Finding Answers in James Cone's "The Cross and The Lynching Tree"

The end of Roe v. Wade. The threat to IVF. The demonization of LGBTQ+ people. The never-ending debate of bikinis or burqas — which exploits women more under the male gaze? With religious extremism, specifically Christian nationalism, coming to the forefront of politics as its proponents fight to destroy and/or undo the civil rights work that decades of protest have won, it’s difficult to see religion as anything but oppressive. That was the fundamental question that inspired me to start writing this work: When religion is so oppressive, what’s the point in subscribing to it? How do people find strength in it? 

It turns out, there’s a lot of theologians and academics discussing this same topic. They do so through a niche branch of theology titled, “Black Liberation Theology.” Founded by James Cone in 1969, with his book, Black Theology and Black Power, it explores how the Christian faith speaks to the disenfranchised. 

I read Cone’s book, The Cross and The Lynching Tree, in my Faith & Critical Reasoning class — which, for everyone who didn’t attend Fordham, was our freshmen theology course. The book crystallized my question above, as it discussed the tension between the Christians that enslaved people and the Christian who were enslaved. Even though white supremacy was grounded in more obscure stories, like that of Ham, Cone argues that African-American spirituality found a home in the Passion of Jesus Christ, which I believe is the most important story within the entirety of the Bible. For anyone who’s not familiar with the Passion, it’s the story about how Jesus died on the cross. That phrase is so ubiquitous in Western culture, that it’s pretty removed from the story’s true pathos. Jesus chooses to die one of the most painful, humiliating deaths—a death that shook, yet did not destroy, his faith in God and his love for his fellow people—in order to save humanity. Cone finds that many Black Christian communities within the US, specifically during the lynching era (when many Black men and women died equally painful, humiliating deaths at the hands of white Christians), pull their strength from the paradox of the cross. The paradox, as Cone defines it, is that the cross “inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word” (18). 

Reading The Cross and The Lynching Tree also made me think back to the last book I read, Merlin Stone’s When God Was A Woman. As I mentioned in that blog post, I felt really horrible after reading Stone’s arguments for how oppressive the Bible, which inspired so much of my cultural upbringing, was towards women. Cone and his liberation theology empowered me to disregard the stories that explain the subjugation of women, and highlight the moments when the story held up people that looked like me. I truly believe that if Jesus Christ, whom Christians supposedly follow, didn’t respect women, then his closest disciple wouldn’t have been one. Peter would have visited the cave, seen the angels, and witnessed the re-birth of Jesus first. But he didn’t. Mary Magdalene did. 

I’ve been really inspired by Cone’s emphasis on the paradox of the crucifix in how it explains the complicated nature of this faith, and the impact that it’s had on American culture as a result. I’m now entering the re-reading and revising step of my project, and am excited to think about how I can incorporate such a rich truth into my book.