Thread by @blackrepublican

"The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching."

-- James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

#RIPJamesCone

"In the “lynching era,” between 1880 to 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women [mostly Christian] in a manner with obvious echoes of the crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these “Christians” did not see the irony or contradiction."

#RIP James H. Cone

"For Mrs. Bradley, the voice she heard was the voice of the resurrected Jesus. It spoke of hope that, although white racists could take her son’s life, they could not deprive his life and death of an ultimate meaning. As in the resurrection of the Crucified One, ...

... God could transmute defeat into triumph, ugliness into beauty, despair into hope, the cross into the resurrection.”

James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

For if the God of the universe could die (unjustly) on a wooden cross, surely this God could relate with those lynched on a wooden tree. Surely, this God leans in close to hear the screams of the oppressed.

-- The Black Conservative