Last Easter, I was with my family at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, Connecticut. We were listening to a recitation of the Passion, the period of his life that saw the arrest, torture, and execution of Jesus Christ. It’s always a solemn affair, and, between verses, you could hear a pin drop in that massive space. We were in the middle of “the trial before Pontius Pilate” when a baby started wailing and weeping. In an instant, it became the focus of two whole pews to soothe this child. They seemed embarrassed. The thought occurred that, while recounting the murder of an innocent man, this infant was the only person in the whole cathedral to react appropriately.

In the Christian tradition, the cross is considered the universal symbol of suffering. Unfortunately, in its universality, it has become a dominating rather than a liberating force. It’s hard to express how complicated it was for early Christians to place a cross at the center of their meditations. Crucifixion was a punishment initially reserved for slaves, designed to be so brutal and humiliating that it could compel obedience through terror. In fact, “death on the cross” and “supplicium servile” (literally “slave torture/supplication”) were used interchangeably in Ancient Rome.⁷ It was radical to place a crucifix in a house of worship because its meaning was particular and resonant to people of its time. In his groundbreaking essay, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone says that “the cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat.”³ What is it supposed to mean to a people who have never witnessed a crucifixion? Rather than a stalwart reminder of human suffering, the cross has become a pacifier for American Christians; this is anathema to many verses of the bible, but perhaps most poignantly to Peter’s commandment to, “live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil.” (Peter 2:16)⁴ If Christianity is to be used to overturn oppression or as Paul says, to loose “the yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1)⁵, Americans need to contend with the fact that if Christ were ever alive in America, he/she likely died in a cotton field, or hanging from a Southern tree, or from tuberculosis a crowded New York tenement. Perhaps right now they are dying of thirst in an ICE detention center or being poisoned by Michigan’s tap water. Imagine how shocking it would be to walk into church one Sunday and see an electric chair above the altar. This is the radicality of particularity. It shakes its fist at oppression and says that there is no injustice too frightening to confront.

I can’t speak to the condition of Judaism, Islam, other denominations of Christianity, or any number of places where Americans can go to feel their spirits renewed. I can only say that several months ago, I saw a man murdered in front of my apartment, and his neighbors stepped over his body to get to work. I don’t blame them. A recent survey from Bankrate found that almost a quarter of Americans have no emergency savings.¹ When this is coupled with wages that do not keep pace with inflation, the instability of our own circumstances seems to belie the possibility of considering those of others.² However, when we are no longer allowed the bandwidth to stop and weep, it is because the spirit of the nation is in crisis, and Americans are aware of it.

Polling has found that between 2004 and 2021, the number of Americans who self-define as Christians has fallen by almost 20 percent;⁶ in the past decade the percentage of those who define themselves as atheists has climbed by almost 10%.⁸ I have known and respected many atheists in my life, but I don’t find godlessness in them, at least not in the sense that I was brought up to understand it.

On the contrary, I see people who are as much concerned about the condition of their souls as anyone else, but who have never found a community to adequately guide them through the complexities of contemporary American life. Instead, America’s churches have allowed many to avert their eyes from suffering and turn instead to a comforting fantasy where their imagination and aesthetics trump their daily experience. America is not becoming a spiritual society; there has never been such a thing. This demographic change reflects a people yearning for guidance, and it’s time that this call should be answered by something radical, just, and new.

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¹ Bennett, Karen. “Survey: Majority of US Households Uneasy with Level of Emergency Savings.” Bankrate, June 23, 2022 Back

² Cerullo, Megan. “Most U.S. Workers Say Their Pay Isn’t Keeping up with Inflation.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, September 14, 2022. Bankrate, June 23, 2022 Back

³ Cone, James H. 2013. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Back

⁴ ESV Study Bible. 2008. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books. Back

⁵ Ibid. Back

⁶ “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. Pew Research Center, June 9, 2020. Back

⁷ Kaufmann, Kohler, and Emil G Hirsch. “Jewishencyclopedia.com.” CRUCIFIXION – JewishEncyclopedia.com. Accessed September 18, 2022 Back

⁸ Olsen, Henry. “Opinion | America Is Becoming Less Religious. That Won’t Demolish Conservatism.” The Washington Post. WP Company, April 2, 2021. Back