The Cross and the Lynching Tree

by James H. Cone

Leaving white churches helped blacks to find their own space for free religious and political expression, but it did not remove their need to wrestle with God about the deeply felt contradictions that slavery created for faith. “Does the Bible condemn slavery without any regard to circumstances, or not?” roars Reverend J. W. C. Pennington in 1845. “I, for one, desire to know. My repentance, my faith, my hope, my love, my perseverance all, all, I conceal it not, I repeat it, all turn upon this point. If I am deceived here—if the word of God does sanction slavery, I want another book, another repentance, another faith, and another hope.”[51] Faith achieved its authenticity only by questioning God, asking, as the Reverend Nathaniel Paul did, “why it was that thou didst look on with calm indifference of an unconcerned spectator, when thy holy law was violated, thy divine authority despised and a portion of thine own creatures reduced to a state of mere vassalage and misery?”[52]