Reflection by Marisa Crofts

​
Of all the men and women who spoke about the effects of white supremacy on the Black community, no one made as strong a connection between the cross of Christ and the lynching tree as did artists.

Poets such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes as well as essayists and fiction writers like W.E.B. DuBois confronted the imagination of their readers with the “strange fruit” that littered the American landscape. “How Calvary in Palestine, / Extending down to me and mine, / Was but the first leaf in a line / Of trees on which a Man should swing” (Cullen qtd. in Cone 95). Their work wrestled with the question of Black identity in a world so intent on denying it. By connecting the murdered Black person with the crucified Lord, Black artists spoke prophetically not only to white Christians who refused to address the lynching crisis but also to the Black man and woman and child who needed some kind of framework within which to process the terror and tragedy of that time period. Unlike their persecutors, Black men and women found that they were one with Christ, victim as he was victim, despised as he was despised—and yet looking forward to freedom and glory and justice. 

Meaningful as this connection was and is, it nevertheless places the question of why God would allow this to happen “at the nerve center of black religion in America” (Cone 105). This admixture of faith and doubt are “an integral part of faith” in the Black community, writes Cone. Yet, as DuBois writes in his short story, “The Gospel of Mary Brown,” the last word is not doubt or death, but hope and life. 

“Artists force us to see things we do not want to look at because they make us uncomfortable with ourselves and the world we have created,” Cone argues (117). And he is right—reading through this chapter and encountering the poems and short stories of Black artists gave me great sorrow—just check out this poem or this one. But just as we are discomfited by the portrayals of wanton violence, we are also asked to think about the connections being made by the poet or essayist. Rather than ducking away from the pain, we honor our Black brothers and sisters by engaging with the images and stories they present us. 

With their unflinching engagement with reality, Black artists proved again and again that the Black voice, body, and mind are undeniably human, undeniably honorable, and full of dignity that is a product of their resiliency and nothing more. 

​To close, here is Langston Hughes’ poem, “I, Too.”

Reflection by Mother Beth

I’m responding this week to chapter three in James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree because we’re suggesting people skip over the second chapter analyzing Reinhold Niebuhr and return to it at the end (unless you are really knowledgeable about 20th-century theologians, it can be a bit dry.) 

The thing that most struck me about this section was what a difference it made that Martin Luther King’s understanding of the Cross was rooted not just in his academic background, but also in his speaking with and for the powerless. Cone emphasizes that the experience of enslavement, segregation, and lynching produced a connection with the Cross “that gave transcendent meaning to black lives that no lynching tree could take from them” (75). I’ve read historical accounts of other Christian martyrs, but the Civil Rights era workers who found in a connection with the Cross the ability to give their lives “to redeem the soul of America” (82) are closer to me, and thus a bigger challenge to my complacency.

In the society we live in, this chapter makes me ask how great a barrier my own situation is to my grasping the extent of the Cross’ power: the fact that I don’t have much experience of being threatened, that I’m economically comfortable, that I’m white, that I can drive and walk and shop pretty much anywhere with no fear of being stereotyped by the color of my skin. King is quoted in this chapter as saying that it was in being faced with “some tragic injustice and some terrible exploitation” that he discovered that God’s love shown in the Cross can give “the interior resources to bear the burdens and tribulations of life, come what may" (81).

I’ve heard this attitude criticized as passive. But knuckling under to injustice and suffering as if no change were possible is, I think, not at all the same as standing proud and undaunted in Christ, confident of God’s truth and freely choosing to bear witness to it in the face of racist hate. Nonviolent, loving resistance is rooted in the confidence that nothing can take away from you the ultimate meaning and identity given you by a loving God. As King wrote, alluding to 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, “There are some who still find the cross a stumbling block, and others consider it foolishness, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto social and individual salvation” (86).
​
I leave you with these questions:

​​For those of us who haven’t grown up in the Black community or haven’t been acquainted with the on-going effects of slavery and racism in the United States, lynching may be a new term—or, at least, a term we once thought bound to the past. Lynching, a form of racially motivated vigilante violence that took the lives of over 4,000 African Americans from the late-19th century to the mid-20th century, has returned to our national parlance following the death of George Floyd in May. His death as well as the deaths of many other Black men and women has revealed what activists have been speaking about for generations: that the Black individual in the United States has lived and continues to live with the repercussions of slavery, namely white supremacy.* 

James Cone (1938-2018), commonly known as the founder of Black liberation theology, speaks into that reality by highlighting the lynching tree—perhaps the most visceral symbol of white supremacy—and its relationship to the cross. “Both are symbols of death,” he writes, “[though] one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy” (xiii). In his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone asks how American Christians can reconcile the liberating message of the gospel with the reality of the lynching tree’s brutal legacy. This question is an essential task for all of us, he argues: “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).  
​
Over the next weeks, Emmanuel’s pastoral staff will be chronicling our own reading of The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and later this summer, we will be hosting discussion groups where clergy, staff, and laity can come together to talk about the difficult material presented in Cone’s book. This topic, challenging as it may be, is nevertheless the work of the Church. We look forward to tackling it with our community.  

O God, you made us in your image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.