Scapegoating, the Cross, and the Lynching Tree
Prologue to Turning Toward the Victim: THe Bible, Sacred Violence, and the End of Scapegoating in Quaker Perspective
The lynching tree is the cross in America.
—James Cone [1]
This inquiry begins with a number, and a question.
The number is 6,391. As numbers go, it is large, but not so large as to be beyond our comprehension. It would take a person about 7 hours to count to 6,391. Since each number is a person, and each person has a name, it would take a bit longer, perhaps a couple of days, to read the names. That would be tedious, but certainly a task that is well within the realm of human possibility.
We could have chosen a larger number: perhaps 7 million, which is the number of Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust; or 800,000, which is the estimated number of Rwandans killed in the genocide of 1994; or the uncounted millions who died in the Belgian Congo, starting at the end of the 19th century.[2] Those numbers seem nearly incomprehensible, but 6,391 is at least within the realm of what we can conceive.
6,391 is the number of African Americans documented to have been killed by lynching, beginning with the end of slavery in 1865.[3] The “lynching era” in American history ended only in the 1950’s, within the lifetime of some of us. But the legacy of the lynching era lives on, in our contemporary debates about police violence toward African Americans, mass incarceration, and the persistent racial inequities that plague American society.
This number, then, leads to a question. . .
This number, then, leads to a question: what is it that led some of our American forbearers to brutally torture and kill others of our American forbearers—too often under the banner of “traditional values” and even religion? The number cries out for an explanation, and a reckoning.
Isabel Wilkerson points us to a place to start. In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she looks at three historical examples of discrimination and oppression: the Dalits (“Untouchables”) in India, the Jews in Nazi Germany, and African Americans during slavery and the subsequent Jim Crow era. She cites the Leviticus ritual of the scapegoat, where the sins of the community were ritually transferred to the “escape goat,” which was then expelled into the wilderness. Wilkerson suggests that not just individuals, but entire castes can play the role of scapegoat. “A scapegoat caste has become necessary for the collective well-being of the castes above it and the smooth functioning of the caste system.”[4] She sees African Americans in the Jim Crow era as such a scapegoat caste, and victims of lynching as quite literally scapegoats.
A further clue comes from the African American theologian James Cone, who has written that “the cross and the lynching tree interpret each other.”[5] He goes on to illustrate a point to which we will return, how the crucifixion “contaminates” the future persecution of all scapegoats:
The crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans in Jerusalem and the lynching of blacks by whites in the U.S. are so amazingly similar that one wonders what blocks the American Christian imagination from seeing the connection. . . . Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus. The lynching tree is the cross in America.[6]
Womanist and process theologian Karen Baker-Fletcher makes much the same point: “African Americans connected lynching with crucifixion, because both the lynched and the crucified defy the claims of empires no matter how small or large the empire may be—a sharecropping town in the deep southern United States or an imperialistic nation.” She cites the poem “Christ Recrucified” by Contee Cullen and a short story by W.E.B. Dubois (both from the 1920’s) that both make the link between crucifixion and lynching explicit.[7]
Taking these clues from Wilkerson, Cone, and Baker-Fletcher, I propose to approach the question about lynching indirectly, by looking at the dynamics of scapegoating and what has been called sacred violence, particularly as it unfolds in the Bible. Sacred violence can be understood as violence that on some level appears to be sanctioned, approved, and even instigated by God. As we shall see, the unfolding Biblical story exposes sacred violence to “subversion from within,”[8] where stories of scapegoating are common, but told from the perspective of the innocent victim, which has the effect of undermining scapegoating. This long process culminates with the crucifixion of Jesus, but we can understand the significance of the crucifixion only by beginning with the Hebrew scriptures that were so foundational to Jesus’ own worldview. We will see that in the passion, crucifixion, and resurrection, the dynamics of scapegoating and sacred violence came to be decisively unmasked.
“The Scapegoat”
In this exploration, I will be relying heavily on the modern scholar who has done more than anyone else to explore the importance of this scapegoating dynamic, the French polymath and cultural critic René Girard (1923–2015), as well as some of his interpreters. Girard’s seminal 1986 book The Scapegoat explores the crucial role of scapegoating in the origin of sacred violence;[9] in subsequent books he speaks of “lynching” and “lynchers” dozens of times to describe the human propensity to this kind of violence.[10] Girard’s insight into the role of the scapegoat in sacred violence comes largely from his deep reading of the Bible, with the Gospel accounts in particular providing the interpretive key.
The word lynching of course does not appear in the Bible; it is a particularly American contribution to the English language—and has an unfortunate Quaker connection. Charles Lynch was a Virginia Quaker who, at the time of the American Revolution, became a Justice of the Peace in Bedford County (and was eventually disowned by his Quaker meeting for taking an oath of office). No longer a Quaker, Lynch became a militia officer, and in 1780 presided over summary trials at an informal court, authorizing harsh punishment of British loyalists, without cause. He subsequently lobbied the Virginia Assembly to retroactively legalize his actions. A Lynch Law thus originally meant any ex post facto justification for extralegal actions. Although Lynch evidently was an enslaver, his extrajudicial actions seemed to be directed at British loyalists rather than African Americans. Only in the nineteenth century did lynching and lynch law come to describe mob actions directed against African Americans.[11]
This is not a book about lynching, in this narrow sense. But it is a book about a certain type of human violence, of which both lynching and crucifixion are prime examples. Beginning with an attempt to reckon with lynching in American history, we are brought first to a consideration of scapegoating—and then to the archetypal example of scapegoating, Jesus’ passion, crucifixion, and subsequent resurrection (however we might understand that). In a word, it brings us to Easter, or perhaps more accurately to “the Easter event” (passion/crucifixion/resurrection/post-Easter appearances).
What has this to do with Quakers?
What has this to do with Quakers? In my fifty years of worshipping among mostly (but not entirely) liberal Friends, I have observed that contemporary Quakers are uncomfortable with Easter. In this, Quakers are perhaps not unlike others in the liberal Christian traditions, and so what I have to say specifically about Quakers may well resonate more widely within the tradition.
Unlike Christmas, when we are mainly at ease with the symbolism of the season, with Easter we seem at a loss, perhaps even a bit embarrassed, by the concrete details. We know the story—the passion, the empty tomb, the various Easter appearances of the risen Christ; but mostly we have rejected the standard interpretation of that story. That interpretation, known as the atonement, attempts to explain (not always very successfully) what Christians through the ages have experienced: that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth have unique saving and transforming significance. Early Friends shared this experience (though not the standard interpretation). For them, the presence of the Inward Christ transformed their lives and empowered them to free their lives from the deception and oppression of the wider society. Among other consequences, it led them to nonviolently resist the wider society’s attempt to cast them in the role of scapegoat.
In light of our central Quaker convictions about nonviolence, what might contemporary Friends be able to learn from both the original Easter event, as well as from early Quaker experience of the Inward Christ and their frequent references to “bearing the Inward Cross”? This is not an easy or simple question, and for most readers may require a stretch into unfamiliar territory. The question cannot be answered outside the larger context of both the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures. In particular, we will see that uncovering the perspective of the victim is crucial to the way the Bible came to unmask and subvert the role of sacred violence and the scapegoat mechanism. It is Girard’s contention that if we do not see this, we will have missed what is most important in the Biblical narrative.
My thesis in this book is that René Girard’s insights into the dynamics of sacred violence (so-called mimetic theory, more fully explained in chapter 1), as well as the experience of early Friends, can be powerful tools in our quest to grasp these challenging truths. I seek to demonstrate that the significance of the Easter event has everything to do with the propensity of humans toward a specific type of violence—and how that might be overcome.
These are hardly peripheral issues. As I write this at the end of 2024, the world is witnessing “hot” wars, in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon, as well as deadly (but largely forgotten) civil conflicts in Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Haiti, Syria, and eastern Congo. Recent mass shootings in the U.S. often have an imitative quality, characterized by escalating rivalry and vengeance. Alexei Navalny’s death in a Siberian penal colony in early 2024 was a dramatic reminder that those in positions of power still make blatant use of scapegoats. And at the end of 2024, the United States re-elected a president whose entire campaign revolved around finding scapegoats. The relevance of our subject is as close as the morning newspaper or, these days, the ever-present news feed in our pocket.
Girard asks, “Why is there so much violence in our midst? No question is more debated today. . . . Of all the threats presently looming over us, the most dreadful one, as we well realize, the only real threat, is ourselves.”[12] If we agree that the various forms of violence—the unnecessary creating of victims—is the human problem, then our challenge is to find ways to overcome violence. Using violence to overcome violence has utterly failed; history shows that violence only begets more violence. As we shall see, it is only through the perspective of the innocent victim that we have any chance of ending the spiral of reciprocal violence.
“The Intelligence of the Victim”
In the aftermath of the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples “underwent a profound shift in their understanding” of both human nature and the nature of God, gaining what Girardian theologian James Alison succinctly calls “the intelligence of the victim.” Simply put, the intelligence of the victim involves a new understanding of “the relationship between God and victims.”[13] God is revealed as having nothing to do with human violence; this nonviolent God is revealed through victims, and is to be found on the side of victims.[14] Alison emphasizes the central importance of this intelligence of the victim:
As it becomes possible to perceive humans as constitutionally violent [through the crucifixion], so it becomes possible to understand God as completely without violence. What allows the intelligence of the victim to be applied to human culture is the completely gratuitous self-giving of God that is anterior [prior] to it. . . . For it to be possible to understand God as love (I John 4:7-11), it was necessary that the human victim be revealed. Only the revolution wrought by the intelligence of the victim made this understanding possible. That God is completely without violence, that God is love, was a discovery made possible only by the self-giving of Jesus to death, and therefore the discovery that our awareness of God had, up till then, been distorted by our own complicity in violence, unrecognized and projected onto God. That distortion is undone. So the intelligence of the victim works two ways: revealing the human being, and revealing God, simultaneously . . . part of the same discovery.[15]
But understanding violence is only part of our task. At its best, our Quaker and Christian tradition has always pointed beyond our all-too-obvious faults, to a new and transformed way of life. This new reality has gone by a variety of names: eternal life, life more abundant, a new birth, salvation, liberation, redemption, the New Covenant, life “in Christ,” the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God. Easter is not just about crucifixion, but resurrection. Put another way, we are unlikely to overcome violence by focusing on overcoming violence; we will need a new vision, a higher calling that allows us to transcend our failings.
Here too the intelligence of the victim is central. Jesus possessed this intelligence during his earthly ministry, but time and again the gospel account indicates that the disciples could not understand. However, for the disciples, “with the resurrection comes the intelligence of the victim.” This intelligence—this wisdom—is something given through the risen Christ, and it makes possible an entirely new basis for human belonging.
What is offered is the possibility for humans to form a new society which does not need victims or exclusions in order for its sense of identity to be built up. . . . Membership in this new Israel involves a new way of relating to the victim. It involves the unlearning of all those patterns of behavior that depend on, or tend to produce, victims of whatever sort. Simultaneously, it involves learning how to relate to, side with, stand up for, those who are cast out, excluded and so on. It involves living for others in such a way that those doing so are always prepared to run the risk of expulsion and exclusion themselves rather than basing their security on expelling and excluding others. This is bearing witness to the truth which comes from the victim.[16]
Turning Toward the Victim: The Bible, Sacred Violence, and the End of Scapegoating in Quaker Perspective is part Bible study, part dialogue with early (and contemporary) Friends, and part primer on René Girard’s anthropological insights. As I hope to show, these three perspectives inform one another in surprising and mutually reinforcing ways.
The victim to whom we first turn is Jesus, the crucified and risen one—but through the crucifixion’s “contamination” of all subsequent scapegoats, we turn ultimately to all victims of scapegoating, to what Girard calls “the modern concern for victims.”[17] As we will see, even in the wake of the biblical revelation, scapegoating has not ended, but its nature has fundamentally changed. The end of scapegoating here has a double sense, both as cessation or coming to an end, and end as purpose or telos. The dynamics of scapegoating have changed, but the underlying telos remains the same: to bring order and stability to the status quo—but always at the expense of innocent victims.
[1] Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, p. 158.
[2] Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, pp. 3, 233. Current estimates are that Belgian colonial rule in the Congo from 1880 to 1920 (roughly corresponding to America’s “lynching era”) directly resulted in 5 to 10 million deaths, or approximately one half of the population.
[3] Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, gives the number as 4084 deaths by lynching in twelve Southern states, from 1877-1950, and a further 307 deaths in eight states outside the South. In a subsequent 2020 report, Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876, the EJI reports “greater than 2000 deaths” prior to the end of Reconstruction. These numbers should be considered minimums, since it is likely that some lynchings were never documented. In addition, the numbers do not count the hundreds of Mexicans and Mexican Americans lynched in the American Southwest over the same time period. Both reports can be accessed at https://eji.org/reports/
[4] Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, pp. 190–91. The story of Wilkerson writing her book is told in the recent movie Origins.
[5] Cone, p. 161.
[6] Cone, pp. 31, 158.
[7] Baker-Fletcher, Dancing with God, p. 129. In her discussion (pp. 128–134) she cites Countee Cullen’ 1922 poem “Christ Recrucified” and W.E.B. Dubois’s 1920 short story “Jesus Christ in Texas.”
[8] For Girardian interpreter James Alison, the expression “subversion from within” is a recurring refrain; see Alison, Raising Abel; e.g., pp. 32, 33, 82, 96, 107, 124–25, 138, 140; also Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 44, 59, 121, 122, 133, 161.
[9] Girard, The Scapegoat.
[10] René Girard, Job: The Victim of His People. Interestingly, Cone op. cit., in a footnote (p. 171) acknowledges Girard as one of the very few White scholars who have recognized this link between the cross and the lynching tree. See also Girard, I See Satan Falling, pp. 64–70. Wilkerson does not refer to Girard’s work.
[11] See Wikipedia articles on “lynching” and “Charles Lynch (judge).” Accessed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching. Karen Baker-Fletcher makes the same point about the origin of lynching (but without the Quaker connection) in Dancing with God, p. 133.
[12] Girard, The One by Whom Scandal Comes, p. 3.
[13] Alison, Knowing Jesus, p. 34.
[14] Alison, p. 43. See Alison, “The Intelligence of the Victim,” chapter 2 (pp. 33–58) in Knowing Jesus.
Also, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 80-83, 95–102.
[15] Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, p. 83.
[16] Alison, Knowing Jesus, pp. 72–73.
[17] Girard, I See Satan Fall, p. 166–168. Chapter 13, pp. 161–69, is called “The Modern Concern for Victims.”