Our Generation's Cross
A game of Hang Man
The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
My elementary school history teacher often went too quickly through the lesson and there would be an awkward amount of time left. I remember looking up at the clock and seeing there was still 20 minutes until school let out. Having finished the material, she was trying to run out the day. She suggested we play hangman and we all enthusiastically jumped at the chance to play a round or two. We were so inoculated against violence that it never occurred to us that hanging a man at the end of the day was a strange and morbid way to pass the time. The excitement would build with each poorly guessed letter, would the man live or would he hang? When a sufficient number of letters had passed unused, our classmate would jump for joy as he put that final piece of body on the board. We were crushed, but it never crossed our minds to ask why does this poor man have to die because we can’t guess the word? We were young kids and blind to the irony of those last 20 minutes of school. Our official history lesson had been completed for the day, so we passed the time by lynching a cartoon stick man.
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Hangman had a dubious history, long before it became an end of the day distraction for school children. There exist numerous volumes and resources on the history of lynching in America such as the EJI report “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror” (this report is available for free download here: Lynching report) and Phillip Dray’s lengthier volume At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America.[2] The following is a very brief history.
During the period of the American Revolutionary War, lynching was used as a form of frontier justice. The community would collectively punish individuals in remote areas where the legal infrastructure was not present or underdeveloped. In these earlier times lynching was rarely fatal and could involve whippings or tar and feathering of the accused perpetrator. Black slaves, who were seen as valuable property, were seldom lynched in the community.
After the Civil War congress passed several important laws that altered the political balance of power in the south. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared black Americans full citizens and that they were entitled to all the rights inherent in that citizenship. Further, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 gave voting rights to African Americans and disenfranchised former Confederates. During the Reconstruction period there were more African Americans elected to political positions of power than ever before. It was a turbulent time, with racial progress being achieved while counter forces in society pushed back against changes that were happening. Sometimes the pushback would manifest as full-blown violence.
The Civil War and Reconstruction were a period of crisis in America. As we say now in COVID, so did many think back then that they “couldn’t wait for things to get back to normal.” A return to the status quo was a heart desire for many, yet slavery had clearly been terminated. Therefore, a slavery-free solution that would maintain the hierarchy of society was needed.
Just such an opportunity came in the contested presidential election of 1876. In return for the presidency, Republican Rutherford Hayes agreed to end the role of federal troops in southern politics. This effectively ended the period of progressive reconstruction and ushered in a new age of terror and violence for African Americans.
The several decades long period after this election is often referred to the era of Jim Crowe (approx. 1876 to the 1950s). A time of reinforcement for the caste system in America. When those who were low, were made to stay low. The lynching tree was the symbol of this system and the most grotesque of all the tools that reinforced it. Lynchings were a violent and public spectacle meant to instill fear into the family members and communities of the victims. It was a glaring contradiction how in the heart of the supposed bible belt, brutal violence could carry the carnival atmosphere of a leisurely Sunday afternoon.
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Theologian James Cone’s book The Cross and the Lynching Tree[3] invites readers to ponder the similarities of the Roman cross and the American lynching tree. The connections between the two are powerful and carry the potential to make our old religion far more relevant to today.
According to the Bible, when God came to earth he did not choose to live in a powerful and influential community. Jesus was a member of the underclass and lived in solidarity with an oppressed nation. Therefore, as Cone shows, a special connection exists between Black American Christians and this carpenter from Palestine. As W.E.B. Dubois wrote:
“Yet Jesus Christ was a laborer and black men are laborers; He was poor and we are poor; He was despised of his fellow men and we are despised; He was persecuted and crucified, and we are mobbed and lynched. If Jesus Christ came to America He would associate with Negroes and Italians and working people; He would eat and pray with them, and He would seldom see the interior of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.” [4]
The similarities between the cross and the lynching tree are indeed striking. The cross was a violent and public humiliation, meant to keep the people in line. The lynching tree was murderous form of intimidation, meant to fill the black community with terror. Both kinds of execution were used to enforce the status quo of dominance and inferiority. They sent a powerful message: step out of line and you too shall hang here.
In the book, Cone discusses the life and career of Reinhold Neibuhr, who is considered one of the greatest theological minds of the 20th century. Neibuhr was also perhaps the most influential American theologian of his era. The cross was central to his theology and he was considered by contemporaries to be something of a radical. Yet as Cone points out, he never made the connection between the Roman empire’s violent acts of terrorism and those of his own empire’s. Neibuhr could not or would not see that “Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus. The lynching tree is the cross in America. When American Christians realize that can meet Jesus only in the crucified bodies in our midst, they will encounter the real scandal of the cross.” [pg. 158]
The implications of Neibuhr’s blind spot should greatly disturb us today. Though I find it difficult to sit in judgement of his intellectual omission or lack of action to speak out against lynching. If such a knowledgeable man, who spoke so passionately about the cross were unable to see the cross being erected in his own backyard, what hope could there be for us to see the cross in our own generation?
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It’s almost as if we are back in the classroom of my childhood, nearing the end of a tense game of Hangman. We are staring at the whiteboard, with just a few letters left to guess, but can’t figure out what the word is. I wonder if our modern-day version of the cross is also sitting right in front of us, so obvious and yet so hard to see.
We tend to think of the cross as something personal, some sacrifice that God is asking us to make when he says, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” In that instance it is the death of the ego and all the false identities that prop up our fragile lives. The invitation to the cross is a calling to lose all the labels that make it easy to explain ourselves, an invitation to become a nobody in the eyes of the world. Loss of wealth, status, and power can feel like a death of our personhood. The manner in which we lose these can feel like crucifixion – public, shameful, with passerbyers shaking their heads at us in disgust.
But the cross is also a physical reality in the world as well. For Black American Christians during the lynching era, there was a visceral connection to Jesus and his execution, a feeling that he understood their fear and pain in a way most could not. A sense that he was “one of us”.
At the end of the book Cone seems to answer the question of what our generations’ cross is:
“Where is the gospel of Jesus’ cross revealed today? The lynching of black America is taking place in the criminal justice system where nearly one-third of black men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight are in prisons, jails, on parole, or waiting for their day in court…
…Nothing is more racist in America’s criminal justice system than its administration of the death penalty. America is the only industrialized country in the West where the death penalty is still legal. Most countries regard it as both immoral and barbaric. But not in America. The death penalty is primarily reserved, though not exclusively, for people of color, and white supremacy shows no signs of changing it. That is why the term ‘legal lynching’ is still relevant today. One can lynch a person without a rope or tree.” [p.163]
A core Christian belief is that God alone has authority over life – when it begins and when it ends. Many mainstream Christians are outraged by the number of abortions conducted in the US each year (rightly so), but fail to connect that logic of “authority of over life” to the death penalty or violence in all its forms.
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Perhaps to better see the crosses of our generation, it’s helpful to understand the purposes they serve. Simply put the Romans took more than they gave in Palestine, which enabled some people to live outlandishly well, while others languished. The cross was the glue that held this arrangement together.
Cone’s description of the modern-day lynching tree in our midst is both disturbing and convicting. Yet the 21st century American cross extends even further than what he is describing. Cone describes the modern-day cross perhaps not thinking that as Americans (white, black, or otherwise) we exist as beneficiaries of a global empire in which lives are sacrificed to maintain our way of living. The United States is a bubble where we rarely tend to think of issues globally.
The Roman Empire controlled through power and intimidation, whereas ours controls through comfort and safety. To see our modern-day crucifixions would upset the gentle façade we exist within. The Romans would crucify their victims just outside the city gate, in a manner and location that was difficult to ignore, but perhaps our crosses have been exported to less visible places around the world: places like Yemen and Pakistan, the factories of Southeast Asia and the plantations of central and south America. Places where we won’t have to see our own hand in maintaining the status quo.
It’s difficult to see yourself as the one lynching others’ lives, yet this insight is the beginning of real change. At the end of the first Christian sermon ever preached, the audience was “cut to the heart” (Acts 2:37). Cut to the heart means more than just ‘they felt bad’ or ‘they were motivated to make healthier choices’. They weren’t seeking mere behavior modification. It means they were desperate to find a way out of an unfixable mess they’d created. They knew there was blood on their hands and they turned to God in a hope for mercy. That’s the kind of reaction really seeing the cross will induce.
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All these years later, I feel like I’m still at the whiteboard trying to guess what it is. Where do the crosses of our American empire continue to be put up in the 21st century? What are the cruel tools we use to keep the oppressed down? How do we send the message “step out of line and you’ll end up like this”?
What is our generation’s cross and why does this poor man have to die because I can’t see it?
REFERENCES:
1. EJI.org [website]. “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror” [link]: https://eji.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/lynching-in-america-3d-ed-091620.pdf
2. Dray, Phillip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. (2003). Modern Library
3. Cone, James H. The Cross and The Lynching Tree. (2013). Orbis.
4. Dubois, W.E.B “The Church and the Negro,” Crisis 6, no. 6 (October 1913): pg. 290