On James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree
Instructor: Kelly Brown Douglas
Date: Friday, October 29, 1:00 – 5:00 pm | Saturday, October 30, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Format: This two-day intensive course will be held online, through synchronous sessions. Registrants are expected to attend full-time, for both days.
Students explore one of the most provocative and award-winning books by Dr. James Cone on the relationship between the cross and the lynching tree. This book looks at how “the cross and lynching tree interpret each other,” throughout the black struggle for freedom—even today. This class will incorporate short lectures, panel discussions, and one-on-one interviews with scholars across the field of Black Theology and African American history.
Students are expected to read Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree in advance of the course.
The Very Reverend Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas was named Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Theology at Union in September 2017. She was named the Bill and Judith Moyers Chair in Theology in November 2019. She also serves as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral and Theologian in Residence at Trinity Church Wall Street.
Prior to Union, Dean Douglas served as Professor of Religion at Goucher College where she held the Susan D. Morgan Professorship of Religion and is now Professor Emeritus. Before Goucher, she was Associate Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity (1987-2001) and Assistant Professor of Religion at Edward Waters College (1986-1987).
Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1983, Dean Douglas holds a master’s degree in theology and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Union.
Dean Douglas is the author of many articles and five books, including Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective and Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. Her academic work has focused on womanist theology, sexuality and the black church.