Some Notes from James Cone visit ITC on 2/20/12

A Reflection on the Cross and the Lynching Tree

10 yrs of research, thinking & writing

I been writing this book all my life... I put my whole being in it... The book chose me... I am still writing it and it will not be finish until I draw my last breath

Gospel of Thomas if u bring forth what it is within u, what u bring forth will save u... What u don't bring forth within u will destroy u... It save me from the meaningless career in theology

I did my best... To do less would be a theological sin

White use Christianity to lynch blacks and blacks used it to survive and resist white

White people discover the cross by the way of the bible... Black people discover the bible by way of the cross

Acts 10:39; lynching of June 2, 1915 (NAACP newsletter), 1st paragraph of text

Hope and salvation vs. White supremacy
Until we can see the cross and the lynching as parallel their will be no liberation of religious church

Paradox... White Christian place blacks on

Where my passion came from
My questioning of this paradoxical

(Is this relevant today?) Jail system... We can lynch people more now then hanging on a tree.

Religion and the blues kept blacks alive... Faith and the blues could not be control by whites

(And the crowd goes wild when he says sit my ass down)

Talk and write out the real concrete world... I say it because I felt their pain ( Baldwin, King, and Malcolm X) basis of theological thinking

I turn to the artist and the poets... Being black and Christian is a paradox... Hate kills the hater not necessarily the hate.

Yet black still love white people... (Do they?)

The deeper the love the stronger the passion... The one u love hurts u... Yet they treat us like dogs... (Really?)

The cross is a paradoxical religious symbols... Absurd claim of Faith

The power in me is greater then the darkness... It bare witness to do things that seems impossible

Reality of love in my own community... I did not have time to wish I was white... Blackness saved me from whiteness and kept me sain (everything black)

The blues was secular spiritual

God is black and is the light in the dark whiteness... (Really)

I am doing it for my mama and daddy who could not speak and I do it for them... To speak the truth!

For people who have been left out in the sunlight of opportunity.

(And what do we do with what we have heard? We become responsible for what we experience, what we have heard and seen. Though I appreciate Cones sharing his personal views of what he has experience and was able to articulate it in text... I am not sure if the text offers any possible solutions to diminishing the the hate, and hurt of our history. In fact I believe if brings on more tension then resolution. We must begin to move forward, and this doesn't mean we forget, it means we forgive. It doesn't mean we ignore, but it means we embrace. It means we begin to take on responsibility for ourselves and still have room to care, to grow, to love.)