#fwbc

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Matthew 6:34  Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Psalm 55:22  Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Psalm 9:9-10 The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.

Psalm 34:10b Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

Isaiah 26: 3-4 Those of steadfast mind you keep in peace—because they trust in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord God you have an everlasting rock.

1 Chronicles 16:11  Seek the LORD and his strength;  seek his presence continually!

Psalm 32:7-8 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

1 Thessalonians 5:11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Deuteronomy 31:8 It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.

“The Cross and the Lynching Tree” is a landmark text on race, religion, and Western Theology written by the late Rev. Dr. James Hal Cone (1938-2018). Cone was a pioneering voice in black liberation theology and is perhaps the most important American theologian of the 20th and 21st centuries. Cone served as Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. 

In “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” cone attempts to reconcile the cross and the lynching tree in the American Christian Imagination. White Christians who claimed the cross, “an emblem of suffering a shame” as the hymn goes, also brutalized African Americans and lynched them. For Cone, this aspect of the African American experience reveals a fundamental irony, paradox, and outright contradiction of Western Civilization: White people cannot understand the Christianity they claim without understanding the cross; Black people fundamentally understand Christianity because we have been on intimate terms with the cross (vis-a-vis lynching, the lynching tree);  the best lens for seeing and interpreting the cross is to bear witness to, examine, and repent from the American crime of lynching-akin to the Roman act of crucifixion. 

In this text, Cone seeks to show how “the cross and the lynching tree interpret each other.” His aim is to reveal how the two symbols “represented both death and the promise of redemption, judgment and the offer of mercy, suffering and the power of hope.”

The study is designed for four sessions as follows:

Monday: Introduction: James Cone and Black Liberation Theology

Tuesday: Chapter One, “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See”); Chapter Two, “The Terrible Beauty of the Cross”.

Wednesday: Chapter Three, “Bearing the Cross and Staring Down the Lynching Tree”); Chapter Four, “The Recrucified Christ in Black Literary Imagination.”

Thursday: Chapter Five, “Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep”; Conclusion: Legacies of the Cross and the Lynching Tree.