By David Fitch, Professor at Northern Seminary<\/p>\n
One approaches the concluding chapter of The Cross and the Lynching Tree<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by James Cone, the architect of the Black theology Movement, with great anticipation. We come with deep longings to see change. We come asking, \u201cwhat shall we do in the face of the horrific racism that rules our society? What is the good news in all of this?\u201d<\/p>\n The gospel for James Cone is:<\/p>\n \u2026more than a transcendent reality, more than \u201cgoing to heaven when I die.\u201d (It is) an immanent reality\u2014a powerful liberating presence among the poor right now in their midst.<\/p>\n The Christian gospel is \u201cGod\u2019s message of liberation in an unredeemed and tortured world.\u201d<\/p>\n Cone does not dismiss the transcendent reality of the gospel \u201cthat lifts our spirits to a world far removed from the suffering of this one\u201d (155). Indeed, Malcolm X and MLK Jr. both had revelatory moments of the transcendent that sustained them in the midst of crisis (this gives us a good clue as to how Cone views the transcendent). But Cone is adamant that the gospel is more than this.<\/p>\n The gospel is that God is actually at work in the suffering of His people.<\/p>\n Central to Cone\u2019s gospel is that God has turned the cross, a symbol of death and defeat, into \u201ca sign of liberation and new life\u201d (156).<\/p>\n In Niebuhr\u2019s words, the cross of Christ worked a \u201ctransvaluation of values.\u201d In other words, God reveals evil for what it is in the cross, and exalts the suffering of people. Cone says: Let us likewise see the lynching tree as a \u201ctransvaluation of values\u201d (157).<\/p>\n Cone asks us to resist \u201cspiritualizing\u201d the cross via a substitutionary atonement that creates a withdrawn piety, making the cross irrelevant to injustice in the world. This is the white man\u2019s atonement.<\/p>\n Cone argues that \u201cJesus was crucified by the same principalities and powers that lynched black people in America.\u201d And because \u201cGod was present with Jesus on the cross and thereby refused to let Satan and death have the last word\u2026God was also present in every lynching\u2026God transformed lynched black bodies into the re-crucified body of Christ\u201d (158).<\/p>\n There is an \u201copening to the transcendent\u201d here in the crosses of the suffering. Here we see God is at work redemptively through the suffering (Cone plays homage to MLK\u2019s theology of redemptive suffering, 83-92).<\/p>\n The gospel for James Cone is that God is at work in the suffering of the lynching tree, working to overcome the injustice. In my preferred language, Cone is recognizing God\u2019s presence at work in the suffering that is profoundly evident in the cross of Christ at Calvary. (This counters the atonement theology that sees God the Father as separated from\/turning his back on the Son at the cross. Following Greg Boyd<\/a> et. al. I believe God withdrew his presence from holding back the evil, thereby allowing Jesus to take on the consequences of the world\u2019s sin\/violence).<\/p>\n Notice again he says \u201cGod was present with Jesus on the cross,\u201d refusing to let Satan and death have the last word. In the same way \u201cGod was also present in every lynching.\u201d He talks of the \u201cconcrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor.\u201d I believe when he talks about the \u201cthe liberating power of black experience\u201d (154), he is talking about the power of presence, the relational power of God\u2019s presence at work in the world drawing people to reconciliation and renewal. Cone lacks of an account of atonement here. This is problematic because it leaves missing an account of how God works\u2014not through violence\u2014but by overcoming<\/em> the violence.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, this all still resonates powerfully for me and with my own work on\u00a0Faithful Presence<\/a>.<\/p>\n But what does this mean in practice? How are we Christians (especially white Christians) to respond to this?<\/p>\n Cone points us in two directions.<\/p>\n 1) Let us remember.<\/strong> By \u201cremember,\u201d I mean \u201cbe present.\u201d Let us be present to the suffering of the lynching tree. Cone suggests that just as the Germans should never forget the Holocaust, Americans should never forget slavery, segregation, and the lynching tree. By remembering, Cone says, we are recognizing \u201cblacks and whites are bound together in Christ by their brutal and beautiful encounter in this land\u2026What happened to blacks happened to whites. When whites lynched blacks, they were literally and symbolically lynching themselves\u201d (165). Cone believes if America has the courage to face \u201cthe great sin\u201d of lynching and the legacy of white supremacy, this can lead to change and transformation.<\/p>\n 2) Let us act.<\/strong> For Cone, the lynching tree frees the cross from the false pieties of well meaning Christians. We are called to do more than mere contemplation and adoration. In the words of Cone, \u201cwe are faced with the challenge to take the crucified down from the cross\u201d (161). The cross offers us courage that there is more than just contemplation. God is present in the cross. And so we encounter God\u2019s solidarity with the suffering in the cross and discover the beauty therein (162). Cone is not explicit as to what this action will look like, but his assumption is this encounter with the cross and the lynching tree will change the way we live. Cone is confident:<\/p>\n If America has the courage to confront the great sin and ongoing legacy of white supremacy with repentance and reparation there is hope \u201cbeyond tragedy.\u201d (Cone\u2019s concluding words on p. 166).<\/p>\n And so Cone leaves us with a call to remember and a call to action. Let us be present and let us engage.<\/p>\n But how to engage? After the compelling, so important, and so biblical call to be with the suffering, know the suffering, see the injustice, and that God is on the side of the suffering\u2014what Gutierrez called the \u201cPreferential Option of the Poor\u201d\u2014we are called to go do something about it.<\/p>\n But how? Do we engage in activism? Do we engage in trying to change the legal and or economic system through systemic change? Do we engage in coercive engagement, all out \u201cwar\u201d against the evils we plainly see? Do we seek to impose our systems, implement retributive actions to remedy, and make \u201ceven\u201d the injustices done against the victims?<\/strong><\/p>\n After reading Cone, the temptation is to follow the realism of Niebuhr and take the justice of the world into our own hands.<\/p>\n More blatantly, the temptation is to change the world through various coercive<\/em> means. This, to me, is the temptation of Cone\u2014indeed the temptation of liberation theology.<\/p>\n Like Latin American liberation theology, where we are tempted to rely on Marxian social analysis and enter into working for social change through the machinery of antagonism and provoking dialectical revolution, with Cone we are tempted to revert to Niebuhrian realism, to engage in the battles of pitting one side of coercive power over another after the injustice has been revealed.<\/p>\n Cone\u2019s critique of Niebuhr (in Lynching Tree<\/em>) seems at once to condemn the inadequacy of his approach to \u201cproximate justice\u201d while at the same time giving a nod to the realism of his assessment: that indeed we must<\/em> engage the world on the world\u2019s terms, engage its violence with a pushback against it, if indeed we are to accomplish anything.<\/p>\n It is easy to remember how at the end of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s ministry, he himself lost patience with the practice of nonviolence. It\u2019s easy to remember Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and others who viewed non-violence as a losing strategy. We must meet power with power. We must share in the same power that does these wrongs to us. Violence with violence.<\/p>\n But what else is there? Where else is there to go after being faced with the compelling reality of suffering and injustice as unveiled in The Lynching Tree<\/em> (and, for that matter, in all theologies of liberation?)<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s where I propose an Anabaptist alternative to the Niebuhrian option\u2014where we take the best of Cone, and supplement him with Anabaptist practice to build a contextual theology.<\/p>\n The sixth (and final) chapter of Cone\u2019s Lynching Tree<\/em> leads most readers to default to the Niebuhr option. Even though Cone criticizes Niebuhr for the lack of presence proffered by his theology (that I contend is inherent to Niebuhr\u2019s theology), Cone leaves us with no alternative to Niebuhr.<\/p>\n To offer such an alternative, I suggest Cone\u2019s book needs three things:<\/p>\n 1) An Alternative Account of Power:<\/strong> There is lacking in Cone\u2019s book an alternative account of power. As I have argued elsewhere, God in Christ enters the world through his people with an alternative way of power. In the words of Jesus:<\/p>\n You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant (Mark 10:42-43).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n God comes, he convicts, he centers, and realigns all forms of relationship\u2014including interpersonal and systemic ones\u2014through His presence. By \u201cpresence,\u201d I do not mean here a psychologized or spiritualized dynamic at play when people become present to each other, although that may be a part of it. I mean that God\u2019s presence that moves people and systems towards redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, cooperation, and transformation, that is, in essence, supernatural.<\/p>\n This presence of God is more than personal. It is always social. It works for social transformation. And when Christians become present in a space, engage, listen, and speak truth in love, entering the space of violence, injustice, suffering, and opening space for discerning new ways forward, God works. This is presence.<\/p>\n His presence is the opposite of violence and coercion. God\u2019s presence of course can be rejected because God does not coerce. So to the human, God\u2019s presence is inefficient.<\/p>\n But when God\u2019s presence is received and responded to, true transformation breaks out.<\/p>\n This is a different kind of power. But it is power nonetheless, and it is mightily at work. In the words of the great John Perkins:<\/p>\n Racism is satanic. It will therefore take a supernatural force to defeat it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There is judgement against injustice in this power, for in the very rejection of God\u2019s presence, God hands people over to the consequences of their sin for all to see (remember Selma). And change comes again\u2014 either in repentance or the destruction of evil as its own end.<\/p>\n Niebuhr could never fathom that anything political (or social) could be accomplished via God\u2019s presence. For him, spirituality was always individual. Like Martin Luther (he was Lutheran enough in this regard), Niebuhr kept the right hand of Spirit separate from the left hand of the Sword. The political needed the right hand, the left hand could only be individual.<\/p>\n But the Anabaptist in me shouts out: Only so much can be accomplished via the left hand of coercion\u00a0 Yes we need preservatory protections. But it is through the Spirit, God\u2019s presence, that He shall work in the world for healing, reconciliation, and restoration. And this is much more than individual. This is intensely social, political. Though Cone gives overture again and again to presence at work in the suffering of his people, he does not develop how a people\u2014the church\u2014makes space for His presence\u2026what I have called \u201cFaithful Presence.\u201d<\/p>\n Without faithful presence, the church will always be tempted by Niebuhr. We always default to the Niebuhrian temptation.<\/p>\n 2) A Role for The Church:<\/strong> To engage the world\u2019s injustice this way, Cone\u2019s book needs a prominent role for the church. But this goes missing in Cone\u2019s Lynching Tree<\/em>. Indeed the most prominent treatment of the church in The LynchingTree<\/em> is of the white church\u2019s failure in America during the pre- and post-WWII Civil Rights movement. As such, it\u2019s easy to understand why Cone has little imagination for the church to play a role in challenging and transforming the culture of white supremacy so ensconced in the American culture.<\/p>\n And yet, with no account for the church, what we get is a default church. The church in effect becomes a training organization for volunteers to be sent into the world to do the work of justice.<\/p>\n The problem with this option is it always sends Christians into the world with the posture \u201cwe know what is right\u201d and we are here to do battle against this injustice on the world\u2019s terms of violence and antagonism.<\/p>\n It is inevitable, then, that God\u2019s people get absorbed into the world\u2019s violence. And I contend that all we end up accomplishing is some mediating steps towards holding back<\/em> injustice (which is worthy nonetheless) but never get to opening space for the renewal of all things in Christ<\/em>. We settle for less. And often, because we engage the world\u2019s violence with more violence, we make it worse. I call it the Donald Trump effect. And in the end, we are exhausted, depleted justice warriors.<\/p>\n This is not the way God shall change the world.<\/p>\n Instead, it is the church\u2019s task in the world is to be His Faithful Presence. It is by His work in the world, and by participating in it, that God shall bring His justice into the world. The church\u2019s task is to be present to the racism of our culture, speak into it when the space is opened, and make space for the new world coming through reconciliation and table fellowship.<\/p>\n 3) Jesus as Risen King<\/strong>: All of the above assumes that God has come in the Son. He has died, taken on the sin and violence of the world, and won a victory in the resurrection. He ascended and now sits at the right hand, the risen King, the ruling Lord.<\/p>\n Of course, Cone is focused on the cross. But much like evangelicals, Cone\u2019s book offers no account of the resurrection and its role in overcoming racism (for too many evangelicals, the resurrection is merely the vindication of Christ in overcoming death).<\/p>\n But apart from the resurrection and ascension, there is no power of God\u2019s presence at work in the world. Neither is there a church that lives under a different politic. And so power will be flattened (\u00e0 la Niebuhr), and the church will be merely a volunteer training organization for the world\u2019s violence. Jesus becomes merely our example, the exemplar who shows us how it is done. For sure, that is true. But in Christ, God has initiated a new Kingdom, a regime of presence, love, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, renewal, and transformation. None of what I have said above is possible unless God has conquered evil in the world, triumphed over principalities and systems, defeated the chains of sin and antagonism, through the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Christ as Risen Lord.<\/p>\n Will this work?<\/p>\n It depends upon what you mean by \u201cwork.\u201d<\/p>\n But let me remind you of the stories of the early Civil Rights movement in the southern United States. It was Charles Sherrod and those early Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meetings that had multi-racial prayer meetings and sit-ins of presence on southern campuses and town centers that disrupted the ensconced Jim Crow society of the south.<\/p>\n Sherrod said that it was the \u201creconciliation that occurs within the Christian community (that) is the deepest and most permanent of reconciliations.\u201d<\/p>\n As I make the case in Faithful Presence,<\/em> reconciliation is a deep practice of God\u2019s victorious presence in the world. It was Diane Nash of SNCC who said:<\/p>\n Our goal was to reconcile, to create a community recovered or fulfilled, rather than simply gain power over the opposition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here we see communities of presence at the core of what started the disruption of Jim Crow of the 50\u2019s and 60\u2019s.<\/p>\n It was Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm communities of Georgia that gathered people, black and white, cooperating together to share economics and farming, that disrupted the white supremacist Jim Crow culture of Georgia.<\/p>\n It was John Perkins\u2019 practices of the three \u201cR\u2019s\u201d\u2014Relocation, Reconciliation, Redistribution\u2014grounded in the church, which added up to a social agenda more radical than any other advanced by the Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n These grassroots efforts\u2014spreading across the south, grounded in the churches practicing presence\u2014 became the ferment from which the Civil Rights Movement grew, and which later the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. became its public leader (read Charles Marsh\u2019s Beloved Community<\/strong><\/em><\/a> for this history).<\/p>\n Ironically, one wonders: After the death of Martin Luther King Jr., after the accomplishments of several landmark pieces of legislation, whether the Civil Rights Movement was not in fact given over to the government (and para-church organizations) too soon, and in so doing, lost its ferment to go further into revealing racial injustice and healing the divisions and antagonisms. Surely legislation must come, but we need not lose the church\u2019s witness to keep the work of justice flowing against \u2018the powers.\u2019<\/p>\n In the words of John Perkins:<\/p>\n The civil rights movement was an overwhelming success. But it failed to inspire our nation to move beyond integration to reconciliation (as quoted in More Than Equals<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, Spencer Perkins and Rice 1993, 17).<\/p>\n So instead, decades later, what we are left with is a society regressed to a second, more hideous, New Jim Crow<\/em><\/strong><\/a> as well as other variations of white oppression (read these writers.<\/strong><\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\nThe Gospel for James Cone<\/strong><\/h2>\n
But Now What?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Temptation of Niebuhr? <\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Missing Pieces of a Theology of Liberation<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Will This Work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n