Neon Crosses and Lynching Trees
Worship and the Cross Part 3
Introduction
Imagine the scene with me. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, gather as another round of bodies are set to be hung on trees outside the town. The governing officials are present, and many come by to jeer and mock those hanging there. They barely seem human at this point – their bodies mutilated.
One of them begins to pray, crying out to God, begging for mercy. They mock and laugh as they watch those hanging die that day…
This description could be mistaken for the crucifixion of Jesus, yet it is actually a description of the thousands of lynchings of black men, women, and children that took place here in the United States less than 100 years ago.
Photographs of these town-wide events would be taken and turned into postcards sent to friends and family with a note: “We had a barbecue this afternoon,” as they watched the bodies of victims burn while hanging from trees.
Theologian James Cone points to the lynching tree as the most appropriate and relevant modern picture we have for understanding the cruelty of the cross of Jesus.
Both were sanctioned by government officials, with many of them present and participating. Both were attended by large crowds. Both were a means not only of punishing the particular people being killed but also of striking fear in the rest of the local population. Both were practices reserved only for people whom those in power saw as less than human.
When we hear about the cross of Jesus, it is appropriate to think about the cruel horror of the lynching tree.
The cross was not kind. It was likely a rugged tree with another plank of wood perpendicularly anchored. It was shameful, debasing, and horrifying for both the crucified and for the onlooker.1
This was the death that Jesus died.
Yet, the symbol of the cross in the modern age has become domesticated, like a neon sign pointing the way to a nice restaurant in a quaint neighborhood.
Perhaps too far an over-generalization, but to help make the point, the cross is sometimes co-opted by suburban pieties, niceties, and fond memories, increasingly devoid of the radical nature of the God-Man Jesus hanging outside Jerusalem on a tree with all of the social stigma that would be transmitted to the world in that moment.
We rightly find comfort in the cross, but because its symbolism is no longer an anathema in society as it would have been for the earliest Christians, its meaning is often confused with our personal comfort.
In this series of essays (this final one being long overdue), I have been considering the cross as a cultural symbol and how it informs the church’s worship practice across the ages.
My argument has been that the cultural frame with which we see the cross will greatly influence how we are formed into Christian worship.
If you haven’t read the previous essays, or if you need a refresher on what I mean by “cultural frame” and “cultural symbol,” you can start here.
Here, we will bring those thoughts to a conclusion as we examine the cultural symbol of the cross in our day, the kind of worship it produces, and consider the Black Church in the United States as an example for faithfully reframing what is often lost in the meaning of the cross.
Cultural Symbols of the Cross in Modern Evangelicalism
In a lecture at Princeton University in 2018, Russell Moore said that any “evangelicalism that is worthy to face the future must be cross-shaped...must point to the cross and be about the cross.”
But which cross? That of the soft glow of a neon sign, one that carries the social stigma of the lynching tree, or another altogether? What meaning is being implied by the kind of cross we imagine?
In any culture, there are symbols, narratives, and rituals that give a culture meaning and purpose.2 Symbols like the cross are one such element that helps us make sense of the world that we live in.
Symbols can do all kinds of things in our cultural framework, but simply put, they give meaning and emotion to our lives. You can read more about this here.
I’ve previously used the example of seeing someone driving by in the car you first drove as a teenager. It is not the same one, but it represents to you something significant: a time and place in your life filled with all kinds of meaning and emotion. Some can be painful, some joyful, but that car symbolizes all of that to you.
Gerald Arbuckle explains that symbols “re-present the object.”3 The cross, too, is a symbol. Whenever we see one, it re-creates all kinds of meaning and emotion for us.
Perhaps for you, the cross represents the moment you decided to follow Jesus, or a particularly difficult season in your life when you spent a lot of time focusing on a cross.
It is reminding you of your journey with Jesus, but it is also linking back to Jesus himself on that cross, despised by society, rejected, suffering, and inviting you into His story.
What Moore was scratching at in that 2018 lecture is that the cross has taken on a cultural symbolism completely detached from the story of Jesus’ cross and what that cross meant in its original context.
As I described in the second installment of this series, since Constantine, the cross began to take on a very different symbolic meaning in some places in the Western world. “By this sign you will conquer,” is how the famed story goes, when Constantine had his soldiers paint a cross on their shields.
In an instant, the cross went from a sign of foolishness and social rejection to a sign of military power.
From disgust to dominance.
Throughout history, this alternative vision of the cross has been utilized as crusaders waved flags while attacking Jerusalem, when Klan members burned them to intimidate Black Americans, and as rioters held them high as they attacked the US Capitol Building.
These uses of the cross were possible because of what Constantine and others like him in the Western Church did to reframe the cross as a sign of Christ’s dominance over culture instead of as a sign of Christ’s humble submission and weakness.4
My goal in highlighting this history is not to redeem the cross for all of culture. The world is still the world and will always twist various symbols to its own ends.
Rather, my goal is that Christians would see how the cross has been extracted from its original context and see it again in light of Jesus’ story:
Foolish. Embarrassing. Humiliating.
But in the midst of that social stigma still:
Powerful, Life-Giving, Freeing
Further, we should consider how this triumphalistic, dominant vision of the Cross has hindered our worship.
Many local churches have been tempted by one version or another of asserting moral dominance over the culture (this happens in both liberal and conservative churches). Much of this has become possible because of this view of the cross, which says, “By this sign we shall conquer.”
This cross is, for many in the majority culture in the United States, attractive because of this “dominant” quality. It shines like a neon light, drawing many to it, promising some modern version of prosperity, happiness, and success.
Many of our worship songs gravitate towards victory, overcoming, blessing, and individual fulfillment. These are certainly biblical themes, but it is notable that songs of lament, calls for justice, acknowledging loss and grief don’t make their way into most churches and do not get pushed by a worship industry focused on making money.
‘Sadness’ doesn’t sell. ‘Down and out’ doesn’t dominate.
This is due, in part, to a false vision of the cross.
Yet if we were to reframe the cross in its original context as a sign of utter embarrassment. humility, shame, and violence, it could aid in radically transforming our worship of the slain Lamb.
Because of the specter of the lynching tree, which has loomed for over a century over African-Americans, I suggest the Black Church Tradition offers the best way for those of us in the United States to reshape the meaning and purpose of the cross in our day.
The Cross in the Black Church Tradition
As mentioned previously, James Cone, one of the foremost Black Theologians of the 20th Century, helps us see the radical nature of the Cross for today through his comparison with the Lynching Tree of the Jim Crow South.
He writes, “Like the lynching tree in America, the cross in the time of Jesus was the most ‘barbaric form of execution of the utmost cruelty,’ the absolute opposite of human value systems.”5
Cone writes powerfully and convincingly in his book The Cross and The Lynching Tree of the parallels between what was experienced by Blacks in the Jim Crow South and its obvious connection to the cross.
So convincingly, in fact, that he is shocked that no white theologians seem to be able to make the connection.
For some White Christians, the distant and spiritual Christ could not be associated with a modern atrocity.
For other White Christians, there was no other possibility but that God had ordained Black folks to be subjugated to Whites.
That a completely different cultural framework had developed in White Churches from that of the Black Church becomes clear in the various catechisms taught by White owners to their slaves when they became Christians.
Esau McCaulley recounts one such teaching,
Who gave you a master and a mistress?
God gave them to me.
Who says that you must obey them?
God says that I must.
What book tells you these things?
The Bible.
From the perspective of the slaves, it was quite clear to them that the Christianity taught by their White slave masters was not authentic and was born out of a completely different perspective, devoid of the suffering of the cross.
Summarizing the contradiction, McCaulley concludes, “Early Black conversion entailed finding the real Jesus among the false alternatives contending for power in the culture.”6
This work of “finding the real Jesus” becomes evident as seen in the development of the Black Church, particularly in its worship tradition.
They began to talk, write, sing, and preach about Jesus differently: Jesus was alive, Jesus was real, Jesus understood their suffering in all its forms.
Eventually, they would even describe the lynching tree and the general suffering of Black Americans in “cross-shaped” language.
Their sufferings, they understood, were similar in many ways to Jesus’ suffering. His rejection and shameful persecution were theirs too.
They entered His story.
The Black Church was able to make this connection easily because they were powerless, socially and politically. They had a history of marginalization that helped them better understand Jesus as a socially and politically powerless person like them.
As the great theologian Howard Thurman would later synthesize, Jesus was a poor Jew whose people were under military occupation. Meaning he was of a people who were socially, culturally, and politically powerless, constantly watching over their shoulder to make sure they didn’t do the wrong or say the wrong thing.7
This perspective, arising from their experiences in slavery and under Jim Crow, meant that the Black Church understood that the cross was still a symbol of suffering.
Unlike Constantine’s vision of the cross as a conquering sign, Klan cross burnings, and Capitol riots, the cross of the Black church bore a resemblance to the cross of Jesus, embodying the suffering, weakness, and shame that resonated powerfully with the first Christians in their own weakness.
This did not result in a shameful association for either the Black Church or the first Christians. Rather, it shaped their understanding of Christ’s strength being made perfect in their weakness.
It helped them live the reality of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:18, that even though the cross and the lynching tree seem like social stigmas, it was, for those being saved, the very power of God.
For the Black Church, they were comforted, empowered, emboldened, and hope-filled by the Good News that God knew the same experience of marginalization and suffering, even to the extreme of the lynching tree. And that by it, they were being saved.
The question that all of this leads to, for our purposes, however, is what kind of impact did this have on their worship practice?
Worship Practices In The Black Church
As with the previous essays, I will use the categories of the songs they sang, the liturgy they practiced, and the people included as a rubric for describing some of the explicit features of Black Church worship that were shaped by this understanding of the cross.
1. The songs they sang
It might be right to say that the Black Church has played a significant role in preserving faithful Christian witness amid the false gospels of power and exploitation through its songs.
As mentioned earlier, they preached and sang about a Jesus and a cross as real to them as the lynching tree. Their songs were filled with the reality that Jesus still works today.
Indeed, A. B. Simpson, the founder of my denomination, the Christian & Missionary Alliance, was inspired to search the Scriptures for the truth that Jesus healed today after hearing former slaves sing “Ride on King Jesus” and especially the line,
“There’s no man like Him.”
The well-educated Simpson was led to a “lost” Christian truth in part through the faithful witness of the Black Church!8
Additionally, the Spirituals of the Black Church developed without thought of financial gain, so the subjects of their songs were far more holistic than much of modern evangelical worship music is today, and much more embedded in the story of Jesus as if the singer was right there with Him through all his suffering.
The Gospel music tradition we know today comes from this heritage and is anchored in the reality that the cross is foolishness to the world because it means suffering, much like the lynching tree. But it is powerful because of the God who hung on it.
What comes through in the songs of the black church is a joining in the suffering of Jesus, because He knows what they have experienced, but still finds a way.
It has led to spirituals like a personal favorite that asks, ‘Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?’
Viewing the cross as suffering and foolishness has enabled the Black Church to write and sing songs that place them firmly in the story of scripture as participants in Jesus’ life today.
2. The liturgy they practiced
Participating in the life of Jesus today is nowhere more evident than in the practice of the Lord’s table. As theologian James Evans says, the Eucharist is still the center of all Christian worship.
In taking communion together, Christ, who was crucified and suffered on the cross just as many in the Black Church suffered on the lynching tree, is present at the center of the community.
From that place, Evans says, “Jesus Christ is the liberator who is actually present in this celebration.” And those suffering here on earth are caught up in “the celebration of the historical solidarity of Jesus Christ with the community of faith.”9
3. The people included
The Black Church was the first “Black-owned” institution in the United States. Those who were considered for much of United States history to be the “lowest of the low” were included by themselves. But in reality, they were hosted by Christ as the taking of the Lord’s supper demonstrates.
Their recognition that, despite their own marginalization, they were hosted by Christ has often led the Black Church to speak up for the needs of other weak and ignored groups. And has empowered them to lead the way in including even their perceived enemies at the table.
Theologian Nancy Lynn Westfield describes her mother, a lifetime advocate for children in the Philadelphia Public School system, as an influential woman who got things done for the good of the least of these in her city.
She was incredibly skilled at bringing together various elected officials and educators to get things done. Westfield thought of her mother’s use of her cooking and hosting skills as the tools of a smooth political operator, yet her mother insisted that “her work came out of the Christian notion of friendship.”10
When perceived as the symbol of ultimate humility and lowliness, the cross led many in the Black Church towards this kind of radical hospitality for all people, even their enemies.
Conclusion
Though not perfect, the Black Church represents a faithful Christian tradition that demonstrates how to keep the meaning of the cross in its proper context.
It truly was and still is foolishness, just like the grotesque lynching tree. But it is power for those who are being saved by it.
In our comfortable American Christianity, we have become too at home with the soft neon glow of the cross in heavily produced stage environments, being swayed by vibey electronic tones, singing songs of God’s blessing and prosperity.
In some ways, these worship fever dreams are so far removed from the visceral reality in which the cross of Jesus really sits, it can be hard to imagine the kind of Christian practice that was normal in the early church flowing from this kind of environment on its own.
We have perhaps become too entranced by watching “God move” in a musical moment, that we’ve lost the reality that to follow Jesus is as socially taboo as death on a lynching tree.
In an age where many Christians are attempting to win back cultural relevance and power, or claim the cross frees us from pain for a life of prosperity, it is vital that we recapture the meaning of the cross from a first-century perspective.
It is utter foolishness.
Many of our Black brothers and sisters have been faithful witnesses to this truth.
We would be wise to pay attention.
For more on crucifixion in the ancient world, read Crucifixion by Martin Hengel.
Gerald A. Arbuckle, Earthing the Gospel: An Inculturation Handbook for Pastoral Workers, 27-28.
Arbuckle, Earthing the Gospel, 29.
To be sure, Christ certainly reigns over the world as the scriptures teach, but he reign is one that has come through suffering and service, not violent dominance.
James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, 35
Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation As An Exercise In Hope, 78
As described in James Evans, We Have Been Believers, 97.
David Jones, A. B. - The Unlikely Founder of a Global Movement, 84
Evans, We Have Been Believers, 164.
Nancy Lynn Westfield, She Put Her Foot in the Pot, in “Creating Ourselves: African Americans and Hispanic Americans on Popular Culture and Religious Expression”, 346