The Cross and the Lynching Tree

Because in recent generations our preachers have been domesticated, we don’t recognize prophetic preaching when we hear it. It grates upon our ears and seems inappropriate in the pulpit of a church. We speak derisively of “fire and brimstone preaching” because, if we ever hear it at all, it’s mean-spirited and arrogant, focused on matters of little consequence. But, when a real prophet holds forth, under the power of the Holy Spirit, with the passion and compassion appropriate to the enterprise, individual lives and entire societies are challenged, and sometimes changed.

And prophetic words are not the province of the preacher alone. Poets, lyricists, novelists, journalists, all who choose words as their medium of expression, are potential channels of the prophetic voice. This is why we protect words, specifically granting freedom of speech; not because we like to hear those with whom we disagree, but because we know instinctively that we so often need to hear what we don’t want to hear.

James Cone, a professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, is one of the prophetic voices that has shaped Jeremiah Wright. He is an advocate of Black Liberation Theology and, therefore, says an awful lot of things an awful lot of folks don’t want to hear. But “professor” derives from “prophet” and Dr. Cone takes his calling seriously. His book The Cross and the Lynching Tree is a prophetic call to black and white America to come to term with this bitter history of abuse that divides and unites them, and to find redemption and reconciliation. This is the calling of the prophet.

Again I direct you to an interview by Bill Moyers as he explores The Cross and the Lynching Tree with its author. Check it out: part one and part two. This is the prophetic voice of the church in America. Where is it in our own country?