Join in soulful conversation about
The Cross and the Lynching Tree
book by the late African American theologian James Cone
Class taught by Professor Emily Holmes, Religion Department, Christian Brothers University
Sundays, 9:30 - 10:25 a.m. at First Congregational Church, 1000 S. Cooper
for 5 sessions: Sept. 30 and October 7, 14, 21, 28
Class takes place in the 12 Step Room on the lower floor. Enter the sanctuary up the steps at the main entrance. Walk forward past the pulpit into the hallway on the left and go down the stairs. Follow the hallway. After a jog to the left it is the first room on the right.
It is not necessary to have read the book to be part of the class. Format includes personal sharing and conversation.
There were 37 known lynchings in Shelby County between 1851 and 1939, the most of any county in Tennessee, yet many acknowledge that they had never heard of the lynchings until recently. It can be difficult to engage in conversation about such horrors in our history but it also provides profound opportunities for healing and coming to terms with the truth, for both black and white Americans. James Cone’s groundbreaking work invites us to unexplored and deeper meanings of the central symbol of the Christian religion.
More often than not, the public renderings of black bodies were carried out by "good Christian folk"—people who had become convinced that their dedication to the regime of white supremacy that demanded these executions was part and parcel of their Christian identity. It is no coincidence that most of the lynchings from the late 19th to mid-20th century occurred in the Bible Belt. Churchgoing lynchers were often murdering other churchgoing Christians who were of the same communion: Baptists killed Baptists and so on. -from a review of the book by Prof. Stephen G. Gray, Jr.
(to read the full review go to https://www.
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