The Cross and Lynching Tree

The Bible teaches us that all men and women are created in the image and likeness of God. Not once does the Bible exclude certain races or ethnicities regarding this topic. To God we are all the same in his eyes. But even with that being in the first chapter of the Bible, immense racism has been shown by white Christian men throughout history. James H. Cone is trying to portray, in “The Cross and Lynching Tree” on page 48 ,that Jesus and the African Americans that were lynched are no different from each other. They were both killed in a terrible way because they were different, and Cone sees Jesus in the lynched black men. Personally, I see this as an extremely important subject and in order to become closer to God we must look at the darker times in our past and find Jesus there as well as the good moments. Cone claims that “No American Christian – white, back, or any color – can understand correctly the full theological meaning of the American Christ without identifying his imagine with a ‘recrucified’ black body hanging from a lynching tree.” (Cone, 48-49) The religious meaning and symbolism between the cross and lynching tree are evident and in “The Cross and Lynching Tree”, as James Cone furthers his point.

To Cone, the cross, representing Jesus, and the lynching tree, representing the black men, interpret each other. They were both “public spectacles” (Cone, 53) that were ridiculed and suffered terrible deaths for their audacity to challenge others. For Jesus it was the high priests and for the black men it was the white supremacists of America. Together the struggles suffered on the cross and on the lynching tree redeem each other. “The lynching tree can liberate the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians.” (Cone, 53) as well as “the cross can redeem the lynching tree, and thereby bestow upon lynched black bodies an eschatological meaning for their ultimate existence.” (Cone, 53) For years Christians turned the cross into a symbol of worship towards Christ as the lynching tree was tucked away in history. White Christians did not see the relation between the two but through the “experience of being lynched by white mobs, blacks found themselves… experiencing Jesus’ faith.” (Cone, 54)

As “The Cross and Lynching Tree” continues, Cone goes on to say that the word of God is offensive. Most will say that the gospel is full of uplifting stories and full of redeeming, but in reality is it an ugly one that leaves our Savior dead and most of us fail to listen to correctly. The word of God is based on the suffering of Jesus at the cross, and without it the “Gospel is no longer the gospel of the God of Jesus.” (Cone, 51) This directly correlates to a lynched black man hanging from a tree, as Cone goes on to explain that “The gospel is a tortured word, a black word in the world of white supremacy.” (Cone, 51) The gospel challenges us to look at the discrimination and harsh treatment of Jesus and realize how we could be better from it, even if this is something most people do not want to hear.

Still to this day there are acts of white supremacy that weigh our society down as a whole. Though, Cone explains that the cross is transformed into “triumphant beauty” to provide hope beyond the lynching tree and to overcome the years of brutal white supremacy.

Cone’s explanation of the cross and lynching tree relates to Goizueta’s denial of the suffering and poor. Failing to recognize suffering or the poor in todays world goes hand and hand with failing to recognize the horrible acts of the past. Goizueta explains that the poor “Are the mirrors of our own souls; their very existence in our midst is so terrifying that we must eradicate them or at least hide them from view… so that we won’t have to see them and their uncomfortable wounds. By denying death, we inflict it.” (Goizueta, 13) Furthermore, by hiding the poor in the background and denying them their existence, is the same thing as how we treat the lynching in todays world. The poor will continue to die just as white supremacy lingers on and innocent black men will continue to die. Both have done nothing wrong but they are vulnerable because the issue is not being brought up. We need to confront our past to realize that the subject is still alive, and ultimately put an end to it.

In “The Cross and Lynching Tree”, James H. Cone makes the argument, in America you cannot understand the cross without understanding the lynching tree. The lynching tree and cross both go hand and hand. Both Jesus and black men had no choice in their journey to their death, neither of them wanted to die, but the people oppressing them made it a reality. Cone urges us to not forget our evil past but confront the ongoing tragedy with “repentance and reparation”, or else it will never end.