The Cross and the Lynching Tree [Hardcover]

James H. Cone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2011

They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. Acts 10:39

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and black death, the cross symbolizes divine power and black life God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era.

In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Well, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Once again James Cone demonstrates why he is indispensable as an interpreter of faith, race, and the American experience. --Bill Moyers

One of the Top 11 Religion Books of the Year. --Huffington Post

One of the Top 11 Religion Books of the Year. --Huffington Post --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

James H. Cone, Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary, is widely regarded as one of the most influential theologians in America. His books include Black Theology & Black Power, A Black Theology of Liberation, The Spirituals & the Blues, God of the Oppressed, and Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 172 pages
• Publisher: Orbis Books (September 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570759375
• ISBN-13: 978-1570759376
• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.5 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #310,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving November 26, 2011

By Edward J. Blum

Format:Hardcover

I've read most of Professor Cone's books and this is one of his most moving. He looks squarely into the evils that were lynchings and searches with those who lived through it and the fears to find theological meaning. I'm indebted to Professor Cone's work for helping me see so many angles of how race influences religion in the United States and beyond. This is a great book, is short and readable, and is a great gift for anyone who dearly loves God and human justice.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A thought provoking book March 20, 2012

By Janet M Hanson

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

As someone born in 1956, I can still find myself with a sense of unreality that when I was a young girl, overt, frank racism reigned. Sundown laws. Seperate facilities for blacks and whites. And now, I've had to come face to face with lynching. You know those old westerns always depict lynchings as done by the riff-raff, the bad folks. But there it is. Lynchings that drew crowds and photographers. An event to take kids to! Lynchings that occurred in Missouri, a neighboring state (and in all likelihood in KS but it wasn't mentioned). Lynchings preceded by torment and torture. Lynchings of women.

And Lynchings done without any flinching of the Christian conscience.

It's an ugly and difficult vision to face up to. And then Cone easily makes his thesis of the actually (blatant) similarity of lynching and crucifixion--that somehow managed to escape connection "back then".

I think it is a cliche to say that we all have the capacity for evil but this is an opportunity to examine the face of evil in our time and to notice how people can be willfully blind to evil.

It is something every white person and every American should read about. While the temptation is to talk about other evils and other victimizations, it is well worthwhile to sit with the spectre of this evil and to resolve to recognize evil in the other incarnations where it still manifests.

30 of 37 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Decent Beginning February 18, 2012

By Eric Styles

Format:Hardcover

I came to this book with expectations that I now realize may have been unreasonable. I read/watched Dr. Cone's initial Harvard Divinity School lecture of the same title a few years ago and thought, "Finally, someone is going to take up this profoundly important inherently religious historical phenomenon and give it it's course." (That is of course is the cleaned up reflection on a not-so-eloquent impulse.) I waited ever so impatiently for the book, checking the internet regularly.

Finally it is here. Cone's work here is a series of essays 1.) critiquing the established white American theologians and ministers for never choosing to see this connection and 2.) offering a basic view of a would-be obvious correlation between the Cross of Christ and the lynching of black Americans. He wades through the spirituals, blues songs, literature and activism of black women and men to demonstrate that they were indeed aware of the profundity of the situation even if there had never been a sustained theological reflection save that of the likes of poet Countee Cullens' The Black Christ.

After having read Cone's book I found myself disappointed. All of this was good, but I had hoped for something much more cohesive, something more systematic. In other words, "So what?" I was hoping that Cone would partner with Rene Girard's theories of mimetic desire and the scapegoating myth. To explore the existential and historical phenomenon of lynching in its American context could be to discover something distinctive and foundational in the very mythos of the nation. How might the black body be a key to understanding America's identity formation? There are all kinds of things to explore: sexuality, violence, their relationships to religion; black bodies as economic and civic scapegoats in the creation of whiteness; lynching as a mechanism of social control analogous to crucifixion.

As a Catholic Christian, all this leads me to the Eucharist, which was my initial impulse anyway. Black bodies cursed, broken and grotesquely consumed in a frenzy of socially sanctioned mob violence provided sustenance for the status quo of a southern society of white supremacy. The eucharistic overtones must be plumbed for their meaning. Black bodies were needed for the creation of the myth of America. How might these truths provide for a black theology of eucharist that liberates and sustains a very different spiritual aim?

Perhaps this is the work for a third-generation of African American theologians and their committed colleagues. Perhaps I need to let Dr. Cone off the hook for not doing my work for me. Nevertheless, I think his essential 'good start' could have gone much further down road.