The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Many people wear a cross as a piece of jewellery, "a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks. Rather than reminding us of the 'cost of discipleship', it has become a form of 'cheap grace', an easy way to salvation that doesn't force us to confront the power of Christ's message and mission. "Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ 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. "

"The lynching tree - so strikingly similar to the cross on Golgotha - should have a prominent place in American images of Jesus' death. But it does not. In fact, the lynching tree has no place in American theological reflections about Jesus' cross or in the proclamation of the Christian churches about his Passion. The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching. In the "lynching era" between 1880 to 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these "Christians" did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions."

"Why did Niebuhr fail to connect Jesus' cross to the most obvious cross bearers in society?"