The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

A case in point is Reinhold Niebuhr, widely regarded as America’s most influential theologian in the twentieth century, and possibly in American history. Among his contemporaries he was unusually attuned to social reality and the “irony” and tragedy of American history. Among white theologians he was particularly sensitive to the evils of racism and spoke and wrote on many occasions of the sufferings of African Americans. Few theologians of the twentieth century focused as much attention on the cross, one of the central themes of his work. And yet even he failed to connect the cross and its most vivid reenactment in his time. To reflect on this failure is to address a defect in the conscience of white Christians and to suggest why African Americans have needed to trust and cultivate their own theological imagination.