The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Every culture receives the imagery of their faith in a particular way; this process is called inculturation and is the means by which a transcendent reality makes sense in their own limited, socio-historical context. The author points out that the imagery of the lynching tree “should have a prominent place in American images of Jesus’ death” but that it is conspicuously absent from “American theological discourse and preaching” (57). This is almost unthinkable, seeing as “the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching” (57). The parallels are almost uncannily similar, but the imagery has not taken root in the consciousness of the American Christian in any meaningful way. Cone examines this lacuna by exploring the work of one of his intellectual heroes, Reinhold Niebuhr, respected (as he points out) as “America’s most influential theologian in the twentieth century” (59) and one of the more progressive thinkers of his day. However, this parallel cannot be found even in Niebuhr's work.

Niebuhr, as Cone continues, is a theologian to be imitated and followed in many respects. He “taught that love is the absolute, transcendent standard that stands in judgment over what human beings can achieve in history” (60).