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The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks.
“I had never in my life been abused by whites,” wrote Richard Wright in Black Boy, as he reflected back on his boyhood in Mississippi, “but I had already become as conditioned to their existence as though I had been the victim of a thousand lynchings.”[31]
Crucifixion first and foremost is addressed to an audience.[3]
Because of human finitude and humanity’s natural tendency to deny it (sin), we can never fully reach that ethical standard. The best that humans can strive for is justice, which is love approximated,
If human power in history—among races, nations, and other collectives as well as individuals—is self-interested power, then “the revelation of divine goodness in history” must be weak and not strong.
have to exercise patience and be sustained by a robust faith that history will gradually fulfill the logic of justice.”
Why?
groups are notoriously selfish and have limited capacity to step outside of their interests and see the world from another group’s standpoint.
most Americans have been for so long, so safe and so sleepy, that they don’t any longer have any real sense of what they live by.
. I don’t suppose that . . . all the white people in Birmingham are monstrous people. But they’re mainly silent people, you know. And that is a crime in itself.”
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) . . .
