Abstract
This article seeks to learn from James Cone’s theology of the cross as articulated in his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by bringing Cone’s theology into conversation with the theology and ethics of the book of Deuteronomy. It proceeds by first discerning the ways in which the birth of the blues may in some ways parallel the birth of biblical law. Blues and jazz music were birthed in the agonizing suffering of the black community during the era of lynching, expressing both the grief and the resilience and hope of African Americans. Perhaps with some similarity, biblical law is a divine–human response to ancient Israel’s experience of enslavement and genocide in Egypt. This law is an ancient invitation into authentic community. Next, the article discerns core themes in Cone’s theology of the cross, namely solidarity with the oppressed, redemptive suffering, and victory over oppression. Cone unfolds these themes by seeking to understand the cross through the experience of the torturous suffering of blacks in the South. The article then finds these same themes in the theology and ethics of Deuteronomy through an examination of the social law, feasting texts, covenant texts, and laws concerning slavery in this book. We learn from Cone that the horrific barbarity of white supremacy in a culture of lynching is a vital corrective lens through which to see and understand the cross of Christ for US Christians. Indeed, Deuteronomy forces us to conclude that a theology of the cross that ignores dynamics of oppression and liberation is theologically myopic. The argument, by extension, is that the suffering of blacks in the United States is also a fresh and vital lens through which to view and understand biblical law.
Hundreds of kodaks clicked all morning at the scene of the lynching. People in automobiles and carriages came from miles around to view the corpse dangling from the end of a rope . . . Picture cards photographers installed a portable printing plant at the bridge and reaped a harvest in selling the postcard showing a photograph of the lynched Negro. Women and children were there by the score. At a number of country schools the day’s routine was delayed until boy and girl pupils could get back from viewing the lynched man.
1
Nearly five thousand African Americans were lynched by whites who were motivated by the hatred at the core of white supremacy during the era of lynching, between 1880 and 1940, James Cone tells us. 2 This article seeks to learn from Cone’s theology of the cross as it is expressed in his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by bringing into conversation the birth of the blues during the violent context of the Reconstruction era with the birth of biblical law in the context of Israel’s slavery in Egypt.
In his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone develops a theology of the cross in light of black 3 suffering and resilience through the horror and agony of the lynching era. Cone challenges theologizing on the cross of Christ that takes place in the Western church and Academy, on the basis that an understanding of the cross has been divorced from the modern realities of systemic suffering and oppression that are germane to the cross itself. Thousands of books have been written on the cross in the past hundred years, without so much as a mention of lynching. 4 And yet, the association of the cross with the lynching tree is as visceral as it is theological. A stark visual resemblance exists between the torturous death of blacks in the South—black bodies hanging from trees—with the cross of Christ. And yet, the similarity goes beyond visual appearance. In both Roman crucifixion and the lynching of black people in the United States, an innocent victim was executed by the will of the state, at the frenzied cry of a mob, in a public display that is carefully curated and advertised in order to strike fear in the hearts of the subordinate population. Cone asserts, “The lynching tree is the cross in America. When American Christians realize that they can meet Jesus only in the crucified bodies in our midst, they will encounter the real scandal of the cross.” 5
This article seeks first to learn appreciatively from Cone’s theology of the cross by a careful examination of The Cross and the Lynching Tree. This is an exercise in active listening, seeking also to discern ways in which the birth of the blues in the context of black life under white supremacy parallels the birth of biblical law in the context of slavery in Egypt (Part I). Part II brings the theology and ethics of biblical law in Deuteronomy into conversation with Cone’s theology of the cross, seeking to listen to the harmony created when Cone’s theology of the Cross and Deuteronomy’s theology and ethics resonate together.
I write as a white, male, Australian who lives and works in Canada. Alongside personal friendships with African Americans, my closest connection with the story of lynching in the United States is through my (side) vocation as a professional jazz pianist. As a jazz musician, I have spent thousands of hours listening deeply to the “sounds” of this story. The blues and jazz express both the lament and also the resilience of the black community as it experienced the unspeakable suffering of lynching and sought to make sense of it through the eyes of faith. Yet, I am ultimately an outsider to this story. I write this article not in order to contribute to black theology (which I cannot do), but to learn from black theology and experience as a white Christ follower who is often challenged by my BIPOC 6 friends and colleagues with the question: “Who are you reading?” Furthermore, I am gripped by the sobering reality that the subjects of two of my (vocational) love affairs, jazz music and biblical law, each emerge from the horror of enslavement, lynching, and torture. This article is also an effort to probe this connection more deeply.
Slavery, lynching, and the blues, in the United States and in the Hebrew Bible
Lynching, its history and social significance
The South is crucifying Christ again By all the laws of ancient rote and rule; The ribald cries of ‘Save Yourself’ and ‘Fool’ Din in his ears, the thorns grope for his brain, And where they bite, swift springing rivers stain.
Excerpt from “Christ Recrucified” (Countee Cullen, 1922). 7
The history of lynching is deeply personal for Cone. He recalls his childhood experience of anxiously watching and waiting for his father to return home after work should his father stay out any longer than usual, “hoping that the lights from every vehicle would be the lights from his pick-up truck.” 8 Despite his mother’s reassurance of Jesus’ care for his father, he knew that his mother was scared too. For the African American community, the reality of lynching is held with unspeakable pain: “Visions of black bodies dangling from southern trees, surrounded by jeering white mobs—is almost too excruciating to recall.” 9 The term “lynching” describes the extra-judicial murder of victims by a variety of methods, including hanging, shooting, stabbing, dragging, and burning. Death by lynching regularly involved torture, prolonged methods of killing that inflicted a maximum amount of agony and shame. This could include castration and rape. Lynching was extra-judicial in the sense that it was sanctioned by the community, with the tacit approval of the governing authorities.
Lynching was a means of maintaining white supremacy during the Reconstruction era. At the end of the Civil War, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which gave black men rights of citizenship and political participation. Many white southerners were furious at the idea that blacks could have equal respectability and participation with whites. Lynching was necessary, it was argued, in order to keep blacks in their place, to redeem the South, saving it from domination by ex-slaves. 10 Lynching was commonly justified, in both official and unofficial channels, through racist stereotypes of black men as rapists, beasts who were set upon soiling the virtue of white women. 11
Not only men but also women and children were lynched. The well-publicized lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, 1955, brought to the public awareness the hidden and horrendous lynching, not only of Till, but also of hundreds of other African American children. As well, 2% of black victims were women. Some of these women suffered in place of a male relative who had fled the mob; some of these women were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and others were punished for bravely standing against racial violence. 12
Lynching was not the isolated crime of a few; rather it was perpetrated by and sanctioned by the community. Often, the date, time, and place for a lynching was advertised in a local newspaper, and in some places as many as 10,000–20,000 people could gather to watch the spectacle. An industry of photography and gift cards grew around the culture of lynching; spectators purchased cards in order to post them to relatives, often posing with the victim for the photograph. Lynching was not only sanctioned by the populace, but by the police and by every level of government. 13 Lynchers, thus, often made no effort to hide their identity. If there was a complaint against them, they could count on the support of the police and even of a jury.
The point of lynching was to gain the attention of those watching and of those who could not bear to watch. Lynching was not merely the action of frenzied mobs, but, as Ida B. Wells puts it, “the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an ‘unwritten law’ that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.” 14 It was the premeditated and calculated effort of whites in the South to maintain white supremacy by instilling fear in the black population through acts of torture and dehumanization.
Yet, as Cone states, “What is most ironic is that the white lynchers of blacks in America were not regarded as criminals; like Jesus, blacks were the criminals and the insurrectionists. The lynchers were the ‘good citizens’ who often did not even bother to hide their identities.” 15 Indeed, “The vigilantes were white Christians who claimed to worship the Jew lynched in Jerusalem.” 16 And yet in the face of this paradox, Cone argues that precisely in the cross of Christ God wrings victory out of oppression. For this reason, lynching is “the window that best reveals the religious meaning of the cross in our land.” 17
The blues: Lament, hope, and resilience
“How did southern rural blacks survive the terrors of this era?” Cone reflects. Self-defense and protest were out of the question, but there were other forms of resistance. For most blacks it was the blues and religion that offered the chief weapons of resistance. At the juke joints on Friday and Saturday nights and at churches on Sunday mornings and evening week nights blacks affirmed their humanity and fought back against dehumanization. Both black religion and the blues offered sources of hope that there was more to life than what one encountered daily in the white man’s world.
18
Robert Johnson, perhaps the most significant figure in the development of the blues, sang: I got to keep movinnnn’, I got to keep movinnnn’, Blues fallin’ like hail And the day keeps on worryin’ me, These’s a hellhound on my trail.
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As Cone reflects, Johnson’s hellhound is nothing less than the brutality of lynching, the fearful reality that haunted black people daily. Yet, through the lament, singing, dancing, and laughter of the blues and the juke joint, along with the hope and sorrow of the cross celebrated in the churches, the black community found the strength, resilience, and humanity to live and to hope. One of the best-known spirituals begins with a note of despair: Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, Nobody knows my sorrow. Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen.
The final line is a cry of hope: Glory, Hallelujah!
20
“If the blues offered an affirmation of humanity, religion offered a way for black people to find hope.” 21 The beauty within black culture was and is as real as the brutality that blacks experienced daily; “the beauty prevents the brutality from having the final word.” 22
The visceral capacity of the blues to express suffering can be viewed from the perspective of music theory. Of course, the deep connection that the blues makes with the human soul is ultimately inscrutable. For example, the endlessly complex use of time in the blues needs to be experienced rather than described, and yet the concept of so-called “blues notes” is one lens into the soul and sound of the blues that can give one insight into the transcendent capacity of the blues to express the suffering and resilience of the human spirit. As the blues is typically conceived, three blues notes form a part of the tonality characteristic of the blues. In Western classical music, a common interval is the third. In the key of C, a Major third would be the interval of C and E. These two notes, when played together, sound harmonious, containing little dissonance. In the blues, the third is lowered to a Minor third, comprising C and E♭. This interval discloses more tension—more “trouble”—than the Major third. A second blues note is the flattened fifth, which, in the key of C, is C and G♭. Again, the flattened fifth contains far more tension than the more common interval in the Western tradition of C and G, which is known as a perfect fifth. A third blues note is the flattened seventh, which in the key of C would be C and B♭. In the blues, these three intervals sing out the pain of slavery and of lynching. They express the sorrow of the black experience, an experience without which the blues would not exist. Further, jazz, soul, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, pop music, or even country music as we know it would not exist without the blues and, therefore, also without that horrific scar on the American soul that birthed the blues, the dehumanizing and hate-filled history of lynching.
Slavery and the birth of biblical law
Parallels may be drawn between the birth of the blues in the Reconstruction era, which followed approximately 250 years of slavery, and the birth of biblical law, which emerged in the wake of slavery in Egypt. Biblical law occurs in three law corpora, known respectively as the Covenant Code (Exod 21:22–23:19), the Deuteronomic Code (Deut 12–26), and the Holiness Code (Lev 17–25). The Decalogue is a further distinctive expression of biblical law (Exod 20:1–17; Deut 5:6–21). To read biblical law for all that it is worth, one needs to understand that these instructions were received by Israel less than three months after being rescued from slavery in Egypt across the Sea of Reeds. The Israelites arrived at Mount Sinai to receive these words with the wounds on their back from the Egyptian whip still raw and open.
Consider what life had been like for the Israelites in Egypt before God delivered them. The Hebrews labored in the brick factories of Pharaoh. Under the whip, they built store cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses (Exod 1:11). Male babies were systematically destroyed to prevent any uprising, a policy that amounted to genocide (Exod 1:15–22). Chilling also is Pharaoh’s command that, in addition to making bricks, the Israelites must also gather the straw (Exod 5:1–23). Pharaoh’s command is a virtual death sentence for the community. Human lives, Israelite lives at least, were expendable in Pharaoh’s pursuit of economic expansion.
Yahweh strategically placed one Hebrew, Moses, in the courts of the empire. From within the flames of a burning bush, Yahweh said to Moses: I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters . . . I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Exod 3:7–8)
23
The Hebrew word for “cry” in this passage is a technical term for the cry of the oppressed. 24 In response to their cry, Yahweh emancipated this enslaved people group, while also bringing judgment upon Pharaoh for his oppressive rule. Yahweh then brought the Israelites to Mount Sinai to receive the law. Discussed below, through these laws Yahweh was creating a new community that operated according to how God wants all human communities to operate: a society in which every person can flourish without oppression or racism.
Hope, in the blues and in the exodus event
In places of dark evil, God seems to be often growing something beautiful, something that is both divine and deeply human. This grace does not justify human evil and atrocity, but it offers the possibility of hope, evident in the black community of the South. In the face of unspeakable oppression, Cone observes, many black parents not only worked hard to love the white oppressors, but also (remarkably) strived to teach their children not to hate. 25 Blues music was birthed from within the suffering and horror of lynching, as both lament and also as a cry of life, a strident testimony to the survival, resilient and creative, of the African American community. In perhaps a similar way, biblical law is a divine–human response to enslavement and genocide. This law is God’s ancient invitation into community, which pronounces judgement upon oppressors, inviting God’s people into life itself.
The cross and biblical law
The cross in Cone
“The South is crucifying Christ again,” Countee Cullen’s poem begins. Reflecting the theology of Cullen’s poem, Cone reflects: “In the United States, the clearest image of the crucified Christ was the figure of an innocent black victim, dangling from a lynching tree.” 26 Exploration of four of the book’s major, recurring themes concerning the cross assists in unpacking Cone’s theology of the cross in The Cross and the Lynching Tree. First, Cone unfolds the profound symbolic correspondence between lynching in the United States and the cross of Christ. Expressions of Jesus’ death on a cross, in preaching, hymns, spirituals, and art, expressed the horrific agony of black victims in the era of lynching in the United States: “‘Calvary, Calvary, Calvary,’ blacks sang slowly with a mournful sound, feeling Jesus’ suffering as their own.” 27 A stark visual association exists between Christ’s cross and the lynching tree. Yet, the association extends beyond visual similarity: Christ, too, was put to death as an innocent victim at the hands of an oppressive regime and at the request and cry of the mob. Both crucifixion and lynching were a torturous, barbaric, and deliberated method of striking fear in the hearts of a subordinate population. So, the black community spoke of Christ as the “first lynchee”; 28 “The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.” 29 Cone reimagines the incarnation of Christ in the context of lynching in the United States: Christ was born in Georgia, in a lynching state. 30
A second theme is solidarity. Cone explains that the cross of Christ connects with the oppression of blacks in a deeper way than Jesus’ teaching, miracles, or even his resurrection. When blacks sang and told the story of Jesus’ suffering, it is as if they were there suffering with him. This is a radical inversion of the values and assumptions of the dominant culture: God sides with those who are oppressed and mutilated, by humbly suffering the same indignity and agony. 31 “He was crucified by the same principalities and powers that lynched black people in America.” 32 Christ’s embodied solidarity with the victims of violent white supremacy transforms the ugliness of torture and death into hope and beauty.
This moves into a third element of Cone’s theology of the cross: redemptive suffering. By the phrase “redemptive suffering,” Cone does not mean that suffering itself is redemptive, but that precisely in Christ’s suffering God defeats oppression, for “God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Cor 1:27). 33 Christ’s redemptive suffering is linked to the suffering of blacks, as Christ suffered in solidarity with victims of violent oppression. Stanley Crouch called Jesus’ cry of dereliction “Perhaps the greatest blues line of all time.” 34
A fourth theme is that in the cross of Christ, God wrung victory out of defeat and suffering: God “snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.” 35 In the mystery of the cross, the revelation of God’s power in human history is weak and humble rather than powerful. Yet this is the “terrible beauty” of the cross, as Niebuhr puts it, 36 that through the atrocity and unspeakable suffering of crucifixion, God enthrones the crucified One, winning a victory over the principalities and powers.
Four key themes within Cone’s theology of the cross become clear when viewing the cross in relationship to the lynching tree in the United States: (i) the cross symbolically associates with lynching; (ii) Christ suffered in solidarity with oppressed and suffering people; (iii) Christ’s suffering was redemptive for innocent sufferers and for the world; and (iv) in the cross, God wrung a victory out of death and suffering. Though these four themes are clear in Cone’s book, Cone does not structure his discussion of the cross according to these four themes. Rather, Cone’s method is to explore the cross imaginatively, 37 rediscovering the cross in light of the oppression and suffering of the lynching era, and in light of the hope and resilience of the black community expressed in the blues and in their faith in the crucified One.
Biblical law and the blues
Blues and jazz music were birthed in contexts of slavery, lynching, and white supremacy, and yet this music sounds the song of the human soul, a testimony to survival and rejection of dehumanizing torture. Perhaps in a similar way, biblical law is a divine–human response to enslavement and genocide. This law is God’s ancient invitation into community, an explicit rejection of the oppression and torture the Hebrews experienced in Egypt. An examination of biblical law enables one to discern these redemptive impulses in the book of Deuteronomy. The purpose of this exploration of Deuteronomy is two-fold: first, to explore imaginatively the development of biblical law in parallel with the development of the blues, and, second, to listen to the harmony created when Cone’s theology of the cross and Deuteronomy’s theology and ethics sound together. Of course, Deuteronomy was not delivered at Mount Sinai, as the law corpus within the book of Exodus was. Rather, Deuteronomy contains Moses’ address to the next generation of Israelites in Moab on the brink of the Jordan River. The specter of slavery and of emancipation in the exodus event, however, deeply shapes Deuteronomy. Three texts from Deuteronomy exemplify this shaping.
Hireling law, Deut 24:14–15
Do not oppress a needy and destitute hired laborer, whether one of your brothers/sisters or your stranger who is in your land and within your gates. You shall give him/her his wage in his day, before night comes upon him/her, for s/he is poor, s/he is always in dire need of it, so s/he will not call out against you to Yahweh and you will incur guilt. (Deut 24:14–15)
The hireling law contains two parts: first a prohibition of oppressing a hired laborer and then a stipulation for prompt payment. A motivation clause indicates the efficacy of a curse uttered by a hireling to Yahweh: “So s/he will not call out against you to Yahweh and you will incur guilt” (Deut 24:14–15). This curse associates with a blessing that may be uttered by a grateful debtor in an earlier stipulation “s/he will bless you” (Deut 24:13). In this way, Deuteronomy teaches that Yahweh is attentive and responsive to both the curse and blessing that vulnerable people may utter toward their oppressors or toward those who have compassion upon them. 38 This law insists that landed farmers in Israel take kinship responsibility for the hireling, for according to this law clansfolk are to be treated as sister–brother, and in the same way also the stranger is to be treated as sister–brother (Deut 24:14). 39 The brother–sister ethic in the hireling law resounds with the African American ethic of brotherhood of all human beings—an ethic of solidarity. 40
Eighth commandment: “You shall not steal,” Deut 5:19
The eighth commandment within the Decalogue states, “You shall not steal.” For much of my life, this command brought to my mind an image of a thief in a black mask creeping around a house at night. I was imagining someone who was poor stealing from the wealthy. Certainly, the eighth commandment prohibits any kind of theft. However, the command “You shall not steal” was declared primarily to restrain those who have wealth and power. This emphasis is evident, first, in the context of slavery in Egypt: the thrust of this command is that there are to be no “Pharaohs” in Israel; no one household is to amass wealth at the expense of others. Second, it is apparent in that a primary goal of the law corpora within the Pentateuch was to curb the excess and violence of wealthy and powerful people (e.g., Exod 22:21–27; Deut 15:1–15; 24:6–22; Lev 19:9–16). Consider, for example, the biblical laws surrounding land possession. Land law protected households against poverty. Every Israelite family was to own land suitable for agriculture and for grazing, and a family’s patrimony could not be revoked: “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine” (Lev 25:23). God owns the land, and God has given everybody a share in it.
The thrust of the eighth commandment is that no one family is permitted to accumulate excessively. The goal is that no family will permanently fall into poverty. In this way, the eighth command dignifies every family, even outsiders (see below). In the United States, the ideology of white supremacy used the terror of lynching to ensure that blacks would not achieve the wealth, status, or political agency of whites. For a white man in the South, a black man earning wealth that would put him on the same level as the white man was intolerable. The eighth command, however, ensures that every person and every household have its share in the divine supply.
Furthermore, this law entails an ethic of restraint on the part of every human being so the good gifts of God may be shared among every person. By calling for restraint, this law hints at an ethic of redemptive suffering, for Israelites are called to take less for themselves for the sake of others. Bringing this into conversation with redemptive suffering in Cone’s theology of the cross leads to the conclusion that enduring the torment of torture is vastly different from willingly taking a posture of restraint for the sake of others; yet, Christ’s call upon His followers to serve others (Mark 10:43–44) is linked thematically in the gospels to Christ’s call to take up one’s cross (Mark 8:34–35).
Covenant solidarity, Deut 10:17–19
A third text in Deuteronomy that demonstrates the resonance between Deuteronomy and Cone’s theology of the cross is Deut 10:18–19: Yahweh executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving them food and clothing. Love the stranger, therefore, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deut 10:18–19)
Notice that the word “love” is used in this passage with regard to the strangers. Just a few verses earlier is an affirmation of God’s love for God’s people: “Yet the
To understand the significance of this association, one needs to unpack the word “love.” The term “love” comes from treaties between kings in the ancient world. Deuteronomy itself is formulated in the terms of covenant between Israel and Yahweh, Israel’s king. I have shown elsewhere that there are three aspects to “love” in this text. 41 First, “love” entails a covenant commitment of solidarity. Second, “love” expresses a kinship connection, which includes taking kinship-responsibility for the other. Third, “love” also entails emotion, as Jacqueline Lapsley has demonstrated. 42 These three dynamics of love within Deut 10:17–18 are represented in Figure 1.
A triangle of kinship connections between Yahweh, Israelites, and the stranger in Deut 10:15–19.
In Deut 10:17–18, God makes a covenant with the stranger. This covenant is nothing less than a steadfast commitment of protection and love with the outsider, the stranger; what a remarkable revelation of the character of God! God’s people are also called, however, to make the same commitment of solidarity with the outsider (a category which will include people of another ethnicity), a commitment of love, of kinship, of emotional investment. Deuteronomy’s assertion that God has a covenant commitment to the stranger resounds theologically with Cone’s articulation of the cross, whereby Christ suffers in loving solidarity with blacks who are tortured and disfigured in lynching by virtue of their race. God’s liberating presence may be found in solidarity with black victims who endure unspeakable suffering.
Slavery in Deuteronomy
Also necessary in bringing Deuteronomy into dialogue with Cone’s theology of the cross is exploring Deuteronomy’s response to slavery. Ancient Israel was a slave culture, something Israel had in common with the rest of the ancient world. During a period of ongoing drought, for a farmer to take out consecutive loans was all too easy, thus eroding any capital the farmer could offer as security against the loan. Once one’s valuable possessions had been spent, the next almost unthinkable step was to offer human capital in order to secure a loan, to exchange a family member for food or for the seed necessary to plant the next crop.
Deuteronomy’s response to slavery is thoroughly embedded in this social and economic world, and yet Deuteronomy also radically transforms the practices and ideology surrounding human capital. To begin, Deuteronomy insists upon radical measures to prevent people from falling into debt slavery. Loans are to be offered without interest, for a person who is in need is your “sister–brother” (Deut 15:7–11). Also, all loans are to be cancelled in the seventh year of release, again on the basis that a debtor is also your sister–brother (Deut 15:1–6). If, despite these measures, a person should nonetheless fall into slavery (which would mean the community had failed to follow the above stipulations), then such a person must be released from slavery in the seventh year of release (Deut 15:12–18).
Other laws recognize the dignity of slaves as full members of the community, as full participants in its religious and familial life. Within a broader social context in which slaves were not permitted to rest from labor for even a single day, the Sabbath law includes slaves within the seventh-day rhythm of Sabbath (Deut 5:12–15). Perhaps most significantly, slaves are included within cultic feasting (Deut 16:11, 14), a provision that aims to enfold the slave within the household as kindred. 43 Yet, should a master fail to treat a slave with grace, Deuteronomy provides that a fleeing slave must be included and enfolded within any Israelite community in which they should desire to make their home (Deut 23:15–16). This law recasts the fleeing slave as a free person, disrupting slavery as an institution; slavery will continue only so long as it continues to be of benefit to an individual slave.
How are we to interpret Deuteronomy’s stipulations in reference to slavery in the United States (and indeed, slavery today)? Biblical ethics are always embedded in a particular social context, within the genuine limits of particular social and economic realities. The interpreter must inquire: what are the values projected in this biblical text? What is the trajectory of these laws, the direction of the transformation implied in the laws? Deuteronomy’s response to slavery insists (in line with Cone’s theology) that every person is a sister–brother, and therefore must be treated with dignity and tenderness, as family. Seeing that, for Deuteronomy, slavery may only continue so long as the slave feels that it is beneficial for him/her, one might conclude that this arrangement is not really slavery at all. Taking Deuteronomy’s stipulations concerning slaves together, Deuteronomy’s “slave” is essentially adopted within the household as kindred.
From this discussion one can see that biblical law, birthed in the atrocity of slavery in Egypt as it was, shaped Israel into a contrast community that lived in the sight of the nations, bearing witness through its transformed life to the loving reign of God. This was a breaking in of the kingdom of God into a human society that is in the thrall of violent evil. The law was an instrument of the Spirit, through which God worked in power to bring healing to human relationships. God’s healing power goes deep down into every aspect of human life, into human relationships, into the structure of society, into politics, into eating practices, into the law courts, and into economics. The law is an invitation to live well, as sister–brother with one another.
The cross and Deuteronomy
As discussed, two particular trajectories in Deuteronomy’s theology and ethics resound with Cone’s theology of the cross: first, God’s solidarity with suffering people and, second, the possibility of redemptive suffering. Deuteronomy’s relentless redemptive ethic—of prioritizing the needs of others over and above one’s own economic privilege, of taking less so that others can have more, of covenant solidarity that invites true and authentic community, of sisterhood–brotherhood that can only be experienced when we share God’s good gifts as given to every person in the community no matter what ethnicity—resounds deeply with Cone’s theology of the cross, whereby God has won a victory from oppression. These two theologies, Cone’s theology of the cross and that of Deuteronomy, sound together like a thick and wondrous jazz chord!
One may add to this harmonic texture the exodus event in Deuteronomy, which opens wide the possibility of, and the imagination for, a totally new society. Deuteronomy seeks to shape a community in the spiritual and ethical trajectory of the exodus. The exodus is mentioned some fifty times in Deuteronomy; this motif is a hermeneutical key to understanding the book. Yahweh rules as the liberating king who is forming a society of mutuality and justice in sharp contrast to the culture of Egypt from which God has emancipated the people.
Within Deuteronomy’s theology of the exodus, Israel is not only “brought out” but also “brought in” (Deut 6:1–25). Yahweh “brought out” Israel from Egypt in order to form her into a new society in the promised land. The laws of Israel’s new King, Yahweh, are consistent with the ethical trajectory of the exodus itself, securing justice for vulnerable and oppressed groups, even as redemption from Egypt had brought freedom for this oppressed nation of slaves. Thus, the exodus event commonly appears in motivation clauses in Deuteronomy that are attached to various stipulations, e.g., “You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall be careful to observe these statutes” (Deut 16:12). God’s victory over oppression in the exodus event opened wide the possibility of a new community, which resonates with Cone’s theology of the cross of Christ, whereby the power of God was present to bring good out of evil and brotherhood out of the hate and evil of white supremacy. Yet judgement is also present in both cases, for even as the exodus event was bad news for Pharaoh and those who supported him, “the cross,” Cone states, “as a location of divine revelation, is not good news for the powerful, for those who are comfortable with the way things are, or for anyone whose understanding of religion is aligned with power.” 44
Making the hermeneutic explicit here will be helpful. How, exactly, does Deuteronomy relate to the cross of Christ? The term “gospel” is unfolded in detail three times in the New Testament (Rom 1:1–4; 1 Cor 15:1–4; 2 Tim 3:8). Each time, the “gospel” of Jesus Christ is said to be the climactic fulfillment of the story of Israel found in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, God is shaping a community that operates as family, as kindred, where every person can flourish. One may extrapolate, then, that the gospel of Jesus Christ somehow establishes this community (as the fulfillment of the story of Israel), infusing the community with the power of the cross to overcome hate and separation. Deuteronomy shows that the gospel of Jesus Christ is deeply communal, that as Christ fulfils the story of Israel in the church and in the world, this fulfillment will include a wondrous experience of fellowship, of brotherhood–sisterhood.
Yet, perhaps the most visceral connection between the cross and the lynching tree in Deuteronomy is found in the phrase, “Cursed is anyone hung on a tree” (Deut 21:23). Paul picks up this phrase in the Pauline Epistles, regarding Christ becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13). This law belongs in a sub-group of laws in Deuteronomy that insist upon just and impartial judicial processes. 45 This stipulation concerns the process of delivering capital punishment in a context of just judicial process. The goal of the stipulation is that the body of an executed criminal is treated with dignity. Bringing this into conversation with lynching in the United States, lynchees were commonly denied even a judicial hearing, and certain ones were denied the right of appeal and impartial judicial process.
A motivation clause is attached to the law: “You shall not defile your land that Yahweh your God is giving you for an inheritance” (Deut 21:23b). While at first glance it may appear that the presence of a corpse might defile the land, this is not the reasoning in Deuteronomy. Rather, the undignified treatment of a criminal (who has been justly tried and convicted) is Deuteronomy’s concern: an unjust judicial process that leads to the mistreatment of a human being (even a dead human being) will defile the land (cf. Deut 16:20; 17:7b). With this stipulation, Deuteronomy reminds us that the mutilating and disfiguring of black bodies on the lynching tree was, and is, outrageous to God. Deuteronomy insists that the very land is defiled when human beings treat one another atrociously. This responsiveness of the creation itself to the moral order comports with Cone’s reflection that, when whites lynched blacks, they were also lynching themselves. 46
The conclusion must be, then, that Deuteronomy’s liberative ethic and theology supports Cone’s claim that the individualistic Western theology of the cross that ignores God’s victory over oppression is culturally myopic and theologically flawed.
Conclusion
It seems that even in places of dark evil, God may be growing something beautiful. It is difficult to imagine something more evil than the atrocity of whites systematically torturing and lynching blacks in the United States during the era of lynching, 1880–1940. Jazz and blues music were birthed in this context of suffering and injustice, expressing both the grief and also the resilience and hope of the black community. Perhaps in a similar way, biblical law is a divine–human response to ancient Israel’s experience of enslavement and genocide in Egypt. This law is an ancient invitation into authentic community.
This article has attempted to learn appreciatively from Cone’s theology of the cross, by first describing Cone’s theology and then putting it into conversation with Deuteronomy’s theology and ethics. For Cone, Christ suffered on the cross in solidarity with suffering lynched victims. Christ’s suffering was also redemptive in the sense that Christ’s agonizing death brought life from violence and death. Also, in the cross of Christ, God wrung a victory out of oppression, triumphing over evil and destroying the principalities and powers surrounding racism and white supremacy. Deuteronomy’s theology and ethics correspond in many ways to Cone’s gospel. In the exodus event, Yahweh achieves an act of slave emancipation of epic proportions. In line with the ethical and spiritual trajectory of the exodus, Deuteronomy holds out a redemptive ethic calling people into kinship-solidarity with one another. This call to kinship includes embracing as family those who may be of different racial backgrounds. Deuteronomy calls humanity to suffer a cost for the sake of others, entailing an element of redemptive suffering.
Cone’s book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, attempts to answer two questions: “Can the cross redeem the lynching tree? Can the lynching tree liberate the cross and make it real in American history?” 47 Through his book, Cone shows how Christ’s solidarity with blacks in the agony of the cross gave blacks hope and faith to live within the “brutal legacy of the lynching tree”. 48 The lynching tree also liberates the cross from its captivity to the dominant cultural narrative: the lynching tree leads Cone to assert that the cross of Christ is inseparable from the evil of oppression, raising Christ both as its victim and also as its vanquisher. As such, we must agree with Cone’s critique of the “bankruptcy of any theology in America that [does] not engage the religious meaning of the African American struggle for justice.” 49 On the basis of this analysis, one might say the same for biblical law. To be sure, in Protestant theology, Old Testament law has been thought to have little more significance than as a spotlight that casts its light around our lives in order to display our sinfulness. Bringing Deuteronomy into conversation with Cone’s theology of the cross, however, reveals something more. It is as if the exodus event has opened a gate that leads into a lush garden. The garden represents this renewed community, in which every person can flourish, especially the most vulnerable. God’s people were invited to enjoy that garden, tending to its plants responsibly (obeying the law) and feasting on its fruits.
The life-long challenge for every reader of Cone is to consider how the cross of Christ is drawing us to repent of our own personal and cultural histories of violence and racism. How may we live in solidarity and humility with those who have suffered systemic injustice? To whom do we need to listen? To be sure, in order to gain such a posture of humility, we will need to grieve those things that Christ himself grieves in our culture and in our own hearts. For myself as an Australian, the appalling incarceration of asylum seekers in off-shore detention centers is a moral scar upon the Australian psyche with which I must wrestle. The deliberate ongoing mistreatment of these people who are seeking a home dehumanizes Australians, even as Australians dehumanize these displaced people. Further, as a white Australian living in Canada, listening deeply to the First Nations is another necessary response. In Canada, six generations of indigenous children were taken from their families and homes by force and then inserted into residential schools in an attempt at systematic cultural genocide.
Jazz and biblical law each “sing the song” of lament and hope, inviting humanity into the joy of authentic community. Reading them together draws out the truth of Cone’s reading of the cross. As an inheritor of these “songs,” I wonder if playing jazz and researching can become something more than creative practices, if they can draw me to actual solidarity with people who suffer oppression. Tracing the thread of redemptive suffering through Old Testament law, to the cross, and then again through the era of lynching to today, I may be confronted with my complicity in the sufferings of my own time and place. I may also be invited to join the divine, singing a human response.
Footnotes
1.
The Crisis 10 (1915); cited in James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 1.
2.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 31.
3.
This article uses the terms “black” and “African American” interchangeably. Using the term “black” follows James Cone’s use of the term in Cross and the Lynching Tree.
4.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 139.
5.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 158.
6.
BIPOC stands for black, indigenous, people of color.
7.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 93.
8.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 153.
9.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 3.
10.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 3–6.
11.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 127.
12.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 120–51.
13.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 9.
14.
Cited in, Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman, 1893–1930. (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1990).
15.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 159.
16.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 159.
17.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 166.
18.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 12.
19.
Lyrics quoted in Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 12.
20.
Lyrics quoted in Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 20.
21.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 18.
22.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 95.
23.
Translations of biblical texts are the author’s, except when citing from Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree.
24.
See further David Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the Bible (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 27.
25.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 162.
26.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 93.
27.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 124.
28.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 96.
29.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 98.
30.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 102–03.
31.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 157.
32.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 158.
33.
Cited in Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 36.
34.
Stanley Crouch, “Do the Afrocentric Hustle,” in The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990–1994 (New York: Pantheon, 1995), 44; cited in Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 124.
35.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 150.
36.
Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Terrible Beauty of the Cross,” The Christian Century, March 21, 1929: 386; cited in Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 37.
37.
See Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 47–48.
38.
See further Mark R. Glanville, Adopting the Stranger as Kindred in Deuteronomy (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 59.
39.
Glanville, Adopting the Stranger, 57.
40.
Glanville, Adopting the Stranger, 104, 165.
41.
Glanville, Adopting the Stranger, 215–20.
42.
Jacqueline E. Lapsley, “Feeling our Way: Love for God in Deuteronomy,” CBQ 65 (2003): 350–69 (362).
43.
See Mark R. Glanville, “‘Festive Kinship’: Solidarity, Responsibility, and Identity Formation in Deuteronomy,” JSOT 44 (2019): 133–52 (141–44).
44.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 156.
45.
See also, Deut 1:16–17; 10:17–19; 16:18–20; 17:2–13; 19:15–21; 24:17; 27:19.
46.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 165–66.
47.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, 161.
48.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, xviii.
49.
Cone, Cross and the Lynching Tree, xvi.