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I read this for class. It came out after James H Cone's early paper the Cross and the Lynching Tree, but before his book of that title. There is a lot here to grapple with. But I also think some things that are not grappled with enough. I would like to have seen some interaction with atonement theories. I think that is also something that Cone needed to do. Comparing Black suffering to Christ's Crucifixion I think has real value, but I also think that there is a weakness in leaving that comparison vague and not thinking through what it is that Christ was doing and what it is that human suffering is doing. The recent comments by House Speaker Pelosi about George Floyd having died for us, is similar. George Floyd's death was a tragic injustice, he was not attempting to die for us. And so attributing that death as a type of martyrdom I think minimizes the loss of life due to injustice as well as the freely given death of Jesus and others that protest injustice and are willingly giving up their bodies for that.
That being said, I have notes on almost every page of this and I likely will skim/read a second time before class because there is so much that is helpful here.
