There has been a debate on social media in regards to certain Southern Baptist seminary professors teaching about James Cone and his theology. I will admit that when I was in seminary, Cone’s theology had the label of “liberation theology”. In my time, that was linked with Latin American Marxist theology and even condoning the use of violence as a means to liberate the poor. I didn’t read any of his writings. In this current debate, there are many who feel that Cone's material has no place in any Southern Baptist seminary, and one seminary president called Cone "a heretic and almost certainly not a Christian."
Over twenty years later, I came across his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. I was intrigued to pick it up after reading this quote about why he wrote this book: he wrote for the purpose of “…seeking to know about this Jesus in whom his parents believed in the face of mistreatment by others who claimed to be followers of this Messiah.” That quote stuck with me. Knowing the history of how Black people have been treated in America over the past 300 plus years, I marveled at the fact that I knew so many black Americans with a rich devotion to Jesus, even though the Bible had been used to keep them enslaved or keep them segregated. This prompted me to read his book. It was probably the best book I read in 2018.
I am planning on taking some time and blogging through this book over the next few weeks. Hopefully, at least one post per week. Mainly summarizing the chapters and providing my reactions from time to time.
Introduction: The cross and the lynching tree are separated by nearly 2,000 years. One is the universal symbol of Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. 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, few people have explored the symbolic connects between the two.
In its heyday, the lynching of black Americans was no secret. It was a public spectacle, often announced in advance in newspapers and over radios, attracting crowds of up to twenty thousand people…But as with the evils of chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation, blacks and whites and other Americans who want to understand the true meaning of the American experience need to remember lynching. To forget this atrocity leaves us with a fraudulent perspective of this society and of the meaning of the Christian gospel for the nation.
The cross is the great symbol of the Christian narrative of salvation. But it has become detached from any reference to the ongoing suffering and oppression of human beings. The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks, rather than reminding us of the “cost of discipleship.” Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “re-crucified” 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.
As Cone recalls his upbringing, he remembers the violent crosses of the KKK and white racists preaching a dehumanized segregated gospel in the name of Jesus’ cross every Sunday. And yet in rural black churches he heard a different message, as preachers proclaimed the message of the suffering Jesus and the salvation accomplished in his death on the cross. The church experience transformed them from nobodies in white society to somebodies in the black church. All of Cone’s work is rooted in the tragic and hopeful reality that sustains and empowers black people to resist the forces that seem designed to destroy every ounce of dignity in their souls and bodies.
His work has tried to reconcile the gospel message of liberation with the reality of black oppression. This is all colored by memories of hearing the gospel as well as primal memories of terror and violence that were part of the reality of growing up in the Jim Crow South. As a child, Cone recalls watching his mother and father deal with segregation and the threats of lynching and he was deeply affected by their examples, and by the sacrifices they made to keep their children safe.
It was the black church and theological texts that kept him wrestling with life and faith, trying to find meaning in a society and an intellectual discourse that did not even acknowledge that he existed. How could he find meaning in a world that ignored black people? He decided to speak about that contradiction.
As he studied in graduate school, he noticed his texts and professors ignored white supremacy and the black resistance against it, as if they had nothing to do with the Christian gospel and the discipline of theology. Silence about both white supremacy and the black struggle against racial segregation made him angry with a rage that had to find expression. This experience colored all of his studies and writings.
In earlier reflections on the Christian faith and white supremacy, he had focused on the social evils of slavery and segregation. How could whites confess and live the Christian faith and also impose three and a half centuries of slavery and segregation on black people? Self-interest and power corrupted their understanding of the Christian gospel. How could powerless blacks endure and resist the brutality of white supremacy in nearly every aspect of their lives and still keep their sanity? Cone concluded that an immanent presence of a transcendent revelation, confirming for blacks that they were more than what whites said about them, gave them an inner spiritual strength to cope with anything that came their way. He wrote because words were his weapons to resist, to affirm black humanity and to defend it.
He had avoided doing much research on lynching for the most part because it brought back painful feelings. But ultimately, reading and writing about the lynching nightmare, looking at many images of tortured black bodies, has been his deepest challenge and the most painful experience he had as a theologian. The cross helped him to deal with the brutal legacy of the lynching tree, and the lynching tree helped him understand the tragic meaning of the cross.
His primary concerns in this present book were to give voice to black victims, exploring the question: how did ordinary blacks like his mother and father, survive the lynching atrocity and still keep together their families, their communities and not lose their sanity? He believed that the cultural and religious resources in the black experience could help all Americans cope with the legacy of white supremacy and also deal more effectively with what is called “the war on terror”. If white Americans could look at the terror they inflicted on their own population – slavery, segregation, and lynching – then they might be able to understand what is coming at them from others. Black people know something about terror because they have been dealing with legal and extralegal white terror for several centuries. Nothing was more terrifying than the lynching tree.
Cone believed that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.
Over twenty years later, I came across his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. I was intrigued to pick it up after reading this quote about why he wrote this book: he wrote for the purpose of “…seeking to know about this Jesus in whom his parents believed in the face of mistreatment by others who claimed to be followers of this Messiah.” That quote stuck with me. Knowing the history of how Black people have been treated in America over the past 300 plus years, I marveled at the fact that I knew so many black Americans with a rich devotion to Jesus, even though the Bible had been used to keep them enslaved or keep them segregated. This prompted me to read his book. It was probably the best book I read in 2018.
I am planning on taking some time and blogging through this book over the next few weeks. Hopefully, at least one post per week. Mainly summarizing the chapters and providing my reactions from time to time.
Introduction: The cross and the lynching tree are separated by nearly 2,000 years. One is the universal symbol of Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. 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, few people have explored the symbolic connects between the two.
In its heyday, the lynching of black Americans was no secret. It was a public spectacle, often announced in advance in newspapers and over radios, attracting crowds of up to twenty thousand people…But as with the evils of chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation, blacks and whites and other Americans who want to understand the true meaning of the American experience need to remember lynching. To forget this atrocity leaves us with a fraudulent perspective of this society and of the meaning of the Christian gospel for the nation.
The cross is the great symbol of the Christian narrative of salvation. But it has become detached from any reference to the ongoing suffering and oppression of human beings. The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks, rather than reminding us of the “cost of discipleship.” Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a “re-crucified” 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.
As Cone recalls his upbringing, he remembers the violent crosses of the KKK and white racists preaching a dehumanized segregated gospel in the name of Jesus’ cross every Sunday. And yet in rural black churches he heard a different message, as preachers proclaimed the message of the suffering Jesus and the salvation accomplished in his death on the cross. The church experience transformed them from nobodies in white society to somebodies in the black church. All of Cone’s work is rooted in the tragic and hopeful reality that sustains and empowers black people to resist the forces that seem designed to destroy every ounce of dignity in their souls and bodies.
His work has tried to reconcile the gospel message of liberation with the reality of black oppression. This is all colored by memories of hearing the gospel as well as primal memories of terror and violence that were part of the reality of growing up in the Jim Crow South. As a child, Cone recalls watching his mother and father deal with segregation and the threats of lynching and he was deeply affected by their examples, and by the sacrifices they made to keep their children safe.
It was the black church and theological texts that kept him wrestling with life and faith, trying to find meaning in a society and an intellectual discourse that did not even acknowledge that he existed. How could he find meaning in a world that ignored black people? He decided to speak about that contradiction.
As he studied in graduate school, he noticed his texts and professors ignored white supremacy and the black resistance against it, as if they had nothing to do with the Christian gospel and the discipline of theology. Silence about both white supremacy and the black struggle against racial segregation made him angry with a rage that had to find expression. This experience colored all of his studies and writings.
In earlier reflections on the Christian faith and white supremacy, he had focused on the social evils of slavery and segregation. How could whites confess and live the Christian faith and also impose three and a half centuries of slavery and segregation on black people? Self-interest and power corrupted their understanding of the Christian gospel. How could powerless blacks endure and resist the brutality of white supremacy in nearly every aspect of their lives and still keep their sanity? Cone concluded that an immanent presence of a transcendent revelation, confirming for blacks that they were more than what whites said about them, gave them an inner spiritual strength to cope with anything that came their way. He wrote because words were his weapons to resist, to affirm black humanity and to defend it.
He had avoided doing much research on lynching for the most part because it brought back painful feelings. But ultimately, reading and writing about the lynching nightmare, looking at many images of tortured black bodies, has been his deepest challenge and the most painful experience he had as a theologian. The cross helped him to deal with the brutal legacy of the lynching tree, and the lynching tree helped him understand the tragic meaning of the cross.
His primary concerns in this present book were to give voice to black victims, exploring the question: how did ordinary blacks like his mother and father, survive the lynching atrocity and still keep together their families, their communities and not lose their sanity? He believed that the cultural and religious resources in the black experience could help all Americans cope with the legacy of white supremacy and also deal more effectively with what is called “the war on terror”. If white Americans could look at the terror they inflicted on their own population – slavery, segregation, and lynching – then they might be able to understand what is coming at them from others. Black people know something about terror because they have been dealing with legal and extralegal white terror for several centuries. Nothing was more terrifying than the lynching tree.
Cone believed that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.
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