Nearly three decades ago, a California minister had himself nailed to a cross as a protest against crime in the streets. The Reverend Willie Dicks, of St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in San Jose, set up a 9-foot by 12-foot wooden cross in a park in Oakland. Removing his white cotton gown, he leaned against the cross and extended his arms. Using carpenter’s nails sprayed with Bactine, an assistant affixed the pastor to the cross, hammering the nails through the skin between the third and fourth fingers of each hand, and between his first and second toes. 

While a small crowd formed, Reverend Dicks remained on the cross for ten minutes, lecturing about crime and morality. “I would like to say from this cross that I’m disgusted that our senior citizens cannot walk through the streets of…