cone's book, this is not only encountering several lynched individuals, but also looking at the white christian leaders who remained silent in this era, particularly, Reinhold Niebuhr. His reaction to lynching, give it time to exhaust itself, strongly contrasts with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, visiting the US at the before the Nazi takeover of Germany. Niebuhr did not spend much time with his fellow americans of african descent, whereas Bonhoeffer attended an historic black church while in New York City and witnessed racism firsthand when had a lunch companion refused service because of his color. This is one of Cone's key points, empathy is strongest when experienced, not philosophized about. From here, Jones dives into the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. King's own experience with racism led him to the action Niebuhr would not take. Cone writes,

Although Martin Luther King Jr. was strongly influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr, he had a different take on love and justice because he spoke to and for powerless people whose faith, focused on the cross of Jesus, mysteriously empowered them to fight against impossible odds. In contrast to Niebuhr, King never spoke about proximate justice or about what was practically possible to achieve...Instead King focused on and often achieved what Niebuhr said was impossible. "What do you want?" ..."When do you want it?"..."I am tired of fighting for something that should have been mine at birth," King often said. p.72

While King did so much, Cone finds the most powerful prophetic work among black artists. He quotes often from the writer James Baldwin,

"I don't mean to say the white people are villains of devils or anything like that," but what "I do mean to say is this: that the bulk o the white Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral washing of the hands...they're mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself." p. 54

King had a theology of the cross which enabled him to move further than Baldwin, because he believed in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice and was willing to join in in that, to save not only his friends but also his enemies. He said, "If physical death is the price I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from the permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive." (p. 82) Cone notes, "With the cross at the center of his faith, he could love the people he knew were trying to kill him, following Jesus' example on the cross, 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do' (Lk 23:34) p. 83

Cone quotes great black writers and lesser known poets, all of whom easily see Christ as a victim of lynching, experiencing the same grief they did when their family, friends, and neighbors were victimized by mob injustice and the system that permitted it, or turned a blind eye toward it, or kept silent and in denial, like Nicodemus or Peter. In the crucifixion, they saw one group of God followers, threatened by another God follower (God incarnate to the christian), needing to keep the outlier in line, by killing him, and making him an example to all the others who might challenge the status quo.
Finally, Cone devotes much of his last chapter to the themes from the poem Strange Fruit (PDF) turned into a heart rending song by Billie Holiday.

In Cone's view, black women and black artists knew more than most American white churchgoers, conservative and liberal, about Christianity.

Black people did not need to go to seminary and study theology to know that white Christianity was fraudulent. As a teenager in the South where whites treated blacks with contempt, I and other blacks knew that the Christian identity of whites was not a true expression of what it means to follow Jesus...We wondered how whites could live with their hypocrisy - such a blatant contradiction of the man from Nazareth...White conservative Christianity's blatant endorsement of lynching as a prt of it's religion, and white liberal Christians' silence about lynching placed both of them outside Christian identity. p. 132

This is the answer to Cone's struggle. How can he be worshiping the same god as those who don't care about his people's suffering or even endorsed it? He's not. The same way the religious leaders did not recognize the God of love incarnated in Jesus. Over and over through all religions, the same teachings can result in different behaviors in accordance with their preference; violent retributive god or merciful and loving god? exclusive and vengeful or inclusive and prodigal? passive or active? The god we worship influences how we live out our faith. As regards the lynching of Christ on a cross, Cone says he still clings to the cross "because I have seen with my own eyes how that symbol empowered black people to stand up and become agents of change for their freedom." p. 145 He adds,

A symbol of death and defeat, God turned it into a sign of liberation and new life. The cross is the most empowering symbol of God's loving solidarity with the 'least of these,' the unwanted in society who suffer daily from great injustice. Christians must face the cross as the terrible tragedy it was and discover in it, through faith and repentance, the liberating joy of eternal salvation. p. 156

Anyone who has been bullied, oppressed, and cast down can find hope in the God who joins them in the gutters of society. "The cross, as a locus of divine revelation, is not good news for the powerful, for those who are comfortable with the way things are, or for anyone whose understanding of religion is aligned with power." p.156 Let the reader understand.

The lynched black victim experienced the same fate as the crucified Christ and thus became the most potent symbol for understanding the true meaning of the salvation achieved through "God on the Cross." Nietzsche was right: Christianity is a religion of slaves. God became a slave in Jesus and thereby liberated slaves from being determined by their social condition. p. 160

I am energized by Cone's book. I feel like the couple on the Emmaus Road, who did not recognize hope after the crucifixion. I have mostly felt despair, but Cone has surprised me and opened my eyes, like Jesus did to them on their way to Emmaus. Yes, racism is intractable in this country, and empowering to many white christians right now, refusing to repent, refusing to listen to the cries of their darker brothers and sisters, but Jesus who died for them too, will open their eyes. In the meantime, I can share a hope that miracles will happen in those hard white hearts, like it has in mine, even mine.