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Monday March 17, 2008
Category: Culture, Democrats, Religion (general)The insanity of "black liberation theology"
The more you know about Jeremiah Wright, the more appalling he is. Spengler today digs up a televised interview between Wright and Sean Hannity in which Wright upbraided Hannity for not having read the black liberation theologian James Cone, with whom Wright identifies. Who is James Cone? He's the theologian who wrote this:
Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.
Wow. Either God wants to destroy white people, or He is not worthy of worship. This is racist idolatry.
Here is an excerpt about Cone and his influence on Trinity UCC, Obama's church, from a sympathetic profile in The Christian Century:
There is no denying, however, that a strand of radical black political theology influences Trinity. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, is a much-admired figure at Trinity. Cone told me that when he's asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity. Cone's groundbreaking 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power announced: "The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people. . . . All white men are responsible for white oppression. . . . Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'. . . Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement." Contending that the structures of a still-racist society need to be dismantled, Cone is impatient with claims that the race situation in America has improved. In a 2004 essay he wrote, "Black suffering is getting worse, not better. . . . White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it. It claims not to exist, even though black people are dying daily from its poison" (in Living Stones in the Household of God).Wright agrees. When I asked him whether white Americans are right to maintain that the racial situation has improved since the days when Africentric Christianity was born, Wright pointed to the racist remarks by radio host Don Imus: "And you say things have improved?"
Yes, well, we've gone from legal segregation and lynching to a time when not only does none of that exist, but a nationally famous radio host can be hounded out of his job for using a racial epithet. Clearly, nothing has changed one bit in this country. Ha. This is the same church that on Sunday compared criticism of Rev. Wright to one of the most infamous crimes in American history, the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. I'm sorry, but what?!?! Utter crackpottery.
How much of this does Barack Obama take seriously? Why would he go to a church whose pastor embraces and extols the vile racist theology of James Cone, which is, as Spengler puts it, "a greased chute to the nether regions"? I'm not asking rhetorically; I honestly don't understand it.
As Spengler says, most nations have been tempted to confuse the Almighty's purposes with their own (I would add that just because America is defined by an idea, and not an ethnos, we are not immune). One of the problems Orthodoxy has had in reaching out to America is that too often, its immigrant congregations don't understand why anybody else would be interested in Orthodoxy. When Julie and I worshiped with the Maronite Catholics in Brooklyn, they could hardly have been more welcoming to us, but they really didn't understand why we, as non-Lebanese, would want to worship with them. Christianity is far more than a tribe at prayer, or it isn't Christianity, it's ethnic idolatry.
Still, I have never met a Lebanese, a Russian, a Greek or any other "ethnic Christian" who would assert on behalf of their ethnos the sort of thing James Cone teaches. "If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him," James Cone wrote. Substitute the word "black" for white, or "non-Russian," "non-Greek," etc., and see how much sense that makes -- and ask yourself how far a white candidate for the presidency would get if he came within 100 feet of a church that embraces that kind of theology.
Anyway, Obama's going to give a major speech on this issue tomorrow in Philly. Good luck trying to square this circle. As Spengler puts it:
What played out last week on America's television screens was a clash of two irreconcilable cultures, the posture of "black liberation theology" and the mainstream American understanding of Christianity. Obama, who presented himself as a unifying figure, now seems rather the living embodiment of the clash.
UPDATE: I won't go as far as Derb and say that Obama is done for, but I think he's right on everything else here:
The MSM can't smother this, not in the age of the web, though they are trying mightily. (The Sunday New York Times "Week in Review" Section had nothing about Wright; neither did the main news section.) Americans are a fair-minded people, who find double standards obnoxious. A guy who says "nappy-headed ho's" in an irreverent radio show is dragged round the city walls behind a chariot to the delighted howls of a mob of self-righteous "anti-racists"; yet a man who uses the authority of the cloth to damn our country and curse white people, is praised as a "biblical scholar" by a candidate for the presidency? I don't think so. This won't stand. The man is toast.
Filed Under: Barack Obama, black liberation theology, casting stones, James Cone, Jeremiah Wright
posted by Rod Dreher @ 3:09pm Permalink 
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Comments
It's not so "insane" when you look at it from the point of view of Blacks, who desperately need someone to blame -- other than themselves -- for their tremendous collective problems: poor relative academic performance; high crime, incarceration, and illegitimacy rates.
Posted by: eh | May 1, 2008 4:51 PM
Here's a Syllogism for you.
Major Premise - Wright is "a typical" Black person dressed in Liberation Theology.
Minor Premise - Obama is "a typical" Politician dressed in Rhetoric.
Conclusion - Obama is "a typical" Wright dressed in Political Clothing.
Posted by: Salty Dog | May 1, 2008 9:09 PM
Reverend Wright is a stupid, dishonest, bigoted, egotistical crackpot. His religion is totally degenerate rubbish, on par with the Nation of Islam. His rheoteric is lies and garbage, and when he played not only the race card, but the religion card, my contempt for him went through the center of the earth. When are people going to get honest with black charlatans and hate mongers and stop calling their paranoid racist lies "conspiracy theories" When allegedly educated people can spout garbage about the origins of AIDS or that Snapple is owned by the Klan because it has the K in the O symbol of Kosher we are dealing with systemic retardation and dishonesty on the scale far greater than imagined.
Posted by: Jakealope | May 2, 2008 5:51 PM
As usual the racial divide is fully evident by the opinions displayed. It's not that "blacks need someone to blame ...", but that America is to blame and refuse to acknowledge it. Furthermore, America continues to set policies that keep black people struggling for a fair hand at life. Being a black man in a world dominated by the policies and rules set up by a racist whites society, I see exactly what these people are speaking of. No, I do not agree with everything they state nor attend their church, but it is a fact that America has put a great amount of effort in keeping the black man down. From the point of view of many black still stuck in poverty, America is not interested in true equality, freedom, and justice. The fact that whites dispel slavery as the major cause of the plight of the black man in this country and place the blame wholly on the black community further shows that this systems is not concerned with the advancement of the black community as a whole. So just as churches were used to organize underground movement to free slaves, march on Washington, and educate the under unprivileged, it still serves the peoples needs in ways the country itself do not see fit to. Also, the reason we have more than one religion and numerous denominations within each is because at some point a subset of the people felt ostracized by the rest and set out to do their own thing. In conclusion, its a black thing and you wouldn't understand. Whites, as a whole, have never had to suffer oppression under another race and enforced by the law and policies of the land in modern history so how could they.
Posted by: Not Important | May 14, 2008 11:31 PM
I teach and drive a school bus. I love ALL my kids; black, white, hispanic, asian. I can tell every child in classes or on the bus, to sit down, stop bothering others, don't hit, stop talking/acting nasty (like grabbing your genitals) etc, except for the black kids. If I tell them that they are doing ANYTHING wrong it immediately ceases to become a behavior issus and immediately becomes a racial issue. "They" always do the same things but only "we" get in trouble. Even when I point out that the majority of black children NEVER get in trouble, those that do see it as because they are black. That is because you supposedly grown up black parents have told them that crap since birth. Like there are 25 white people assigned to keep each black person "down" at birth. You are pathetic cowards who can never take responsibility for your own actions - it simply MUST be some white person's fault. Thank God for those parents - of whatever ethnicity - that teach their kids the concept of personal responsibility. The rest of you just keep whining and doing nothing for yourself - black liberation theology depends on it.
Posted by: tj | May 16, 2008 11:29 AM
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