The Cross, The Lynching Tree, and the Color Purple
(In this paper, I explore the atonement theories (or lack thereof) of black liberation theologian, James Cone, and womanist theologian, Delores Williams. This paper is part of a series of short papers exploring Cone’s work that I wrote for a seminary course I took in the fall of 2019 that centered around Cone’s theology.)
While Christians across history and traditions have placed a significant weight upon the cross, how they have interpreted the event varies greatly, especially in how it gets interpreted to develop one’s soteriology. Even between theologians who share a similar social location, the atonement theory out of which one interprets the event of the cross may vary drastically in their minute differences in social locale. No two theologians exemplify this subtle but important difference in atonement theories (or lack thereof) more than James Cone and Delores Williams. In this essay I will contrast the two atonement theories of James Cone and Delores Williams and suggest that it would have been apropos for Cone to have ceded to Williams’ theory.
To begin, like many Christians in many traditions, Cone finds the cross as central to the Christian message, especially as a black man who has experienced the suffering and oppression Jesus did upon the cross. For Cone, the cross is necessary for liberation. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, he says, “[t]he cross is the most empowering symbol of God’s loving solidarity with the “least of these[.]” While Cone certainly does not suggest that the cross must simply be spiritualized (in fact he suggests just the opposite!), he does propose that Christians discover in the cross “the liberating joy of eternal salvation.” Therefore, Cone does not stray far from most of the Western theological traditions’ atonement theories–although he was quite willing to reject them. All atonement theories, despite their minor differences, claim that Jesus’ death upon the cross not only atones or makes amends for our sins but that his death was necessary in order to do so. Cone rejects the emphasis of redemptive suffering in the Western theological traditions’ atonement theories; however, he still believes that what is redemptive in the cross is “the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.” In addition, by centering the cross, Cone claims the good news sides decidedly for the poor and oppressed. Furthermore, Cone does not simply suggest the cross ought to be centered but that the cross is the “locus of divine revelation[!]” Ultimately, the cross has no power in the Christian message for Cone if it has nothing to say about the violence perpetuated against black bodies in past, present, and future in America. Whether it be lynching or police brutality, when a black body lay slain hanging from a tree or in a pool of blood on the street, Cone unapologetically claims God is present with the innocent just as God was present with Jesus. For Cone, this is where the cross is redeemed for it exposes the scandal of the White Christian mob who murder black bodies–that “they can meet Jesus only in the crucified bodies in our midst.”
Drawing upon her experience as a black woman, Delores Williams critiques Cone’s oversight of how a black woman would experience his theory of atonement. Through the lens of surrogacy, Williams suggests that the theories of atonement that both the Western theological tradition and Cone hold are simply surrogacies–meaning that Jesus is the ultimate surrogate in which God had Jesus die in place of humankind…