Jack Miles makes a revealing comment: “The crucifix is a violently obscene icon. To recover its visceral power, children of the twenty-first century must imagine a lynching, the body of the victim swollen and distorted, his head hanging askew above a broken neck, while the bystanders smile their twisted smiles” (pp. 3-4). This is an excellent statement, as far as it goes. Like most white scholars, Miles failed to mention that lynched victims in America were mostly black, especially the ones who were tortured. To leave out the racial aspect of lynching misses the point completely.
