34 pages • 1 hour read
James H. ConeThe Cross and the Lynching Tree
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Centrality of the Cross in Christian Spirituality
Since Christianity has been part of the mainstream culture and consciousness for the better part of the last two millennia, the paradox of a Roman cross playing such a large part—aesthetically and theologically—of the Christian message can pass by the average person’s notice. The fact that an ancient torture device meant to humiliate and kill its victim while also terrorizing the local populace into submission can be lost. However, as Cone notes: “The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat” (24). The Jewish community of first-century Palestine expected the eventual advent of their long-awaited Messiah, but they did not expect a messiah in the image of the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Christian community of the first century claimed had fulfilled the promises to which Israel had long held.
In the public consciousness of the people of Israel, the Messiah was going to be one who came to liberate them from their political overlords, return them to prominence in the Holy Land—the land that had been promised to the patriarchs, as recorded in the Hebrew Bible—and allow them to flourish like never before. Naturally, many Jews expected their Messiah to take military or political action, defeating their enemies (the Romans, at the time) in the only way they imagined possible. When a small band of people claiming that this Jesus of Nazareth had been their long-awaited Messiah, the two images simply didn’t line up: How could this carpenter from a small town be the Messiah if he had been arrested, tortured, and crucified?
While the preaching of Jesus’ resurrection was the primary focal point for the early Christian community, the prominence of the cross was central to Christian preaching. As the apostle Paul says in his letter to the church in Corinth: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2, English Standard Version). James Cone speaks about how this reality is close to the heart of the Black Christian community precisely because of what it meant: “The cross speaks to oppressed people in ways that Jesus’ life, teachings, and even his resurrection do not. […] The cross places God in the midst of crucified people” (49). From the first century to the present day, the most universally recognized religious symbol is that of the Christian cross, demonstrating why it is so important to each community of Christian believers as they struggle to understand how the cross relates to their own lived experience.
The Parallels between the Cross and the Lynching Tree
A surprising fact, as the author notes, is the near complete lack of recognition on the part of Christians anywhere that the Cross and the lynching tree are obvious analogs merely separated by time:
Despite the obvious similarities between Jesus’ death on a cross and the death of thousands of black men and women strung up to die on a lamppost or tree, relatively few people, apart from black poets, novelists, and other reality-seeing artists, have explored the symbolic connections (15).
The book title gives away the point of the message, but the parallel imagery is of such importance that the author sees a radical need for it to be emphasized, especially in America, a nation that needs to come to grips with its racist and violent past.
While every generation of Christians has seen their own lives reflected in the narrative recorded within the Bible and has made the stories and message their own, the Black Christian community over the last two centuries is uniquely positioned to see the message of Jesus and the gospel in their own experience. As the author points out—while writing this book in the 21st century—his childhood experience involved fear, anxiety, and doubt about his place in the world solely due to the color of his skin. Black Christians came to view the cross as a symbol of both their salvation and their oppression. As Christians, they saw the cross as a symbol of hope and the source of their salvation in Jesus. At the same time, the cross was also a symbol of the white Christians, the source of their suffering, who claimed to worship the same Jesus as those whom they brutalized and killed.
Cone writes, “The lynching tree was the most horrifying symbol of white supremacy in black life. It was a shameful and painful way to die” (38). However, in a paradoxical movement, the poets of the Black community found a way to subvert even this horror by equating it to the cross of Jesus. In seeing the parallels between the cross and the lynching tree, they can subvert the symbolism, taking what is intrinsically horrific and making it a symbol of hope in their desire to regain their dignity. The most powerful manner of transference between the two was in understanding the cross as a symbol of divine solidarity in their suffering:
In the mystery of God’s revelation, black Christians believed that just knowing that Jesus went through an experience of suffering in a manner similar to theirs gave them faith that God was with them, even in suffering on lynching trees, just as God was present with Jesus in suffering on the cross (44-45).
The Liberating Power of the Cross and the Gospel Message
Cone often notes how the cross made up the central note of Black preaching in churches across the country every Sunday morning. He recalls his own worship experience in his hometown: “We sang about ‘Calvary,’ and asked, ‘Were you there?’, ‘down at the cross,’ ‘when they crucified my Lord’” (44). The cross was “the foundation” (44) of their entire faith and was the root from which their spirituality blossomed. While the cross was certainly a symbol of humiliation and death, the Christian message is that salvation and glory actually come to earth through this experience of death and darkness. The gospel message of liberation begins with Jesus’ death on the cross.
In the lives of Black men and women, lynching was a public spectacle just like Jesus's death: “Crucifixion first and foremost is addressed to an audience” (58). This public spectacle was meant to humiliate and drive fear into the hearts of its audience. The power of the gospel message, however, transformed this fear into a passion and thirst for justice that could not be quenched. The message of Jesus, as present in the gospel, was one of liberation and freedom from the oppression of slavery to sin, and it was clear that “God’s revelation transvalues human values, turning them upside down” (62). In this transvaluation of human values, the one who unites themselves to the symbol of the cross can find ultimate liberation even in circumstances that force them to remain materially captive and oppressed. The cross is a symbol first of spiritual freedom, and then, precisely due to that spiritual freedom, it can then become a symbol of earthly freedom, as a source for those who strive for peace and justice.
In the shadow of the cross, and empowered both by political and artistic sources that drew upon the imagery of the cross, social justice movements in the Black community realized that “God’s justice called for black people to bear witness to freedom now, even unto death” (112). The liberating power of the cross was central to this movement, identifying as the “crucified people in America” (112), and “[l]ike Jesus, blacks knew torture and abandonment” (115). In the end, spurred on by advocates like Martin Luther King, Jr., they were even able to preach the need for love and forgiveness of their oppressors in the same manner that Christ had prayed for forgiveness on behalf of those who had betrayed him and put him to death.
