The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk.

Genres: Theology, Nonfiction, Religion, History, Race, Christian, Christianity

202 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

James Hal Cone was an advocate of Black liberation theology, a theology grounded in the experience of African Americans, and related to other Christian liberation theologies. In 1969, his book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to articulate the distinctiveness of theology in the black Church. James Cone’s work was influential and political from the time of his first publication, and remains so to this day. His work has been both utilized and critiqued inside and outside of the African American theological community.

Reviews

[E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

As one of the Associate Pastors at Rolling Hills Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, one of my responsibilities was the bulletin boards in the hallways. I don't know that anyone gave me that job, so much as I took it on. I really enjoyed putting up various kinds of bulletin boards. I rarely was only informational. Often I put up something around a theme of the season (I did one after 9/11 with U2 songs, for instance).

My favourite bulletin board I designed, and one I hung up also at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas (where I also took over bulletin boards) was "Images of Crucifixion." I would place a white in the middle of the bulletin board (maybe influenced by Chagall). Then, around it I hung full-color pictures and texts. The pictures included famous artistic renderings of the crucifixion but also many modern ones. I also included an image of a black man being lynched.

The texts were song lyrics and poems. Some of the traditional Good Friday hymns were included and poems directly addressing the cross. I also hung some critical modern poems. Plus, I included "Strange Fruit." And "American Triangle," the song that Elton John recorded about Matthew Shepherd's murder.

In 2006 when I was organizing the Good Friday service at Cathedral of Hope, I drew on this bulletin board and instead of the normal Tenebrae readings, read from these selected poems, including "Strange Fruit" and "American Triangle."

To me the connections between lynching and the crucifixion were always obvious. I don't know that any book ever gave me that idea. I created that bulletin board before I had read James Cone's God of the Oppressed or anything similar.

Simply put, The Cross and the Lynching Tree is the powerful book of the cross that I have ever read. And lately I've been reading a lot of books on the cross and atonement, as I prepare for a class we will have on that topic later this year at First Central.

It is at once a stunning and a damning book. At times I wanted to repent for being white. But it is also inspiring of hope and reconciliation.

It is a brief book that succintly discusses the connection between the cross and the lynching tree and, through that, the power of the cross in the black religious experience. The first chapter discusses that black experience.

The second chapter is a damning discussion of Reinhold Niebuhr, standing in for white, liberal theologians who have ignored the lynching tree and the role of black experience in developing their American theologies. Cone likes Niebuhr and has nice things to say about him, but he also exposes his blinders. Niebuhr was the great Christian ethicist of his day, and he never addressed lynching, despite its on-going prevalence and the orchestrated campaigns against it.

The next chapter is an interpretation of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. as an exploration of the cross. This chapter is reminiscent of the chapter on King in James McClendon's Biography as Theology.

Then Cone turns to the black literary tradition and reads the works of Countee Cullen, W. E. B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and others as theological source material. This is the best chapter in the book and its own amazing contribution to the history of American theology.

The final full chapter explores the experience of black women and entertains the critique of the cross posed by womanist theologians, particularly Delores Williams. I liked this chapter and Cone's narration of the history of black women, such as Fannie Lou Hamer. I do think that the critique of Williams and others deserved a more developed response, however. The thrust of his response is that in the black religious experience the cross is not experienced as a justification for suffering but as an empowerment to fight for one's liberation. That seems a little too simple.

The epilogue wraps ups the book and Cone's entire theological career. It seems that this will be his last book, though he does not say it.

In this epilogue he opens up some possibilities to interpreting the cross that I have not quite encountered before. I will treat of them in a separate post.

I have one, and only one, critique of the book. In chapter three he writes about Mamie Till Bradley and her powerful, confrontational response to white supremacy when her son Emmett Till was lynched. I immediately thought of Judy Shepherd and her powerful response to homophobia after Matthew's death.

In the book Cone mentions lynchings of non-blacks, but he never mentions the lynchings of queer persons. I know that generally these lynchings do not occur as major public spectacles and are definitely against the law, qualities which make them different. But they do exist in their own fashion and should invite their own theological reflection. Cone himself writes that we must have the imagination necessary to "relate the message of the cross to one's own social reality." He is very negative of Niebuhr and others for their failures.

Which is all the more reason I was surprised by his silence on queer lynchings. I know one purpose of this book was to offer hope and healing for American's racism, but doesn't this recent and on-going form of lynching deserve at least something? Is Cone, then, guilty of a similar failure to Niebuhr? How powerful an impact Cone could have, as the leading black theologian, to make that connection and confront the homophobia that entraps many African-Americans.

[Amy Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a theologian I need to be able to explain for the sake of myself, my students, and the church why white supremacy is fundamentally anti-Christ. While there are many ways to do this, I'm grateful to Cone for helping me to do this and to understand the cross better. This book is easily one of the best theology books I've read in the last 5 years.

I'm looking forward to picking it up again this semester since I'm assigning it in my Trinity and Christology class. Maybe I'll be able to get through the last chapter without crying this time but that's very unlikely.

VERY highly recommended.

[Andrew Marr · Rating 5 out of 5]

"They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown."

White boys like me mostly didn't know what Bob Dylan was singing about when "Desolation Row" first came out on "Highway 61 Revisited." James Cone's book tells us it was about lynching. Lynching was a public spectacle where people took pictures and made postcards out of them.

Cone goes on to argue that the lynching tree was a series of grisly re-enactments of the crucifixion of Jesus. He also demonstrates on how very difficult it has been and still is for Americans to see this truth. Reinhold Niebuhr, arguably the greatest American theologian was, in spite of his social concerns, blind to this reality. Even black people have had trouble seeing this connection, though Cone shows how some black women, especially Ida B. Wells articulated it powerfully. He contrasts Niebuhr and all white liberals with Martin Luther King, Jr. who put his life on the line.

The dynamics of lynching as analyzed by Cone provide powerful confirmation of the theory of collective violence of René Girard. (See my article Violence and the Kingdom of God http://bit.ly/SwYVuH) Girard argues that perpetrators instinctively fail to see what they are going. Cone shows us this truth in spades.

Dylan goes on to sing that "the circus is in town" and then catalogs Western Civilization turned topsy-turvy, suggesting that lynching does this, thanks to the "blind commissioner."

Cone is right about whites blindness to this truth, but Dylan did "The Ballad of Emmett Tell" in 1963, telling the story story in stark terms, though without any Christian reference except to complains that the human race has fallen "down so god-awful low." Then there is Mark Twain who wrote "The United States of Lyncherdom," calling lynching for what it was and clearly discussing the human mimesis just as Girard was to do half a century later.

Cone's book is written calmly, even gently. There is no mincing of words, yet the words are somehow full of forgiveness. The forgiveness in Cone's words, the forgiveness proclaimed by Jesus, should be enough to undermine our trust in ourselves and our ability to see what we are doing. We must repent not only of lynching, but of our collective hatred of enemies today.

[Ben De Bono · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that James Cone an I are theologically far apart would be a fairly significant understatement. I am a conservative evangelical while he is one of the primary voices behind black liberation theology, standing well within the liberal theological tradition. Despite those differences, I was very excited to read this book and, after finishing it, am very glad that I did. The reason for that is simple - I came to this book not to critique Cone's answers (I knew going in we would largely disagree) but to better understand his perspective and the questions he's asking.

I am convinced that the answer to racism and the path to healing racial wounds lies not in sociology or politics but in the Gospel. If we're to actually solve those problems, they must be solved theologically. Cone points out that too often white culture looks at things like lynching and want to shut them away in the past. What's done is done and there's no value in bringing it up again. Cone argues that we must not do that. Those experiences must be remembered and given voice. He's right! The hope of the Gospel doesn't come by sweeping sin and pain under the rug. It comes by confronting it and allowing God to change us through it.

The mistake Cone makes is in his conclusions. He chooses experience, not the Word of God, as his theological starting point which creates a great many problems. Along the way he deliberately rejects much of the western theological tradition, again causing many problems. Although my goal isn't to critique Cone, these errors need to be pointed out at least briefly. This is a valuable book but it's one that needs to be read with a heavy dose of discernment.

The questions Cone raises are invaluable and if we ever want to have a true expression of the Gospel that brings all people together into God's Covenant Family, then those questions need to be heard. For that reason alone, this book needs to be read. It's conclusions are highly problematic but its perspective is one that's gone unheard for far too long.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: A reflection on the parallel between the cross and the lynching tree, the perplexing reality that this has been missed within the white community, and how an understanding of this connection and the meaning of the cross has offered hope for the long struggle of the African-American community.

James H. Cone makes an observation in this book that "hit me between the eyes." He puzzles why White Christians in America have failed to see the connection between Jesus, who was "hung on a tree" and the thousands of blacks, usually innocent of any crime who were lynched, all across the United States, often accompanied by the cutting of body parts as souvenirs, riddling with bullets, violent abuse, or burning--all done as a spectacle often attended by a town (Colson Whitehead offers a vivid description of all of this in a scene in The Underground Railroad).

I discovered that I was not alone to being blind to this obvious parallel. Cone discusses the life and work of Reinhold Niebuhr, an influential figure on presidents as diverse as Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama, with his theory of moral realism. He is one of my heroes, going back to college days when I wrote papers on him in a philosophy of history course where I was first introduced to his thought. Cone observes Niebuhr's silence about this connection when lynching was a reality, and that unlike Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish theologian, he never actively advocated against the injustices epitomized by the lynching tree.

Cone explores the use of lynching as a form of social control in the post-Reconstruction South, and other places determined never to let blacks think they were equal to whites. He explores the theology of the cross, and the identification with Christ in the civil rights struggle, of bearing a cross, reflected in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., who came to a point of accepting that he would likely die, but that death could be redemptive for his people. The cross had a power that was liberating--from fear, from the loss of dignity. It offered hope--a resurrection, a crown.

Cone moves from Black spirituals to the literary works of James Weldon Johnson (who wrote the words to "Lift Every Voice and Sing", the "Black national anthem") to W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes. He speaks of the Black Christs, both men and women, who shared the fate of Christ, who was also lynched. And he writes movingly of the work of Black women who walked the way of Christ, as did Fanny Lou Hamer in voter registration or Rosa Parks.

Most chilling in this book are Cone's references to "Strange Fruit," a poem by Abel Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allen) brought to public attention by the jazz singer Billie Holliday:

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the trees and blood at the root,
Black body swing in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

The juxtaposition of fruit, trees, Southern breezes and poplars with blood, black bodies, and hanging vividly underscore the horror of lynching, and how it had become a commonplace at one time in our country.

Cone raises a question I've heard many whites raise, "but wasn't that a past that is best forgotten?" He responds by asking what has happened to the hate, the indifference, and denial that made lynching possible? These have not disappeared (truth that the years since this book was written has borne out). He contends that only the remembering and retelling of the story of these injustices and honoring those who stood against them can bring healing.

He concludes:

   The lynching tree is a metaphor for white America's crucifixion of black people. It is the window of that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land. In this sense, black people are Christ figures, not because they wanted to suffer but because they had no choice. Just as Jesus had no choice in his journey to Calvary, so black people had no choice about being lynched. The evil forces of the Roman state and of white supremacy in America willed it. Yet God took the evil of the cross and the lynching tree and transformed them both into the triumphant beauty of the divine. If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy with repentance and reparation there is a hope "beyond tragedy."

This is a powerful book because of its profound reflections on the cross and how we've made our black citizens bear it, and the profound spirituality that has emerged from it. The question is will we see what we've been blind to, or in suppressing the truth, become blinder yet, leaving the door open to new terrors. I long that our nation will see and hear and confront our national sin. I wonder if we will, but this book challenges me to always live in hope--even if what is standing in front of me is a cross--or a lynching tree.

[Ryan Linkous · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What a profound and haunting book. While I disagree with Cone theologically in some places, I think his central thesis is sound. His evidence – accounts of lynching, white theologians, gospel hymns, black artists, womanist theologians – is formidable and damning.

As a white Christian who is a Reformed leaning Baptist, I have been puzzled and dismayed by the total and angry rejection of Cone by those who loudly and proudly wear the Reformed Baptist banner (although I have since learned from those who have studied the history that this rejection and animus actually is not at all surprising). I understand why: being confronted with America's past and the white American church's past is uncomfortable to put it mildly. But there is so much in this book which every American Christian who cares about history, truth, and the gospel should be able to say a hearty "Amen." Quibble with the finer points of Cone's soteriology if you want, but don't deny yourselves or others the chance to learn and grow in their sanctification. Let it lead us to lamentation. Let it lead us to repentance.

The cross and the lynching tree – what analogs. Can we break the chain of violence? The day I write this (March 17, 2021) is one day after a white Southern man, who I understand to have been a recently converted member of a Reformed Baptist church in Georgia, traveled to 3 massage parlors in Atlanta and murdered eight people, at least six of whom were Asian-American. This one year after COVID-19 was branded the "chinavirus" by then US President Donald Trump, a phrase I saw parroted on social media by dozens of white southern people. As Cone says in his concluding pages (p. 163), "One can lynch without a rope or a tree."

Until the American church, especially the white American church, comes to grips with lynching tree, it will never be able to move beyond its racist shackles. I hope it doesn't take a generation or two to die before conservative churches grapple with this and "bear fruit in keeping with repentance" including but going far beyond "heart attitudes" – dismantling structures of oppressions, restructuring existing ones. When will we learn that it probably gives God more glory to shut the doors of a church that actively cultivates racism amongst its members or at least buoys racist sentiment than for that church to continue praising the name of Jesus all the while they recrucify the Son of God and remain blind to those made in his image.

Lord, have mercy.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 5 out of 5]

James H. Cone’s “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” is a profound reflection on black suffering at the cruel hands of white supremacy and the astonishing parallels between the Crucified One and black victims of lynching. Cone wonders why theologians have not considered the parallels between the cross and the lynching tree before; in particular, he castigates those in the liberal and mainline traditions who were vigorous in their critiques of inequality in American culture but who remained silent on the race issue, including Walter Rauschenbusch, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and especially Reinhold Niebuhr (one entire chapter is taken up with Cone’s critique of Niebuhr’s neglect of race). Cone interacts with a host of African American figures, including Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Billie Holliday, and Martin Luther King Jr., in exploring how the black community raised their voices against the white supremacy they endured decade after decade and as more “strange fruit” hung from the branches; as well, Cone draws upon traditional African American spirituals and hymns that reverberate with the shared suffering that both Jesus and African Americans faced and the hope that the Cross gave to black believers. Cone writes:

“God must therefore know in a special way what poor blacks are suffering in America because God’s son was lynched in Jerusalem. Jesus and other subject people suffered punishment under the Roman Empire what blacks suffered in the United States. He was tortured and humiliated like blacks. What are we to make of the striking similarities between the brutality in Rome and cruelty in America? What is most ironic is that the white lynchers of blacks in America were not regarded as criminals; like Jesus, blacks were the criminals and insurrectionists. The lynchers were the 'good citizens' who often did not even bother to hide their identities. They claimed to be acting as citizens and Christians as they crucified blacks in the same manner as the Romans lynched Jesus. It is even more ironic that black people embraced the Christian cross that whites used to murder them. That was truly a profound inversion of meaning.” (p. 158-59)

As a Canadian I am aware of racial tensions in the USA (e.g. the Black Lives Matter movement and the shootings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and others), but this book made me much more aware of the despicable violence that white supremacists unleashed upon African Americans; in particular, I was shocked at the gruesome account of Mary Turner’s burning and lynching (eight months pregnant, during her murder her belly was sliced open and the mob killed her baby; Turner was murdered in reaction to her own outcry against a mob that had lynched her husband).

Though Cone’s chronicle of race, religion, and white supremacy is lamentable and disturbing, I would consider this deeply moving book to be a kind of “apologetic,” not in the typical style of William Lane Craig, John Lennox, and others, but in that despite the oppression blacks faced at the hands of (ostensibly) white Christians, they did not renounce the Messiah their white tormentors claimed as their God; as Cone relates, the black community leaned into the conviction that God knew their own suffering and that He would one day deliver them. Theirs is an inspiring faith.

[Alison Eddins · Rating 5 out of 5]

A noose was hung outside the US Capitol as I finished this book. The terrorists who did so were called loved and very special by the man in the highest position. Our president has gone on a legalized lynching spree in 2020, ending a 17-year federal government hiatus from the death penalty. “One can lynch a person without a rope or tree.” The Church was the root of this evil and we better be the ones most fervently trying to reckon with our heavy hand in it.

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up

Written by a Black liberation theologian, The Cross and the Lynching Tree is a powerful examination of the theological connection between the death of Jesus and the history of lynching in the United States. It recontextualizes the symbolism of the cross in a way that has long been ignored by white theologians and church leaders and shows why the suffering of Christ has often been so resonant within the Black church. He takes to task those who have failed to understand and embody the true nature of Jesus and his ministry and instead actively or passively enabled the rot of white supremacy in the American church. Towards the end of the book he engages with womanist thinking on the overemphasis on suffering and how the cross might instead lead to hope for change. This part could have been further fleshed out, but it's an important piece.

I would recommend this for anyone struggling with whether it's possible to reconcile Christian faith with antiracist work and the harm that has been done by the white Evangelical church. Cone offers a possible path and food for thought. Personally I think he nails the way Christian thinkers have often glossed over Jesus' identity as a marginalized person and his death due to hateful bigotry and a corrupt justice system. All of which has important ramifications for modern life and what it might mean to actually be Christ-like.

[James Calvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1964, I was a kid, a couple of years away from voting age, a son of my father, and like him, a Republican. I was no Bircher, but I remember my thrill when Barry Goldwater told the nation and the world that "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." I was old enough to know what that single sentence meant to hard-line right-wingers whose fear of commies and leftists pushed them to the "extremes" Goldwater legitimized--or tried to--with that widely anticipated and much beloved line.

I remember watching the speech on our old black-and-white Zenith, maybe my first real interest in politics on a national scale. Like my dad, I thought Goldwater a prophet and Martin Luther King a communist, a man who stirred up all kinds of social discord--even violence--throughout the nation.

What did I know? Not much, but I was confident about defending American liberty.

I have few memories of the 1964 Democratic Convention. I'm guessing the Zenith wasn't on, not because my parents would have objected but because there simply wasn't any interest. I'm sure the speakers who rose to the dais--other than Goldwater--would have been disappointing to them and to me.

So I have no memories whatsoever of a short speech given by a stocky African-American woman named Fannie Lou Hamer, a woman who was pleading the case of a delegation of Mississippians, most of them black, asking for voting credentials at that convention. Hamer had a sixth-grade education and no more because her hands were needed in the cotton fields, where her family tried to make a life from sharecropping. She'd started picking cotton when she was six years old.

When Fannie Lou Hamer sat and told the 1964 Democratic Convention what she'd suffered--a horrible beating while jailed in Winona, Mississippi, on some ridiculous charge--delegates were stunned. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had occupied the office for less than a year at that point and who, down the road, distinguished himself boldly and wonderfully for the cause of civil rights in this country, was scared to death he'd lose the votes of the Dixiecrats to the Republicans if they heard Hamer's indictment of Southern racism. Johnson was so scared he called the networks to interrupt the Ms. Hamer's testimony,

President Johnson told them he was having an important unscheduled news conference. The networks assumed that he was about to name his nomination for Vice-President, so, just like that, they turned out the lights on Fannie Lou Hamer and starting broadcasting from the Oval Office, where LBJ simply told the nation it was, at that moment, nine months since the death of President Kennedy. That's it. That was the whole story.

There was no news. What there was, was subterfuge. The President successfully kept Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony from gaining a national audience. That happened. That actually happened.

So much about that story is out-and-out incredible. First, Hamer herself--a woman who'd spent her life in cotton fields, trying to make a life for her children, a woman who wanted to vote and got beaten horribly for nothing more than wanting rights that were hers. Hamer's story turns your stomach and wrenches your heart.

Then, the entire situation--Johnson, the civil rights advocate, worried about an election should white Southerners start going over to the other side and supporting Goldwater; Johnson, who did so much for African-Americans, shutting out the lights on Ms. Hamer's incredible speech.

And then the press, who left the convention floor and flocked to the Oval Office to cover the President, like so many lemmings. But then again, however, the press, who smelled something like "fake news" a half-century ago and went back over the ground they'd just trod in an effort to locate the source of the smell they couldn't get out of their system. Eventually, a free press found it, discovered the whole blasted story.

I never knew any of that until I read James H. Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a reprimand, an indictment against "Christian" America. Cone's book is a Jeremiad that is just plain wilting in every way possible--culturally, morally, spiritually--to the white folks at whom he aims, most specifically those who confess the name of Jesus.

Cone makes you weep, makes you wonder where you were in 1964, where you were for a half-century or more of terrifying bloodletting when white folks, many of them church-going folks, pulled out ropes from their shed and hung black men--and some black women--for one purpose only: to keep n______s in their place.

If you're a white man or woman, if you're a believer especially, The Cross and the Lynching Tree will teach you all kinds of things you didn't know, things you can't help but wonder how you missed. It will make you wonder where you've been.

[Levi Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Cone's work is both brutal and beautiful. He exposes the rotting corpse of American life, exhibited most keenly in the lynching tree. America's sin of white supremacy was often perpetrated by those that were "Christians." Cone exposes the irony of such a practice, questioning how those who follow a crucified Lord can then turn around and crucify others. The parallels between the cross and the lynching tree are hard to miss. Yet, they were often missed or blatantly ignored by whites, including many theologians and pastors that should have clearly seen and articulated the parallels. The parallels, however, were often expressed in the language of Christian faith by the black community, which emboldened the black community to speak out and act out against the systems of oppression under which they lived. The cross inspired non-violent resistance to the systems of oppression and gave courage to withstand the possibility and reality of violent reprisal. Cone also makes the point that suffering is not redemptive in and of itself. It takes imagination to find redemption in suffering. The African-American churches saw that God redeems the suffering and that suffering comes about when the powers and principalities are challenged and exposed. The question for communities of faith today is how the cross is shaping our imagination and who are the people that are continuing to be "crucified" or "lynched" by society-such as in the current penal system which targets African-Americans disproportionately to the nation's demographics.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally picked up this book because I thought that it was about how religion was used as a tool of control and justification for slavery. This book was not that at all. This book focused on how lynching is essentially the same thing as crucifiction, and how both were used as methods of terror and torture and execution, but that those parallels are largely ignored in society and by religious theologians.

I am an atheist and I've yet to read the bible (it's on the "someday" list, but by no means a priority), so the scripture quoted here, and the references to religious themes and stories and such, and the concept of faith and redemption through suffering were largely lost on me. Those are just not part of my personal lexicon, if you will, and I certainly never connected the cross to the lynching tree myself. But that doesn't mean that I couldn't appreciate it in an empathetic way, and understand that though those religious aspects hold no meaning or value in my personal life, to others it would be very important, meaningful, and powerful. I can appreciate his thesis here, which is that the cross, and the redemption and meaning that it represents, has offered hope and faith for Black people during the very long history of subjugation, oppression, and state-sanctioned torture and murder they've endured for far too long... But I don't appreciate it from the same perspective or understanding within that belief system.

Anyway... I say this to just offer a bit of context, because I really appreciated this book from a Humanist perspective and not a religious one. The symbolism was very clear once laid out. It's like one of those seeing-eye puzzles, where once you see it, you wonder how you could have missed it for so long.

This book was very brutal to listen to. There were no punches pulled in the descriptions of lynchings and the absolute atrocities that the "civilized" and "good" white people perpetrated against Black people for any and everything. I have been reading on this topic quite a lot over the last several years, and even still, some of what was here shocked me to my core in it's absolute depraved and gleeful savagery. It shouldn't shock me anymore that everything that Black people were accused of being - savages, rapists, brutal, immoral beasts, etc - is simple projection and exactly describes those white people who happily tortured and murdered Black people for not being adequately deferential... or just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or any number of other trivialities.

It's utterly heartbreaking, and the images of one scene described will haunt me for a long, long time.

But, as hard as it was to read, it was quite worth it, because Cone also describes the resistance and Womanist movement (something I was unfamiliar with before, and now will need to read up on), and how instrumental Ida B. Wells was in documenting and calling attention to the lynchings happening throughout the nation, despite it putting her at definite risk. As I was finishing this book, Chicago was preparing to unveil a monument to her legacy of activism. But the work continues, and so while I'm happy that she and her work are being honored and that this brings attention to the atrocities that were perpetrated, I'm saddened that we are nowhere near ending racism or injustice.

So, this book and I went on a definite journey. I learned quite a bit, I cried more than a little, and I'm simply in awe of the determination to survive and thrive and demand justice that is still too long denied. I don't have faith in any greater power or anything, but I do believe in what Martin Luther King Jr said: "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I really hope so.

[Eddie Mercado · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cone seeks to connect the Cross of Jesus Christ, with the Lynching tree which has tortured and killed thousands upon thousands of black people. The majority of this book paints a picture, a history of Black people in the United States, how their faith was instrumental in their life of suffering, and how their trust in Jesus impacted their fight for justice and equality. To this portion of the book, I grieve in where the church failed, and I find encouragement in how my brothers and sisters suffered unto glory, joining the cloud of witnesses in the presence of their Savior. This book is not an easy read, but in Cone’s heartbreaking depictions of violence against black people, we are brought face to face with our country’s ugly and vile history.

But what is extremely problematic, is found in Cone’s theological interpretation and application of this history.

What Cone provides is a Jesus who brings a therapeutic healing to the suffering black church, but no personal salvation. A Jesus who identifies with the oppressed, but can’t save them of their own sin. A Jesus who can’t even change the heart of the oppressor! Near the end of the book, we find a manner of thinking entirely alien not merely to the modern Evangelical church, but to the historic black church. He writes:

“I accept Delores Williams’ rejection of theories of atonement found in Western Theological tradition and in the uncritical proclamation of the cross in many black churches. I find nothing redemptive about suffering in itself. The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God‘s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed which led to his death on the cross” (150).”

Jesus’ death on the cross is not merely a rational concept, but is a historical development, with redemptive-historical ramifications even for this day and age, as we live in between the times of his first and second advent. The Cross assures us that He will deliver us from this present evil age in an eschatological reign over sin and death! But Cone preaches no such Jesus. In fact he states that “Jesus’ life, teachings and death were about God’s protest against exploitation of the weak by the strong.” He sells the passive and active obedience of our Lord FAR too short. And for this reason, i must say this book is a poison for the church. Give me a God who saves me by taking upon himself my sinful deeds. Give me a God who grants me his Spirit by which I’m empowered to suffer unto glory. Give me a God who in eschatological intrusions, provides opportunities of justice to take place in a world that hates Him. Give me a God who saves body and soul.

Cone does not offer us such a God in “the Cross and the Lynching Tree.”

[Todd Hiestand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, what a book. Highly recommend. A stunning look into the history/theology of white christianity, white supremacy and the struggle of the black community in America.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman sitting next to me at the conference on Black and Womanist Theology at the University of Chicago in the fall of 2005 told me that James H. Cone is really more of the scholar than the preacher. But he suited me just fine that night when he preached a sermon called "The Cross and the Lynching Tree." My notebook was practically vorticist in its responsive energy. And the book that came out of it, too, is pretty scintillating.

James Cone, of course, is famous for his books Black Theology and Black Power, A Black Theology of Liberation, and so forth (the "and so forth" sort of the difficult part of having your first works completely shake up an entire field). The Cross and the Lynching Tree, I'm told is not his LAST book (apparently he's writing what he CALLS his last book now), but it seems to me an effort to readably crystalize a nugget of a theological contribution that would, while resting on the same foundations as the Black Liberation Theology that preceded it, offer to theology something that is (regrettably) new to it. That nugget is taken from what he calls commonsense grassroots theology, which has led black preachers and poets since the 19th century to link the cross of Jesus and the lynching tree.

The argument, in short, is this: "When American Christians realize that they can meet Jesus only in the crucified [lynched] bodies in our midst, they will encounter the real scandal [and tragedy, and redemption] of the cross" (158)--or, "humanity's salvation is revealed in the cross of the condemned criminal Jesus, and humanity's salvation is available only through our solidarity with the crucified people in our midst" (160). To Cone, the cross, in America, anyway, needs the lynching tree to keep it from being some ornament that you tuck under your Easter dress neckline. This idea makes it possible for us to see a trace of the sublimity (as in the terrifying, horrific, and beautiful) in Ephesians 2:14, "For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups [Jews and Gentiles here, but the analogy stretches pretty far] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us." The lynching is what brings us together, in and beyond the horrific culpability that echoes in our rememory?

The major (and, in my view, correct) theologically foundational insight here, is that the wellsprings of this theological knowledge are poetry and people, the music and the folks. The idea that God works revelation in and through language and people that may be outside the accepted intellectual or ecclesiastical cultures is sensible, given an omnipotent, such-knowledge-is-too-wonderful-for-me-it-is-high sort of God who came to earth as an oddly knocked up teenager's kid. Cone says, "Faith that emerge out of the scandal of the cross is not a faith of intellectuals or elites of any sort. This is the faith of abused and scandalized people--the losers and the down and out." The inclusion of the word "intellectuals" there, well, that isn't accidental. Which is first why this book must be accessible. For it is by no means obvious that, if you're trying to offer something to THEOLOGY, you should write so accessibly. Language is, after all, never precise enough. Read any Karl Barth lately? It's a slow business. And it is also why there's so many chunks of Jim Crow era literature in the book. For Cone, the thing that the folks have been singing, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord" "Strange Fruit" and the poetry--such as Countee Cullen's "The South is crucifying Christ again," offers something to theology--a corrective--a revisioning of the cross's centrality to the gospel. Chapters 4, rich with poetry, and 6, rich with the summative statements worth mulling over, are wonderful. There is also an accessible history of Jim Crow lynching in chapter 1.

Now, in the book, Cone takes Niebuhr, who he otherwise would have really supported!, to serious task for NOT coming up with the connection between the cross and the lynching tree. Niebuhr, he writes, should have seen and wrote about this connection, but he didn't--though he claimed to be interested in justice and race--because he failed as a white American to actually see the "terrible beauty of the cross" as coincident with the real world around him--white blinders. This critique seems less useful than the idea that he wants to support with the critique, that white American Christians could be really helped by a look at the cross and the lynching tree now. No doubt Niebuhr deserves the critique, but the chapter works, I think, more in relation to theological history than to a broader audience that may wish to encounter his work (and to whom he is so solicitous in the accessible voice presented by the book). In another substantial chapter, he sets up Martin Luther King, Jr. as the image of how the cross/lynching tree in American can have theological payoffs as working though examples of lynching can illuminate the redemptive power of the cross/lynching tree--this seems to work better for the general, non theological-ivory-tower reader.

Now, the theological differences between black theology and other, more evangelical protestants, are pretty well known. See Vince Bacote's talk on African American theology here: http://www.wheaton.edu/WETN/All-Media... for an easily listenable summary. But I thought that Cone's description, early in the book, of the difference between Barth's and Niebuhr's starting points, was helpful. The idea from Barth is that theology begins with God's revelation to people--with the word, with the gloriously meditatable idea that God has time for us. The idea from Niebuhr is that we can't even know the word outside of human failure and the brutal facts of human "self-interest and power" (the irony of citing Barth as the more "Evangelical" position is not lost on me, though all of this probably helps to most quickly illustrate how LITTLE I know of theology). Barth starts with God, Niebuhr starts with people. African-Americans, says Cone, were black before they were Christian, so it makes sense to look to experience as a source for understanding. This could potentially ruffle feathers, and, I believe, regularly HAS at my own institution, where setting up liberation theology or African-American theology as major interlocutors in your integration of faith and learning can get a flag thrown.

I recently read, however, Lammin Sanneh's Translating the Message (easily among the most powerful works of theology I've read in the past several years) and for me it sets up some good possibilities for the relationship of ideas tied to cultural experience and theology/gospel. Sanneh holds that translatablility is central to the message of the gospel. When the gospel is translated among cultures as it has expanded, that translation involves "a certain judgment" on the culture that brings the message--as well as on the receiving culture, requiring an interrogation and refiguration of dearly held dogmas. Sanneh chronicles the spread of the gospel to support his case, but surely we are all translating back and forth to each other the gospel--all the time, on a micro-level. Mightn't the act of translation be a way to think about the relationship here between African American theology and evangelical theology as both seek to offer the gospel to the other (for we are offering the gospel to each other again and again within the body of Christ, aren't we? "The body of Christ," and "The Blood of Christ"--another translation.)? Seems to be a speck/log issue. Surely there can be a way to hear how, starting point aside, these theologies are judging themselves as they judge each other--which makes one not need so much to reject the other culture/theology as respond to it.

I had been uncomfortable all along in the book with what seemed like a forgetting of the resurrection in the centralizing of the cross (which isn't fair I suppose, since this book is a corrective to over emphasis on Easter Sunday without Good Friday). In the last chapter, though, Cone makes an interesting move, not altogether, in my view, successful, but worth pushing further. Cone moves toward an engagement with (sometimes-seeming-cross-denying) womanist theology as a potential wellspring for thinking about how we might move through cross to resurrection. In the justice work of black women, the cross becomes a way to triumph over (through the resurrection) principalities and powers--through the suffering and responses to it, a new day comes. This seems like a necessary and helpful close-out to the book, though it perhaps isn't as fully rendered as would be helpful. There are more conversations to have here, as Cone himself acknowledges--this is one opening, what amounts to the asking of a QUESTION in the old spiritual, "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble--as in the hearing, and the reading, of Cone's book.

[Austin Spence · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has just about everything that I could want in a theological book tied to race. Cone brings in his own lifetime struggle with what it means to be like a suffering God as a follower, criticism towards one of America's greatest theologians, historical analysis and stories about the pain of lynching and part of it's redemption. It even delves into how art inspired by the suffering has lead to people's redemption. This is an incredible book on looking at culture and it's implications on how the Black community has seen Jesus's suffering.

The send off chapter wrapping the book up with a bow has to be one of the best in the genre. The conclusion is straightforward, begging the question of where we are overlooking the connection between God and current sufferings of people. A proper look at "White Christianism," to use a term from another great author Carl F. Ellis, Jr.), means looking at what our current faith refuses to allow God's redemptive hand to touch. Bravo, James.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been on my « want to read » list for a while, and it did not disappoint. I learned so much and really enjoyed the intersections that James presented in connection to the historical lynchings of Black people in America and the historical crucifixion of Jesus. The theological imaginings he discusses, his own, and those of other black men and women (social activists, ministers, artists) were so rich and thought-provoking. For those who struggle with questions of theodicy (the question of evil / suffering), black theologians are perhaps the most poignant and meaningful voices of truth, and from my understanding, James H. Cone is a leader among his peers. Looking forward to reading more from him.

[Claire Contreras · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew this book would be powerful, but it's more potent and meaningful than I can even begin to express. I have not picked up a book in almost six months, and this book had me glued from cover to cover. In short, this book is profoundly and theologically relevant to the present moment in the United States. Please read it.

Here are some further thoughts.

In his introduction, James Cone reveals his own struggle as a Black Christian in America to reconcile Christian identity in America with the history of white supremacy in the church. He states that "the cross helped me to deal with the brutal legacy of the lynching tree, and the lynching tree helped me to understand the tragic meaning of the cross."

He first takes readers through the history of the Black experience in America, recounting the history of lynching. Then he introduces the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, who has been regarded as the most prominent American theologian in the twentieth century. Cone celebrates the ways that Niebuhr's work engaged with both the cross and social context, but he chides Niebuhr for his deficient engagement with the Black struggle. Like many other white theologians of his day, Niebuhr failed to critique and denounce white supremacy. Cone contrasts Niebuhr's work with that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who directly engaged theological reflection with the Black struggle in America, and indeed bore the cost of it. Cone also illuminates the way that Blacks in America engaged with and expressed their suffering and struggle through both religious experience and also the arts and blues. He also weaves in the black female experience and particularly, womanist theology's critique of redemptive suffering.

In his conclusion, he notes how the cross and the lynching tree are necessary interpretations of each other: "Can the cross redeem the lynching tree? Can the lynching tree liberate the cross and make it real in American history...the lynching tree frees the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians...The cross needs the lynching tree to remind Americans of the reality of suffering - to keep the cross from becoming a symbol of abstract, sentimental piety...Yet the lynching tree also needs the cross, without which it becomes simply an abomination."

The historical context of the book felt meaningful but dense. Cone's closing chapter, however, brings home the urgency and indeed his imperative that the church in America remember its history in order to be delivered from it: "Whites today cannot separate themselves from the culture that lynched blacks, unless they confront their history and expose the sin of white supremacy. The cross of Jesus and the lynching tree of black victims are not literally the same - historically or theologically. Yet these two symbols or images are closely linked to Jesus' spiritual meaning for black and white life together."

[Nick Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s strange to give five stars to a book that actually has lots of flaws. Cone never really gets to the point of talking about what suffering does or what the Cross does or if or how it is necessary to God’s purposes. He doesn’t spend much time clarifying his own views on atonement. He says he’s not a pacifist, but he doesn’t clarify where he stands. He also is very evidently trying to make up for lost time in decades spent not deeply engaging with feminist and womanist theologians. There are several sections where I just longed for him to keep going deeper, and he didn’t. So the book as a whole ends up as a survey of his previous work, but the power with which he writes—dealing with poetry and music and other literature; dealing with 20th century white theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr in particular; and the autobiographical elements—brings the whole work way way up to a powerful reading and thinking and feeling experience.

[Eve Tushnet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully-structured book using the theology developed in US black communities and black liberation movements to illuminate the Cross for all Christians. This theology emerges from the life and prayer of a community, from its worship, its perseverance, its temptation to despair. And even from its internal conflicts: The section wrestling with black feminist/womanist critiques of Cross-centered theology is excellent, and the exploration of the juke joints as liberatory and limited is simply thrilling.

When white Christians refuse to see lynching and racism as crucifixions we damage our own ability to cling to the Cross of Christ. We become gawkers at Calvary and not disciples.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listen, Christ,
You did alright in your day, I reckon —
But that day's gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
Called it Bible —
But it's dead now,
The popes and the preachers've
Made too much money from it.
They've sold you to too many

Kings, generals, robbers, and killers —
Even to the Tzar and the Cossacks,
Even to Rockefeller's Church,
Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.
You ain't no good no more.
They've pawned you
Till you've done wore out.

from Langston Hughes poem ‘Goodbye Christ’

Now I don’t read many theology books or believe in religion any more but I was raised in the Christian church. There is a richness in the story telling and community that I have not forgotten. So I don’t automatically disregard religious books but I generally only read the ones where there is some connection to oppression or some important story to tell.

Cone’s writing in the core of the book is eloquent and literary. He leaves the preachiness for the prologue and conclusion. These are by rule the worst parts of any book, so I don’t give these pages much stock.

While this book largely addresses black christianity, Cone argues that there is a distinction between it and white christianity. As an African American he believes he more easily identifies with themes of the cross because of lynching, slavery, racism and oppression against African Americans. It is difficult to argue against any of his points.

Cone emphasizes the spirituality of the black religious experience more than atonement etc. He does so through historical quotations and analysis of many Civil Rights leaders and literary figures who themselves experienced saw some of the worst racism first hand. His quotes of the poet Langston Hughes and the author Richard Hughes are particularly well placed. There is a good deal of discussion of Martin Luther King Jr. and his desire to avoid martyrdom.

This is one of the rare books that finishes much stronger than it begins. The chapter entitled ‘Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep’ highlights the contributions of black women that were the real force behind the Civil Rights Movement and it is quite inspirational.

There are only five chapters in this short book. Glad I read it.

5 stars

[James Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read alot of trauma therapy and trauma theology books in the last three years. This book sorta fits in these categories but certainly transcends the pop, self enlightenment of some therapy books and the sterile theological categories of some theology books. This book blazes with prophetic lament about the treatment and hatred black americans have endured in the country that claims to be the "land of the free." Cone is angry but it feels like a holy anger, a holy indignation towards a white church that sits idly by while black people are assaulted and lynched.

Cone does no fancy theological footwork to make his case, he simply recounts history. Its a history that hits you over the head. How complex it is to worship and love a God that indifferent and bigoted white people are also worshipping. Cone stays tenaciously committed to God and to his son Jesus, but he laments and questions God, demanding from him an answer to the suffering.

Their is no easy believism or "get out of hell card" Christianity here. Rather someone who has meditated for a long time at Golgotha. Its a bracing read but also cuts through so much of the dross that dominates Christian discourse in our time.

[Josh Issa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cutting commentary on how black people in America used theological language and identification with the person of Jesus to struggle through and overcome the legacy of lynching and white supremacy in the US.

Truly heartbreaking to read about the lynching narratives and how recent they are. The parallels between the function of the cross in Roman society and the lynching in the South are strong and it indicts all those who claim the US as a “Christian” nation who crucified Christ over and over thousands of times.

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.

[Robyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

THE CROSS AND THE LYNCHING TREE
James H. Cone

Some of this book I agree with, some of it not so much, but I have a difficult time relating to anyone who dares to stand today and tell me what GOD thought or is thinking... I don't believe that Cone has the authority or the right to try to put words in the mouth of God. You can compare and try to interpret the scripture, and state it in that manner. But I don't think one HUMAN should say what God thought.

“Jesus’ life, teachings, and death were about God’s protest against the exploitation of the weak by the strong.”

For that, we are miles apart.

2 stars

Happy Reading!

[Joel Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough - one of the most important and meaningful reflections on America, the cross, theology, and justice I've come across

[Misael Galdámez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm having trouble parsing my reflections on this book. It's profound, cutting, and emotionally disturbing, yet also filled with hope.

One of the most difficult things about theologies of the atonement is their emotional distance from the cross. James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree reminds us that the crucifixion is not an abstraction but rather a concrete event in history. In this event, God both demonstrates his solidarity with the dispossessed, the marginalized, the down-and-out, while judging the rulers and authorities of the world and triumphing over them.

In our context, those closest to the "crucified" of Jesus' day are those who suffered lynching at the hands of white supremacists. As Cone writes, "if the God of Jesus is found among the least, the crucified people of the world, then God is also found among those lynched in American history." Indeed, "because God was present with Jesus on the cross and thereby refused to let Satan and death have the last word about his meaning, God was also present at every lynching in the United States." God is present to the crucified (or lynched) of our history in a special way.

This book also made me reflect on the unique contributions of the Black church. As I have been reading various ethnic theologies, I've been trying to sort out how each brings something unique and different. For the Black church, I think one of their gifts is the dialectic or struggle between faith and doubt.

Both Esau McCaulley's Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope and this book highlighted how Black Christians have lived in the tension between doubt and trust. Black faith emerges out of a struggle with suffering. Suffering sometimes seems to contradict their faith, while faith gives meaning to suffering. Yet, as McCaulley puts it, there's a dialetic of trust, and "wrestling" with faith until one finds blessing.

This book should be required reading for race and religion in the U.S. It is by no means an easy read, and the details of specific lynchings are enough to make your stomach churn in pain. But we need to be honest with ourselves and our histories.

[Pearl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Black Liberation Theologian James Cone explores the symbolic and historic connections between the crucifixion of Jesus and the lynching of Blacks in 19th and 20th century America. He asserts that understanding this connection is vital to the meaning of the cross and confronting it is vital to the health of Christian America.

For Cone, it is a personal struggle. How can he make sense of the awfulness of lynching - of Black suffering in America, of living under white supremacy - of being a Black man seeking justice and having faith as a Christian when black suffering contradicts that faith?

Cone is particularly aggrieved that none of America's foremost white theologians and preachers made any connection between the meaning of the cross and the lynching tree, that God entered into human affairs and took the side of the oppressed, that none of them made the rejection of white supremacy central to their understanding of the gospel.

Cone's chapters on Reinhold Niebuhr and on Martin Luther King are two of the best in his book. Christian ethics and the Christian gospel for both of them begin in experience and the cross is the greatest symbol of God's supreme love for human life for both. Niebuhr, however, had no felt experience for the condition of the human life of Black people in America. King, on the other hand, saw not only the cross as the symbol of God's love but the lynching tree as the symbol of hate and held these symbols together in a Hegelian dialect: a contradiction of thesis, antithesis, yielding to a creative synthesis.

Other chapters in his book are informative about black history and culture but are rather repetitive, as relating to his theology. Perhaps they are meant to be as Cone drives home his point about the terrible reality of black suffering in a "Christian" America under white supremacy.

[Drick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cone begins his book with a damning theological observation which he seeks to correct and address in this book: How could any theologian explain the meaning of Christian identity in America and fail to engage white supremacy,its primary negation." (p. xvii) From that point he then describes the history of lynching of African Americans (1880-1940)and links that to his reflection on the cross of Christ. He critiques the most prominent white theologian at the time, Reinhold Niebuhr, as one who saw the scourge of racism and lynching but did not include it in his theological reflection. Using the history of African American church, the music of the blues, and the writing of significant poets and novelists of the time, he shows how the lynching tree was a central reality in the lives of black people in America, and how they saw the cross of Christ as putting Jesus in solidarity with their suffering.

This book is a must read for anyone serious about living a fully authentic Christian faith. It sheds light on the words of Jesus in Matthew 7 that many will call his name but when they come to him, he will say "I never knew you." For white Christians this is a book we must ponder because it raises serious questions and challenges to the authenticity of the faith in which most white Christians were raised.
April 2020 - I reread this book during Holy Week leading up to our remembrance of the crucifixion. Cone helps us see how Jesus' death on the cross prefigures and reflects the great suffering of black people and by extension other oppressed peoples and that the lynching tree, like the gas ovens, andthe anti-immigrant cages at the US border are contemporary symbols of the cross.

[Porter Sprigg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was powerful and disconcerting. It is incredible to me how easily we forget the atrocities done in our country less than 100 years ago. It is heart-wrenching to read about the heinous acts of terror committed in the name of white supremacy, the unjust killings of black men and women. Hope is found however, in the ways that black Americans saw lynching deaths in light of Jesus' death on the cross. The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ spoke to those suffering under white supremacy. I especially loved the chapter on Martin Luther King Jr., a man whose love and compassion are unfathomable to me. I don't necessarily agree with all the theology discussed in this book, and I wish it focused more on the resurrection, in order to speak the light of God's restoration into the black experience. Having said that, I highly recommend it. It will make you think reflect on the evils of our nation and the goodness of our Savior.

[Kyle Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Perhaps nothing about the history of mob violence in the United States is more surprising than how quickly an understanding of the full horror of lynching has receded from the nation's collective historical memory."

"Christ crucified manifested God's loving and liberating presence in the contradictions of black life--that transcendent presence in the lives of black Christians that empowered them to believe that ultimately, in God's eschatological future, they would not be defeated, no matter how great and painful their suffering."

A hallmark work of liberation theology. Every American--white and black and others alike--need to read this book, however uncomfortable, provocative, and unpleasant a reading of it can be. James Cone himself considered this book the highlight of his career--the career, mind you, of one of the most significant African-American thinkers in history.