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“The significance of Christ is not found in his maleness, but in his humanity,” writes Grant. “This Christ, found in the experiences of black women,” “the oppressed of the oppressed,” “is a black woman.”[5] Unfortunately, the powerful image of “Christ as a Black Woman” has been left out of our spiritual and intellectual imagination,
“A significant number of female lynchings were not suspected of any crime,” writes historian Patrick J. Huber. “These ‘collateral victims’ died in place of an intended male target, such as a father, son, or brother, who had eluded the grasp of a frustrated mob.”[7]
Black women suffered when black men suffered and when black men did not.
New Testament scholar William Barclay called Jesus’ cry of abandonment “the most staggering sentence in the gospel record.”[12] Black cultural critic Stanley Crouch called it “perhaps the greatest blues line of all time.”[13]
Black faith emerged out of black people’s wrestling with suffering, the struggle to make sense out of their senseless situation, as they related their own predicament to similar stories in the Bible. On the one hand, faith spoke to their suffering, making it bearable, while, on the other hand, suffering contradicted their faith, making it unbearable. That is the profound paradox inherent in black faith, the dialectic of doubt and trust in the search for meaning, as blacks “walk[ed] through the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps 23:4).
“God may not come when you want but God is right on time,”
Ida B. Wells.[16]
Moderation was not a virtue when “men, women, and children were scourged, hanged, shot, and burned.” “It may be unwise to express myself so strongly,” Wells wrote in her diary, expressing her outrage at the lynching of Eliza Woods of Jackson, Tennessee, “but I cannot help it and I know not if capital may not be made of it against me but I trust God.”[26]
White Christianity was not genuine because it either openly supported slavery, segregation, and lynching as the will of God or it was silent about these evils. “The nation cannot profess Christianity,” Wells said in an essay, “which makes the golden rule its foundation stone, and continue to deny equal opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the black race.”[30]
the dark race that is the most practically Christian known to history, than to the white race that in its dealings with us has for centuries shown every quality that is savage, treacherous, and unchristian.”[31]
Black people did not need to go to seminary and study theology to know that white Christianity was fraudulent. As a teenager in the South where whites treated blacks with contempt, I and other blacks knew that the Christian identity of whites was not a true expression of what it meant to follow Jesus.
White conservative Christianity’s blatant endorsement of lynching as a part of its religion, and white liberal Christians’ silence about lynching placed both of them outside of Christian identity. I could not find one sermon or theological essay, not to mention a book, opposing lynching by a prominent liberal white preacher.[32] There was no way a community could support or ignore lynching in America, while still representing in word and deed the one who was lynched by Rome.
there never would have been a black freedom movement without the courageous work of women—such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Jo Anne Robinson, Ella Baker, Septima Clark, and many more.
Nellie Burroughs said, “The men ought to get down on their knees to Negro women,” who “made possible all we have around us—church, home, school, business,”[54]
American ministers to develop an understanding of the Christian gospel that would empower African Americans to affirm their black and Christian identity. How could one be black and Christian at the same time if the public identity of the Christian faith was identified with white supremacy?
churches. I find nothing redemptive about suffering in itself. The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross.
the enslaved Africans sang because they saw on the rugged wooden planks One who had endured what was their daily portion. The cross was treasured because it enthroned the One who went all the way with them and for them. The enslaved African sang because they saw the results of the cross—triumph over the principalities and powers of death, triumph over evil in this world.
They are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him in contempt. —Hebrews 6:6
Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for “pie in the sky.”
we cannot find liberating joy in the cross by spiritualizing it, by taking away its message of justice in the midst of powerlessness, suffering, and death. The cross, as a locus 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.
Bonhoeffer was right: “The Bible directs [us] to God’s powerlessness and suffering. Only a suffering God can help.”[6]
Salvation is broken spirits being healed, voiceless people speaking out, and black people empowered to love their own blackness.
One must suppose that in order to feel comfortable in the Christian faith, whites needed theologians to interpret the gospel in a way that would not require them to acknowledge white supremacy as America’s great sin.
The real scandal of the gospel is this: humanity’s salvation is revealed in the cross of the condemned criminal Jesus, and humanity’s salvation is available only through our solidarity with the crucified people in our midst.
people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.
In 2005 the U.S. Senate formally apologized for its failure ever to have passed an anti-lynching bill. Did the apology get rid of the hate? What happened to the indifference among white liberal religious leaders that fostered silence in the face of the lynching industry? Where is that indifference today? Did the hate and indifference vanish so that we no longer have to be concerned about them? What happened to the denial of whites who claimed that they did not even know about lynching, even though many blacks were lynched during their adult years?
Just as the Germans should never forget the Holocaust, Americans should never forget slavery, segregation, and the lynching tree.
