Chapter 2 – “The Terrible Beauty of the Cross” and the Tragedy
of the Lynching Tree: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr.
Reinhold Niebuhr is probably the most influential U.S. Protestant
theologians of the 20th Century. This chapter is filled with Cone’s dissatisfaction
with Niebuhr’s lack of passion and rage against lynching and racism. It is not
that Niebuhr didn’t speak on these things or that he didn’t work toward racial
equality, but Cone found his engagement wanting.
Cone begins this chapter again reflecting on the terrorism
of the lynching of black people in the U.S. He continues to make the connection
between the cross and the lynching tree. Both the cross and the lynching tree
were symbols of terror, instruments of torture and execution, reserved primarily
for slaves, criminals and insurrectionists, the lowest of the low in society.
The purpose for both was to strike terror in the subject community. It was to
let people know that the same thing would happen to them if they did not stay
in their place. He quotes NT scholar Paula Fredrickson that “Crucifixion first
and foremost is addressed to an audience.”
With these similarities, the connection between the cross
and lynching should be easy. Cone asks, “But how do we understand the failure
of even the most “progressive” of America’s white theologians and religious
thinkers to make this connection?”
I have to interject here. I am not as familiar with Niebuhr
as I should be. As I read this chapter, I sympathized with Cone in his
disappointment with one of his heroes, but at the same, I wonder if he was just
disappointed Niebuhr never made the analogy of lynching with the cross. Cone
does admit that Niebuhr was particularly sensitive to the evils of racism and
spoke and wrote on many occasions of the sufferings of African Americans. But
Cone finds it hard to believe that a theologian who was as focused on the cross
as Niebuhr was, couldn’t make the connection to “its most vivid reenactment in
his time.”
Cone believed that Niebuhr had a complex perspective on race
– at once honest and ambivalent, radical and moderate. Niebuhr called racial
hatred, “the most vicious of all human vices”. But at the same time, he believed
that the founding fathers, despite being slaveholders, “were virtuous and
honorable men, and certainly no villains.” He stated that Jim Crow laws of the
late 19th century were good doctrine for the day. He hailed the end
of public school segregation, but was also pleased with the phrase “with all
deliberate speed”. He wrote, “The Negroes will have to exercise patience and be
sustained by a robust faith that history will gradually fulfill the logic of
justice.” In Cone’s eyes, this makes Niebuhr similar to the southern moderates
on racial equality. He was more concerned about not challenging the cultural
traditions of the white South than achieving justice for black people. Niebuhr
wrote: “We can hardly blame Negroes for being impatient with the counsel for
patience, in view of their age-long suffering under the white man’s arrogance.”
Yet, he also wrote: “The fact that it is not very appealing to the victims of a
current injustice does not make it any less the course of wisdom in overcoming
historic injustices.” This does not sound like what leaders like MLK (inspired
by Niebuhr himself) advocated: “It is hardly a moral act to encourage others patiently
to accept injustice which he himself does not endure.”
Cone compares Niebuhr’s lack of passion to others like
Clarence Darrow and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Darrow was the defense attorney of a black
man who was accused of murder after shooting a white man during an episode when
the black man’s family was under threat of violence from a mob protesting his
family’s presence in the white neighborhood. Darrow, in his defense, had the
capacity to empathize with blacks and to persuade others to do so arguing that
blacks have as much right as whites to defend themselves when their home is
under attack. This was in Niebuhr’s town at the time. Niebuhr expressed some dispassionate
sympathy but also expressed regret at what he categorized as the bitterness of
Darrow’s speech.
During Bonhoeffer’s time at Union Seminary (while Niebuhr
was teaching there), he spent time reading African American history and
literature, he also attended Sunday School and church at Abyssinian Baptist
Church in Harlem. Niebuhr, in contrast, showed little or no interest in engaging
in dialogue with blacks about racial justice (although Cone will provide an
instance of a radio dialogue with James Baldwin). Cone notes that Niebuhr cites
no black intellectuals in his writings and in his language referred to blacks
as “our Negro minority” instead of “our brothers” as he referred to Jewish
people. This sounds like white paternalism to Cone.
After Niebuhr left his church in Detroit to go to Union
Seminary, conflict arose when several African Americans tried to join the
church. Both sides, pro and con, appealed to Niebuhr. Although Niebuhr was no
supporter of racism, he stated that he, “never envisaged a fully developed
interracial church at Bethel.” The church wasn’t ready for that. Niebuhr knew
that denying membership to people based on race was a problem but he was a
pragmatist who knew that white churches were not prepared to include blacks.
Niebuhr seems to feel regret that he did not prepare the church for that. While he spoke many times against racial
prejudice, there is no evidence that he endeavored to address race in a
practical way by trying to lead his church toward racial inclusion.
Cone notes again that Niebuhr spoke and said very little about
lynching. As a professor at Union, Niebuhr expressed concern for racial justice
not by seeking to establish it on the faculty and among the students but by
working with a cooperative farm organization in the south. Cone claimed that this
would be the closest and perhaps only time he would engage the black struggle
for justice. Niebuhr was much more interested in economic cooperation that he
was in challenging racial prejudices. Cone laments that most of Niebuhr’s writings
reflecting on race was not written in conversation with blacks. In the radio
dialogue with James Baldwin, Cone notes the lack of passion in comparison with
Baldwin’s rage against injustice. When Niebuhr wrote against liberalism, pacifism,
communism, and the easy conscience of American churches, he expressed outrage;
but when it came to black victims of white supremacy, he expressed none.
Cone does acknowledge that Niebuhr showed some signs of growth
in this regard later in life. Cone even acknowledges how some of his earlier
works were influential on Cone as well. What Niebuhr wrote about love, power,
and justice helped Cone understand that moral suasion alone would never
convince whites to relinquish their supremacy over blacks. As Niebuhr wrote in Moral Man and Immoral Society, “The
white race in America will not admit the Negro to equal rights if it is not
forced to do so.” Even when Cone taught Niebuhr in seminary, he admitted that
his understanding of the cross is deeply influenced by Niebuhr’s perspective.
He never questioned Niebuhr’s greatness as a theologian, but instead admired
his intellectual brilliance and social commitment. What Cone did question was
his limited perspective, as a white man, on the race crisis in America. His theology
and ethics needed to be informed from critical reading and dialogue with
radical black perspectives. In spite of being a theological giant in Cone’s
eyes, he has this against him. Even though Niebuhr is called a prophet, and
Niebuhr believed that courage was the primary test of prophesy, he took no real
risks for blacks. Just as MLK learned much from Niebuhr, Niebuhr could have
deepened his understanding of the cross by being led by being a student of King
and the black freedom movement he led. And as I, personally, am still seeing
today from the attitude of many prominent white pastors and church leaders, white
theologians do not normally turn to the black experience to learn about theology.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment