Cross THE
AND THE
Lynching Tree BIBLE STUDY
Chapter Summaries / Questions Curated And Written By Marben Bland
JAMES H. CONE
Table Of Contents And Schedule The Cross And The Lynching Tree Bible Study 7:00 PM ET Thursday, January 11, 2024, The Life And Legacy Of Dr. James H. Cone
Page: 2-3
Introduction with Rev. Dr. Daryl Bloodsaw
7:00 PM ET Thursday, January 18, 2024, Page: 3-6 Chapter One: “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See” The Cross and the Lynching Tree in the Black Experience. Scripture: Acts 10:34-43 (NRSV) With The Rev. Roz Turner
7:00 PM ET Thursday, January 25, 2024, Pages: 7-9 Chapter Two: ‘The Terrible Beauty of the Cross’ and the Tragedy of the Lynching Tree: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr” Jeremiah 22:3-5 With Rev. Janice Rhodes Casey
7:00 PM ET Thursday, February 1, 2024, Page: 10-14 Chapter Three: “Bearing the Cross and Staring Down the Lynching Tree: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Struggle to Redeem the Soul of America.” Scripture: Mark 15:21-41 With Rev. Curry Butler
7:00 PM ET Thursday, February 8, 2024, Page: 14-17 Chapter Four: “The Recrucified Christ in Black Literary Imagination” Scripture: Matthew 8:5-13 With Rev. Dr. Michael Ephriam
7:00 PM ET Thursday, February 15, 2024, Chapter Five: ‘Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep’ Scripture: 2 Samuel 13:1-32
Page: 17-22
With Rev. Janice Rhodes Casey
Bonus Material Conclusion Summary And Analysis: “Legacies of the Cross and the Lynching Tree”
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Overview James Cone’s theological work, entitled The Cross and the Lynching Tree, is the result of almost 50 years of theological reflection on the intersection of religion, race, and culture and is thus considered to be one of his most mature and developed works. A Methodist minister and seminary professor, Cone was one of America’s most unique and qualified voices on race and theology. In this work, Cone draws a direct link between the symbolism of the lynching tree in America’s troubled history of racist violence and the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, an innocent victim tortured and put to death by being hung from a tree. Contextual Analysis Authorial Context: James Cone as a 21st-Century Author When The Cross and the Lynching Tree was published in 2011, the United States of America had recently elected its first Black president, Barack Obama. As the last in a long line of books that James Cone had published on the subject, The Cross and the Lynching Tree addresses major issues of race, religion, and cultural assumptions that had been the focus of his academic career for almost half a century, starting in the 1960s. On the one hand, the election of a Black man as President of the United States represented a new frontier for race relations in the country, proving that this was a new possibility in a country that had never achieved that before. In general, cultural expectations had become generally positive and optimistic about the future of race relations and new social harmony in a country haunted by its violent past. On the other hand, it would be false to say that such a significant symbolic achievement had somehow healed the wounds caused by the country’s white supremacist past that saw men and women of African descent as subhuman and unworthy of being treated with basic dignity and respect. Dr. Cone’s work as one of the founding fathers of Black liberation theology centered on the place of Black Christians in a country dominated by white Christian communities. The Cross and the Lynching Tree was a work that gathered together his mature thinking and reflections on what was, to him, the primary analog of the Black Christian experience: the relationship between the Cross of Jesus Christ that violently stole the life of the innocent Nazarene and the lynching tree that had violently stolen the life of thousands of innocent Black men and women. Cone’s position 2
was one of baffled confusion since it appeared to him that the parallel between the two had never really been highlighted, even though it was such an obvious comparison.
Chapter One: Summary & Analysis “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See” The Cross and the Lynching Tree in the Black Experience. Scripture: Acts 10:34-43 (NRSV) The Gentiles Hear The Good News 34Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
The Gentiles Receive the Holy Spirit 44While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were 3
astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” 48 So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days. Chapter One: Summary & Analysis “‘Nobody Knows de Trouble I See’: The Cross and the Lynching Tree in the Black Experience”. Scripture: Cone opens the first chapter by focusing on the paradox of the Christian message: The Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world accomplishes his mission of redemption by undergoing brutal torture and public execution by crucifixion. The cross “inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat” (24); it is a critique of worldly power and domination. The experience of African American men and women in America in the lynching era from about 1880 to 1940 was a time of unfathomably horrid suffering. While lynching was initially a term that didn’t refer to a specific act toward any specific group of people, its historical instantiation quickly crystallized and fixed upon the acts of violence perpetrated against Black people, especially as enacted in death by hanging. Lynching itself was additionally problematic because it was a mode of extra-judicial community retaliation against a perceived slight or crime; it was an act of “mob violence” (26) and unsanctioned vigilantism that came about largely as the counter-reaction of southern white communities after the Reconstruction Act of 1867 where Black men were granted “franchise and citizenship rights” (26). The public imagination quickly framed the issue as a “them vs. us” dichotomy, and white southerners began to see Black men as violent threats to their community and Black women as corrupting and “salacious Jezebels” (29) who had no place in their neighborhoods. In retaliation, white communities took matters into their own hands by lynching Black men (and women in some cases) for any perceived slight or half-hearted accusation. Additional sensation was added to these events due to their propensity to become media spectacles 4
and public events to which one would bring a packed lunch and a camera. The ubiquity of the lynching mentality was so pervasive that the Black community could do almost nothing to quench its bloodlust, knowing that “violent self-defense was tantamount to suicide” (34). If one fought back, it would lead to violent retaliation, so the only thing to do in most cases was to silently accept the brutal circumstances, choosing the only mode of deescalation possible at the expense of one’s dignity. The only way that most could handle the horrors of the time was to turn to other outlets, most significantly the outlets of religion and the blues. The Black communities quickly took solace in the hope that music could bring to their lives, offering “a collective self-transcendent meaning in the singing, dancing, loving, and laughing” (35). The communitarian aspect of creating something that was uniquely their own and spoke to their own experience was empowering in a way that nothing else quite had been before. When Black men and women couldn’t talk publicly about their fears or the injustice they faced without fear of retaliation, they could resort to composing poetry and song about their perspective on the world. While “the blues offered an affirmation of humanity,” it was “religion [that] offered a way for black people to find hope” (41). Music spoke to their heart, and religion spoke to their soul. In their Christian faith, the individual could acknowledge that “the lynching tree symbolized white power and ‘black death,’” while also acknowledging, at the same time, that “the cross symbolized divine power and ‘black life’” (41). If their central point of fear was being strung up on a tree as an innocent victim, they could look to the cross where Jesus hung, strung up on a tree as an innocent victim, and in Jesus, they could see the solidarity and love of God who entered into their own suffering as a poor, marginalized victim. The gospel songs they composed “focused on how Jesus achieved salvation for the least through his solidarity with them even unto death” (44). The one thing that could not be taken from them was their hope, their will to live, and their faith; since their faith was not a “thing” that could be exploited or stolen, it was what they clung to most tenaciously. While the presence of Black churches gave African American citizens their own spaces of worship and respite, they “did not remove their need to wrestle with God about the deeply felt contradictions that slavery created for faith” (50). At a time when their suffering seemed so utterly pointless 5
and unending, the God who came to earth in the person of Jesus seemed silent; this was a major challenge, but one that ultimately led to the protests and marches that would result in the Civil Rights Act and institutional change in the government structures that would lead to slow but genuine change.
Discussion Questions: 1. In verse 34 how does Peter describe God’s views about the Gentiles? During Peter’s time how did the Jews view Gentiles? How does Jewish treatment of non-Jews in the past and today compare to the treatment of Blacks in America? 2. Cone describes the lynching era from about 1880 to 1940 as a time of unfathomably horrid suffering. How did the treatment of African American men and women in America during the lynching era compare to Peter’s pronouncement in Act 10:34 that God shows no partiality? 3. In Act 10:39 Peter says that Jesus was put him to death when they hung him on a tree. How does lynching who Cone describes as a symbol of white power and black death compare with crucifixion? Chapter Two: Summary & Analysis ‘The Terrible Beauty of the Cross’ and the Tragedy of the Lynching Tree: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr” Jeremiah 22:3-5 English Standard Version 3 Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. 4 For if you will indeed obey this word, then there shall enter the gates of this house kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their servants and their 6
people. 5 But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation. Chapter Two: Summary and Analysis: ‘The Terrible Beauty of the Cross’ and the Tragedy of the Lynching Tree: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr”
Every culture receives the imagery of their faith in a particular way; this process is called inculturation and is the means by which a transcendent reality makes sense in their own limited, socio- historical context. The author points out that the imagery of the lynching tree “should have a prominent place in American images of Jesus’ death” but that it is conspicuously absent from “American theological discourse and preaching” (57). This is almost unthinkable, seeing as “the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching” (57). The parallels are almost uncannily similar, but the imagery has not taken root in the consciousness of the American Christian in any meaningful way. Cone examines this lacuna by exploring the work of one of his intellectual heroes, Reinhold Niebuhr, respected (as he points out) as “America’s most influential theologian in the twentieth century” (59) and one of the more progressive thinkers of his day. However, this parallel cannot be found even in Niebuhr's work. Niebuhr, as Cone continues, is a theologian to be imitated and followed in many respects. He “taught that love is the absolute, transcendent standard that stands in judgment over what human beings can achieve in history” (60). In Cone’s estimation, “Niebuhr has a complex perspective on race—at once honest and ambivalent, radical and moderate” (65). Cone goes on to point out that while Niebuhr criticized American race relations as hardly better than the Nazi regime’s eugenic hatred, he failed to see that the injustices of the era demanded a radical and immediate call to action, speaking instead about needing to take an approach characterized by “gradualism, patience, and prudence” (66). Niebuhr realized that groups are inherently selfish and protective of their own and yet failed to see this reality about his own group of relatively conservative white Christians. In contrast, Niebuhr holds up the German theologian and political activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer—who was 7
criticized at the time by his peers for being too close to the Black community—and who would go on to be executed by Nazi Germany for a plot to assassinate Hitler. Niebuhr’s philosophy was not so radical nor urgent. While he knew that denying church membership on the basis of race was immoral and contrary to the gospel demands, he also realized that this would be a great obstacle practically. Thus, he allowed the difficulties to dampen his enthusiasm for issues of racial harmony and justice: “Rather than challenging racial prejudice, he believed it must ‘slowly erode’” (76). Cone believes this is because Niebuhr failed to listen to the Black activists, like Malcolm X, who spoke publicly at the time. How could it be the case that an eminent theologian in America during the lynching era could ignore such an obvious tragedy and scandal to the Christian way of life? Cone outlines Niebuhr's conversation with the “radical black intellectual” James Baldwin in the 1960s and shows the differences in the urgency that the two sides took in the debate. Baldwin takes Niebuhr to task regarding the issue of complicity in the white community, stating that “the bulk of the white...Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral and contrary to the gospel demands, he also realized that this would be a great obstacle practically. Thus, he allowed the difficulties to dampen his enthusiasm for issues of racial harmony and justice: “Rather than challenging racial prejudice, he believed it must ‘slowly erode’” (76). Cone believes this is because Niebuhr failed to listen to the Black activists, like Malcolm X, who spoke publicly at the time. How could it be the case that an eminent theologian in America during the lynching era could ignore such an obvious tragedy and scandal to the Christian way of life? Cone outlines Niebuhr's conversation with the “radical black intellectual” James Baldwin in the 1960s and shows the differences in the urgency that the two sides took in the debate. Baldwin takes Niebuhr to task regarding the issue of complicity in the white community, stating that “the bulk of the white...Christian majority in this country has exhibited a really staggering level of irresponsibility and immoral washing of the hands” (83), principally criticizing the silence of his fellow Christians in the face of this hate and violence. The author praises Niebuhr in many ways, explaining that he even teaches a seminary course on his work due to his “profound 8
reflections on human nature, the cross, and creative social theory, focusing on justice, self-interest, and power” (88). The prowess of his thought as a theologian was never the issue, he says; it was merely the fact that he had a very “limited perspective, as a white man, on the race crisis in America” (88). This criticism and exploration of Niebuhr’s failings is the author’s way of criticizing all those academics who failed to see a very obvious moral issue in the racial crisis of the era and the violence that was being committed on the supposedly Christian soil of the American south. In examining how and where someone as eminent as Niebuhr could go wrong and miss the boat, as it were, the author can point out where structural, cultural, and institutional issues arise that create the circumstances in which such an obvious evil can go unchecked and unremarked upon.
Discussion Questions: 1. Cone believes that it is almost unthinkable that a theologian as renounced as Reinhold Niebuhr could fail to see the crucifixion as a firstcentury lynching. How should religious leaders of today use Jeremiah 22: 3-5 to view racial injustice? 2. Cone credits Reinhold Niebuhr for criticizing American race relations calling them as hardly better than the Nazi regime’s eugenic hatred. However, he is dismayed by Niebuhr’s gradualism, patience, and prudence approach to racial injustice. What approach to injustice is recommend in Jeremiah 22:3-5? 3. Cone believes that structural, cultural, and institutional issues arise that create the circumstances in which such the obvious evil of lynching can go unchecked. Using Jeremiah 22:3-5 as our touchstone name at least three injustices in America today that have gone on unchecked.
Chapter Three: Summary and Analysis: “Bearing the Cross and Staring Down the Lynching Tree: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Struggle to Redeem the Soul of America.” Mark 15:21-41 9
Contemporary English Version Jesus Is Nailed to a Cross The soldiers took Jesus to Golgotha, which means “Place of a Skull.”[a] 23 There they gave him some wine mixed with a drug to ease the pain, but he refused to drink it. 22
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They nailed Jesus to a cross and gambled to see who would get his clothes. 25 It was about nine o'clock in the morning when they nailed him to the cross. 26 On it was a sign that told why he was nailed there. It read, “This is the King of the Jews.” 27-28 The soldiers also nailed two criminals on crosses, one to the right of Jesus and the other to his left.[b] 29
People who passed by said terrible things about Jesus. They shook their heads and shouted, “Ha! So you're the one who claimed you could tear down the temple and build it again in three days. 30 Save yourself and come down from the cross!” 31
The chief priests and the teachers of the Law of Moses also made fun of Jesus. They said to each other, “He saved others, but he can't save himself. 32 If he is the Messiah, the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross! Then we will see and believe.” The two criminals also said cruel things to Jesus.
The Death of Jesus 33
About noon the sky turned dark and stayed that way until around three o'clock. 34 Then about that time Jesus shouted, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”[c] which means, “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” Some of the people standing there heard Jesus and said, “He is calling for Elijah.”[d] 36 One of them ran and grabbed a sponge. After he had soaked it in wine, he put it on a stick and held it up to Jesus. He said, “Let's 35
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wait and see if Elijah will come[e] and take him down!” 37 Jesus shouted and then died. 38
At once the curtain in the temple[f] tore in two from top to bottom.
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A Roman army officer was standing in front of Jesus. When the officer saw how Jesus died, he said, “This man really was the Son of God!” 40-41
Some women were looking on from a distance. They and many others had come with Jesus to Jerusalem. But even before this they had been his followers and had helped him while he was in Galilee. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joseph were two of these women. Salome was also one of them. Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis: “Bearing the Cross and Staring Down the Lynching Tree: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Struggle to Redeem the Soul of America.” In the third chapter, the author James Cone explores his relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights legacy that he left behind. In the wake of the Emmett Till lynching, the civil rights movement saw an upswell of support like never before, coming in the wake of an event so shocking that “Black people throughout the country were outraged that white racists would stoop so low as to lynch an innocent child” (105). The murder of Emmett Till proved to be a breaking point for the movement not only because of the horrific nature of the act but in the way that it was leveraged by Emmett’s mother to attempt to put a real human face on the racism and violence that had been their experience every single day. Emmett’s mother “insisted that the sealed casket be opened for a three-day viewing” (105106) so that the world could see precisely what had been done to her child: “She exposed white brutality and black faith to the world and, significantly, expressed a parallel meaning between her son’s lynching and the crucifixion of Jesus” (106). By allowing the public to see the aftermath of Emmett’s violent end, his mother was doing the only thing she knew to do to offer up a peaceful protest, allowing the shame of his attackers to manifest to the world. As an additional note, the open-casket display didn’t 11
just shame and convict his murderers, but it also put the thought of recognition and conviction into the heart of every young Black man in the country that it easily could have been any of them. The author recounts having this thought: “I remember saying to myself, ‘Emmet Till could have been me!’ My older brothers felt the same way, as did most young males we knew” (106). Just a few months after the lynching of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks staged her protest by refusing to give up her seat on the bus, and it became obvious that a new era was dawning. Right into the midst of this stepped Martin Luther King Jr., who “came to embody this faith, courage, and intelligence” (109) present in the Black community. What made MLK different was that he wasn’t content to discuss the issues as an academic, at the theoretical level, even though he was more than equipped to do so intellectually. He brought the theory out onto the streets, truly living the truth by which he was convicted. What made MLK’s teaching and example even more radical was that he consistently advocated for peace and nonviolence, even in the wake of evident injustice and aggression; he realized that “love and the cross lead to nonviolence and reconciliation” (110). What Reinhold Niebuhr had deemed impossible—bringing radical love into existence as a historical reality—MLK believed was possible, and it was what motivated him from the start. The theological underpinning of MLK’s message was the cross, for “the cross spoke to the lives of blacks because the likeness between the cross and the lynching tree created an eerie feeling of mystery and the supernatural” (115). The cross was the most powerful symbol to raise as a standard because it stood for something wholly transcendent, which could unite all their cares, fears, and sorrows universally. Even when MLK suffered injustice, harassment, and aggression, he refused to stop, even when he feared for his own life, convinced that sooner or later, he would be killed for his pursuit of justice. For King, “the cross represented the depth of God’s love for suffering humanity, and an answer to the deadly cycle of violence and hatred” (125), and it motivated him to continue his particular mode of nonviolent noncompliance. He was convinced he would be killed, but his faith gave him the courage and the motivation to keep going. When reflecting on the events that sparked the civil rights movement, it is almost impossible to see any good in its initial causes. The death of an innocent child, especially a 12
consciously willed and violent death like that of Emmett Till, is a grave obstacle to faith; in fact, the suffering of the innocent has been one of the principal objections to belief in God or a moral universe for thousands of years. As Cone notes, it’s one thing to wax philosophical in a discussion of the pain, suffering, and death of the innocent in the ivory tower of academia, but it is quite another to “talk about the death of innocent children who were killed while worshiping Jesus” (128) in the wake of it happening in your lived experience. In attempting to understand the ancient Christian understanding of redemptive suffering, Cone admits that he was slow to understand its depths, and it is only in the acknowledgment of Jesus’ solidarity with those who suffer that any of it can make sense. Discussion Questions: 1. Cone describes the murder of Emmett Till as a breaking point for the Civil Rights movement not only because of the horrific nature of the act but in the way that it was leveraged by Emmett’s mother to attempt to put a real human face on the racism and violence that had been their experience every single day. In what ways is the crucifixion of Jesus a similar breaking point for Christians? 2. Cone said for Martin Luther King, Jr. “the cross represented the depth of God’s love for suffering humanity, and an answer to the deadly cycle of violence and hatred” The cross motivated him to continue his particular mode of nonviolent noncompliance. Despite the fact that King was convinced that sooner or later, he would be violently killed for his pursuit of justice. In which ways can the violent death of Jesus on the cross as detailed in scripture serve as a motivator for us to press for social justice despite the violence or discomfort it may bring? 3. Redemptive suffering is the Christian belief that human suffering when accepted and offered up in union with the Passion of Jesus, can remit the just punishment for one's sins or the sins of another, or the other physical or spiritual needs of oneself or another. In chapter 3 Cone acknowledges his late adaptation to the understanding of redemptive suffering. Given that the word redeem means to be set free what freedoms have been achieved 13
via the redemptive suffering of Jesus? What freedoms have been achieved via the redemptive suffering of African Americans?
Chapter Four: Summary and Analysis: “The Recrucified Christ in Black Literary Imagination” Matthew 8:5-13 New International Version The Faith of the Centurion 5 When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.” 7 Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?” 8 The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 10 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11 I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 13 Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment. Chapter 4 Summary and Analysis: “The Recrucified Christ in Black Literary Imagination” Cone begins the chapter by pointing out that throughout history, it has been the case that “[m]ost black artists were not church-going Christians” (139). 14
They were, however, deeply concerned people who could see pain and suffering in the world. At the same time, they were still formed by the Christian imagination by way of the culture. Even if artists weren’t practicing and deeply pious Christians, they seemed to be the people most capable of linking the cross and the lynching tree. To Cone, this is a curious thing: “What enabled artists to see what Christian theologians and ministers would not?” (139). What allowed the artistic vision to make this connection when the philosophers, theologians, and preachers so often failed to do so? Cone’s diagnosis is that it takes a deep imagination to make this connection, an imaginative approach to life that many analytical thinkers do not possess. In their experience, “lynching and Christianity were so much a part of the daily reality of American society that no black artist could avoid wrestling with their meanings and their symbolic relationship to each other” (141). The artist is the one who is most likely to live in the heart of the community and encounter normal, average people, and thus, they are most likely to connect to the average lived experience of those suffering and in need. Cone illustrates his points throughout this chapter by citing countless poems, hymns, and gospel music lyrics to demonstrate the reality of this phenomenon and to illustrate the beautiful and haunting manner in which these topics were addressed by Black artists. Citing artists and literary greats such as Countee Cullen, Everette Hawkins, W.E.B. Dubois, and Billie Holiday, Cone allows the words of the most influential figures to speak for him. When artists created visual representations of Christ upon the cross “and painted him black, they were also referencing Christ as a lynched victim” (146), drawing out the implications without having to speak even a single word. In a short story by W.E.B. Dubois entitled “The Gospel of Mary Brown,” an illustration ran with the piece depicting a Black Madonna holding a Black Christ child. In their artistic pining for answers and meaning in the heart of a dark world, Black artists and creatives sought meaning from their own lives. Cone notes, “Such spiritual wrestling did not arise out of abstract reasoning but from enduring and confronting the reality of inexplicable suffering” (153). In the artists’ judgment, no true peace could be achieved by simply ignoring this violent history and sweeping America’s racist past under the rug. On the contrary: the facts needed to be confronted, put on full display, and allowed to purify the future. They 15
recognized that “telling the painful and redeeming truths about their life together” (159) was a prerequisite for a future characterized by harmony and love. The voices of the artists in the Black community proved to be prophetic and required “them to speak truth to power” (165). As Cone notes in his closing words on the topic: “More than anyone, artists demonstrate our understanding of the need to represent the beauty and the terror of our people’s experience” (165). 1. Cone observes that black artists while not church-going Christians seemed to be more capable to link the cross and the lynching tree than philosophers, theologians, and preachers. Similarly, the centurion in Matthew 8:5-13 who is not from the priesthood is more capable than the priesthood itself in recognizing who Jesus is. What is your reasoning for this? 2. Cone asserts that lynching and Christianity were so much a part of the daily reality of American society that no black artist could avoid wrestling with their meanings and their symbolic relationship to each other. Darius Rucker is an African American country rock singer, musician, and songwriter, performing to mostly white audiences. 20 years before the Confederate flag came down from the South Carolina Capital, Rucker and his band Hootie & The Blowfish released the single Drowning as a Protest. Use the link below to listen to the song and view the lyrics. After listening reflect on Cone's observation regarding the gift of the black artist of being more capable than the priesthood of calling out injustice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg9N1x_C8vo 3. Cone notes that Black artists are prophetic and can speak truth to power. The voices of the artists in the Black community proved to be prophetic and required “them to speak truth to power.” In embracing Jesus how did the centurion in Matthew 8:5-13 speak truth to power?
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Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis: “‘Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep’” 2 Samuel 13:1-32 The Rape Of Tamar 1Some time passed. David’s son Absalom had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar; and David’s son Amnon fell in love with her. 2Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. 3But Amnon had a friend whose name was Jonadab, the son of David’s brother Shimeah; and Jonadab was a very crafty man. 4He said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.” 5Jonadab said to him, “Lie down on your bed, and pretend to be ill; and when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me something to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, so that I may see it and eat it from her hand.’” 6So Amnon lay down, and pretended to be ill; and when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, so that I may eat from her hand.” 7Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon’s house, and prepare food for him.” 8So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house, where he was lying down. She took dough, kneaded it, made cakes in his sight, and baked the cakes. 9Then she took the pan and set them out before him, but he refused to eat. Amnon said, “Send out everyone from me.” So everyone went out from him. 10Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber, so that I may eat from your hand.” So Tamar took the cakes she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. 11But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her, and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.” 12She answered him, “No, my brother, do not force me; for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do anything so vile! 13As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the scoundrels in Israel. Now therefore, I beg you, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you.” 14But he would not listen to her; and 17
being stronger than she, he forced her and lay with her. 15Then Amnon was seized with a very great loathing for her; indeed, his loathing was even greater than the lust he had felt for her. Amnon said to her, “Get out!” 16But she said to him, “No, my brother; b for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her. 17He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence, and bolt the door after her.” 18(Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.c) So his servant put her out and bolted the door after her. 19But Tamar put ashes on her head and tore the long robe that she was wearing; she put her hand on her head, and went away, crying aloud as she went. 20Her brother Absalom said to her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? Be quiet for now, my sister; he is your brother; do not take this to heart.” So Tamar remained, a desolate woman, in her brother Absalom’s house. 21When King David heard of all these things, he became very angry, but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn. 22But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Absalom hated Amnon, because he had raped his sister Tamar.
Absalom Avenges The Rape Of His Sister 23After two full years Absalom had sheep-shearers at Baal-hazor, which is near Ephraim, and Absalom invited all the king’s sons. 24Absalom came to the king, and said, “Your servant has sheepshearers; will the king and his servants please go with your servant?” 25But the king said to Absalom, “No, my son, let us not all go, or else we will be burdensome to you.” He pressed him, but he would not go but gave him his blessing. 26Then Absalom said, “If not, please let my brother Amnon go with us.” The king said to him, “Why should he go with you?” 27But Absalom pressed him until he let Amnon and all the king’s sons go with him. Absalom made a feast like a king’s feast.e 28Then Absalom commanded his servants, “Watch when Amnon’s heart is merry with wine, and when I say to you, 18
‘Strike Amnon,’ then kill him. Do not be afraid; have I not myself commanded you? Be courageous and valiant.” 29So the servants of Absalom did to Amnon as Absalom had commanded. Then all the king’s sons rose, and each mounted his mule and fled. 30While they were on the way, the report came to David that Absalom had killed all the king’s sons, and not one of them was left. 31The king rose, tore his garments, and lay on the ground; and all his servants who were standing by tore their garments. 32But Jonadab, the son of David’s brother Shimeah, said, “Let not my lord suppose that they have killed all the young men the king’s sons; Amnon alone is dead. This has been determined by Absalom from the day Amnon raped his sister Tamar. Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis: “‘Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep’” The final chapter begins with the narrative of a Black woman who just happened to be the wife of a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Haynes Turner was a Black man known to quarrel with a white man who had just been murdered, Hampton Smith. Since the mob that had gathered couldn’t find the man accused of the crime (one Sidney Johnson), they decided to lynch Haynes instead. Hayne’s wife Mary, eight months pregnant at the time, raised her voice in protest at this horrific miscarriage of justice and was lynched herself. Cone recounts the horrific crime in detail—she was arrested by the local sheriff, who then turned her over to the mob. She was “stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death” before “a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death” (170). This lurid scene shows that even though women made up only 2% of lynching victims, their stories are no less horrific or worthy of attention. Often, it was not the threat of death that served as the greatest existential threat to Black women but fates even worse in the form of sexual assault and degradation. In addition, when Black men were lynched, Black women “not only suffered the loss of their sons, husbands, brothers, uncles, nephews, and cousins but also endured public insults and economic hardship” (173) as a result. The depths of the suffering of women 19
created a deep challenge to their faith. Cone points to the great work of the woman long considered “the pioneer of the anti-lynching crusade” (176), Ida B. Wells. Wells began her work in the anti-lynching movement in 1892 when three of her friends were lynched in Memphis. Motivated by this, she launched into action, giving speeches, writing editorials, and publishing pamphlets for the cause: “Our country’s national crime is lynching” (177), she wrote at the head of one of her essays. She pointed out the outright hypocrisy of many of the advocates for lynching. One of the primary accusations against those who were lynched was sexual assault, but she demonstrated that in the case of the lynching of her friends, for instance, it was “envy of black economic success” (178) that had been the motivator, not sexual violence. Relevant to the author’s topic, of course, is that Wells attributed her great success and motivation to her faith in God, a faith that convicted her to a place where action was the only choice and remaining passive and silent was no longer possible. This did not mean that her faith was never tested or that she never saw her circumstances as an obstacle to be overcome in times of trouble; far from it. She wrote, “The heart almost loses faith in Christianity when one thinks of…the countless massacres of defenseless Negroes” (181). Once again, the senseless violence perpetrated against the innocent was a serious and genuine obstacle at times. Criticizing the white communities of supposed Christians, she was forced to conclude that it was nothing but mere hypocrisy “because it either openly supported slavery, segregation, and lynching as the will of God or it was silent about these evils” (182). However, one of the most effective and lasting female voices in this arena happened to be one set to music. The infamous rendition of “Strange Fruit” sung by Billie Holiday was, in her own words, a protest and was later dubbed by Time Magazine as “the best song of the century” (185). The song is one of resistance, placing the victim at center stage: “Southern trees bear strange fruit/Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/Black body swinging in the Southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” (185). What is even more curious is that the lyrics are adapted from a poem written by a Jewish school teacher who wrote the poem as a reaction to his experience of seeing pictures of lynching victims. The song raises a stark question: “How could white Christians reconcile the ‘strange fruit’ they hung on southern trees with the 20
‘strange fruit’ Romans hung on the cross at Golgotha?” (186). The song served as an accusation for all who heard it, for no white person could listen to it with an easy conscience, exposed and stripped bare, indicted for their silence, inaction, and complicity in the atrocities delivered against Holiday’s people. While not every Black woman could have the influence of Billie Holiday, it remained a fact that in the churches, women continued to have an enormous impact, often making up “more than 80 percent of the membership” (194) in community churches. This ratio was reflected in the enormous support of women in the civil rights marches and protests in the years to come, and it was women who usually most radically embodied the notion of redemptive suffering, participating in “redeeming America through nonviolent suffering” (198). While it is true that certain women, as theologians, have challenged the breadth of the notion of redemptive suffering—Cone cites the work of Delores Williams as one who would challenge certain interpretations of this concept—the notion is still relevant through the notion of service and the reorientation of justice in relationship. No matter what, the cross can never be separated from the gospel message of liberation and “as lived and understood in the African American Christian community” (203).
Discussion Questions: 1. The final chapter begins with the horrific narrative of Mary Smith. At eight months pregnant was taken by a white mob stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death” Then a white man with a hunting knife opened her swollen belly, the living unborn infant fell to the ground only to be stomped to death. Even though women made up only 2% of lynching victims, their stories are no less horrific or worthy of attention. Often, it was not the threat of death that served as the greatest existential threat to Black women but instead, it is sexual assault and degradation.
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Sexual assault is not a foreign topic in scripture the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13:1-32, is a maddening account of the dangers women face as they become prey to stronger and more powerful men. Why is this and other accounts of sexual violence included in the Bible? What does the Lord want us to learn from these accounts? How can we be better advocates for women especially when enablers like Jonadab exist? 2. The infamous rendition of “Strange Fruit” sung by Billie Holiday dubbed by Time Magazine as “the best song of the century is a song of resistance, placing the victim at center stage. Adapted from a poem by Abel Meeropol a Jewish school teacher who wrote the poem as a reaction to his experience of seeing pictures of lynching victims. The song raises a stark question for our consideration - How could white Christians reconcile the ‘strange fruit’ they hung on southern trees with the ‘strange fruit’ Romans hung on the cross at Golgotha?” 3. Cone cites the 80% membership of women in the African American Christian community as a driving force for the redeeming of America through nonviolent redemptive suffering. As women take on more of the formal leadership roles in the AME church how do we encourage men to be more receptive to women in leadership? Should the church have more men like Absalom to defend and avenge women? Conclusion Summary And Analysis: “Legacies of the Cross and the Lynching Tree”
In his concluding remarks, James Cone recalls his experience as a young boy waiting for his father to come home at the end of the day, inviting the reader to empathize a little with his anxiety in wondering about his father's fate each day after work. This experience led to his struggle with the Christian faith even as a child: “Belief in a good and just God was no easy matter for any Black person living in the so-called Christian South” (212). He sums up his question in this way: “If God loves black people, why then do we suffer so much?” (213). This question motivated him from his earliest 22
memories all the way through his education and career as an academic, teacher, and writer. The entirety of his career, the author writes, is a result of that initial questioning and struggle, and led to his constant search for answers on how the gospel message of liberation could be applied and transformative for the Black community. In Cone’s words, the lynching era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was “the Heart of Darkness for the African American community” (213) and served to catalyze a powerful civil rights movement that was ultimately rooted in eschatological hope as offered by the Christian faith in a crucified Messiah. This paradox was a powerful symbol for all that had to be endured: “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’” (219-220). Recognizing the analog of the cross and the lynching tree will hopefully enable a new imaginative grasp of the horrors suffered by the Black community and the reality of a lived Christian experience in Black churches across America.
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