The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Short Review: This is a book worth reading even (maybe especially) if you are tempted to dismiss Black Liberation Theology. Cone is not attempting to say that Lynching does the exact same thing as Jesus did at the cross, but he is saying that how we understand both lynching and the cross should be influenced by the other.

Overly simply, he is saying that if our understanding of the Cross does not have any relevance to racism, lynching and other areas of injustice, then we do not actually understand the message and work that Christ did on the cross.

And if we do not see in lynching the fact that an innocent Jesus was lynched by a corrupted system, then we are missing how as Christians we should be understanding the matters of injustice around us as Christians.

On the way there is very helpful reflections on art, history, culture, blind spots and many other matters. My plan is to go visit the new memorial to lynching that the Equal Justice Initiative opened earlier this year in Montgomery, AL. This book has been recommended to me for years, but it was Cone's death earlier this year and my planned visit that moved me to actually pick it up.

It is a clear book and not hard to read the words on the page but it does take some processing and that processing is difficult. So I spent about six weeks reading it. I will probably read it again either this fall or sometime in the next year. I am rounding up my rating because of the importance.

There are places that I think there are weaknesses both theologically and in the communication. But while I have appreciated all of Cone's books that I have read (I think this is my fourth), this is probably the best. Although the four I remember reading (Malcolm and Martin and America, his memoir My Soul Looks Back, and A Black Theology of Liberation) are all very different types of books and hard to compare against one another.

My full post is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/cross-and-the-lynching-tree/