Just finished reading: The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011) by James H. Cone. Dr. Cone makes it hard to deny that (1) many 19th- and 20th-century African-American Christians saw—nay, experienced and made pastoral use of—the remarkable congruencies between the cross of Christ and the lynching tree, and that (2) most white Christians, including our best theologians, were and still are blind to the same.
Until I read this book, I myself was one such white Christian. And upon my being enlightened by Cone’s strong voice and ample evidence, those congruencies tempted me to say that my entire thoughtcastle on the Cross is an abstract sham.
But then, there is one incongruence between the cross of Christ and the lynching tree that Cone conspicuously fails to mention: Jesus is not only the lamb of God. He is also our highest priest, and unlike American Blacks, Jesus willingly subjected Himself to His lynching at the behest of the Father.
And that makes a world of difference. If you think Jesus was crucified against His will, then the best thing you can say about His crucifixion is that died a martyr for His own teachings and popularity—which is precisely all that Cone, not to mention most theologically liberal Christians I’ve met, seem to be saying about the Cross. In doing so, you brush aside a mountain of scriptural claim that there’s more to it than that and thus evacuate the Cross of much of its salvific power. Evacuate it or perhaps, as Cone hand-wavingly and unhelpfully does, render it “a mystery.” If I have one theological pet peeve, it’s calling answers to theological questions “mysteries” without even trying to see if there’s anything more to be said. (Okay, that’s just one of of my…many theological pet peeves.)
Hence, despite this book’s first-place win in the Catholic Press Association’s Theology category, there’s barely any theology in it. It’s a Religious Studies book rather than a Theology book. And what theology there is in it is no theology of the Cross; instead, it’s a theology 101 of the Resurrection: Since God raised the crucified Jesus from the dead, then God will raise us from the dead, and hence our suffering becomes sufferable.
A sound, welcome, life-changing theological conclusion, to be sure. And as a Religious Studies book, this book was worthwhile: Reading the Jesus- and lynching-related quotations from Hughes, King, Wright, Du Bois, Ellison, Wells, Hamer, and several bluesmen was truly enlightening, and I’m grateful for it.