The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Book Review (James Cone)

Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “recrucified” black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America, and no deliverance from the brutal legacy of slavery and white supremacy. [xv]

This book floats and stings. What does it mean to be black and Christian, in a country where Christianity comes coded as white, and its history is inextricably bound in the sins of racism, slavery, and lynching. How can the Cross and the Lynching Tree be interpreted in light of each other?

Cone wrestles with this question across five chapters, almost five separate essays. In the first of these, “Nobody Knows De Trouble I See”, he connects the death of Jesus on the cross, with the lynchings of Black people in America. Lynching, for a definition, is a form of extrajudicial killing, and it was baked into the expression of white supremacy in American history as an extension of the belief of a God-given right of whites to control Black people as inferior people. How did Black people survive the Lynching Era (1880s to 1950s)? Cone points to the Blues and the Black Church as two sources of sustenance.

Chapter two, “‘The Terrible Beauty of the Cross’ and the Tragedy of the Lynching Tree” is a sustained reflective essay on Reinhold Niebuhr and his utter failure to engage the question of lynching, and racism in general. Niebuhr looms incredibly large in the American theological tradition. Considered by some as America’s greatest theologian, he was and remains highly influential in terms of ethics, political theology, and the like. Niebuhr’s writings on race are complex. On the one hand, he was capable of fierce denunciation of racism. On the other, he was almost always a moderate, not wanting to upset whites, urging a go-slow approach. Ultimately, Cone argues, Niebuhr could see the problems, but lacked the deep and genuine empathy required. Niebuhr ultimately failed in this regard - he choose a safer, middle course, of liberal concern but not radical action. The very kind of thing that MLK railed so much against in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. This chapter is a damning indictment of Niebuhr’s failures, and of white theologians in general.

Chapter three then, “Bearing the Cross and Staring down the Lynching Tree” turns to MLK. It starts by connecting the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 to the rise of the Civil Rights movement, notes how for many activists their resources for resistance were grounded in, for instance, Camus or Fanon, while for those like MLK it was rooted in the Black Church all the way down. Where Niebuhr analysed the cross, and hoped for some proximate, practical justice, MLK lived the cross, and worked for the impossible.

How did King live with the daily threat of death for more than twelve years? No one was more at risk than he. The cross of Jesus is the key to King’s willingness to sacrifice his life, not only for the freedom of black people (“I will die standing up for the freedom of my people”) but also for the souls of whites and the redemption of America. [82]

Chapter four moves to poets and artists, “The Recrucified Christ in Black Literary Imagination”. Poets are rarely orthodox, and you shouldn’t expect them to be; you also shouldn’t worry too much about it.¹ This chapter is an incredible illumination of the poetry of Black writers, particularly the twin lenses of the Lynching Tree and the Cross. Few, though, are as powerful as Strange Fruit, which you should know and listen to in Billie Holiday’s rendition:

The final chapter, “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep”, specifically engages Womanist perspectives. What happens when we re-frame this discussion specifically to engage the perspective of Black Women? What I loved most in this chapter was learning more about the heroic life of Ida B. Wells. But what I struggled most with in this chapter is what I struggled most with in the whole book.

That’s this question: the failure of White Christianity. We are talking about a nation founded in racism, pervaded by racism, in which slavery and lynching were carried out on a massive scale, and all backed up and supported by White Christianity. It’s easy enough to find an American Christian tradition that is all white, says nothing about race, and doesn’t even recognise this as a problem. The effects of the original sins of American Christianity pervade America to this day, and infect the church. How could the church fail so badly? How could God let it? How does God watch such suffering inflicted in his name?

This isn’t a problem limited to America. It’s a problem repeated throughout history. It’s a problem in Australia, a country with its only racist past and deeply racist present. At the same time, I am caught in a conundrum, because the only resources I find to have the strength to say that these things are deeply, utterly wrong, are the same resources - the God of the Bible. And so while many people ask these questions and thus abandon Christianity, I find that to abandon Christianity means abandoning the very basis for thinking these things are wrong to begin with. Secularism has no foundations, its nihilist all the way down. If it’s the God who liberates the Hebrews from Egypt who shows us what justice and love are, it’s the same God who holds us to account for the countless failings to live lives of justice and love in this world.

Writ on a larger canvas, there is something difficult about looking at all the suffering of the world, and concluding that God, who is wise, just, loving, good, powerful, and sovereign, must have a better plan for this to bring good out of evil than I could ever comprehend. But this remains better than any other alternative view.

Let’s let Cone have the final word here:

Theologically speaking, Jesus was the “first lynchee,” who foreshadowed all the lynched black bodies on American soil. He was crucified by the same principalities and powers that lynched black people in America. Because God was present with Jesus on the cross and thereby refused to let Satan and death have the last word about his meaning, God was also present at every lynching in the United States. God saw what whites did to innocent and helpless blacks and claimed their suffering as God’s own. God transformed lynched black bodies into the recrucified body of Christ. Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus. The lynching tree is the cross in America. When American Christians realize that they can meet Jesus only in the crucified bodies in our midst, they will encounter the real scandal of the cross. [158]

1. This is why I find debates about how ‘Christian’ Bono is, and whether U2 is a ‘Christian’ band, ad nauseam, pointless and banal.