Methodist pastor and theologian James H. Cone (1938–2018) is one of the most significant voices in black theology. From his earliest works—Black Theology and Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970)—to The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone has consistently interpreted Christian life and theology through his lived experience. As he writes in the introduction, “I was black before I was Christian (xvii).

In true practical theological fashion, The Cross and the Lynching Tree brings two modes of execution into critical dialogue.

Can the cross redeem the lynching tree? Can the lynching tree liberate the cross and make it real in American history? Those are the questions I have tried to answer. (161)

Cone makes the devastating and compelling case that these two disgraceful causes of death can help to interpret each other. The reality of lynching prevents the cross from becoming a mere “theological concept or as a magical talisman of salvation” (108). It’s an offense, a disgrace, an unthinkable crime.

As you would expect, this book is deeply personal and does not shy away from the black experience in America. Cone gives voice to the victims, exposing the silence of society and notable theologians. Yet he does this with a generous heart. Not unlike the pain caused by a surgeon, the pain reflected in Cone’s book is the only path to the healing of American Christianity.

Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christa 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. (xv)

Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Orbis Books, 2011.