Liberal Forum

Governor Bob McDonnell [R-Virginia] has been in the news lately because of his controversial 'transvaginal ultrasound' bill.Ol' radical Bob is likely going to ask that this bill be changed, I'll bet so that intravaginal ultrasounds done routinely for abortions be made available to the women.But otherwise, no mandate that they be done. Given that most women already are required to receive them before an abortion, the law wouldn't be intrusive.And generally, he's governing in a mainstream conservative way.Say, is Reverend Wright radical? Given that Obama made that moonbat his spiritual mentor, is Obama?A guide to the radical theology of the Rev. Jeremiah WrightBy Stanley KurtzPosted: Tuesday, May 13, 2008What we've got here is failure to contextualize. If nothing else, Jeremiah Wright's defenders and enablers are right about that. To fully understand those "sound bites" and "snippets" calling on God to damn America, accusing the U.S. government of intentionally spreading HIV among blacks, and blaming 9/11 on America's allegedly terrorist history and foreign policy, we do need more context.Far from exonerating Wright, however, removing those notorious sermon-segments from their endless video loop and firmly placing them in their social, political, historical, and theological context is even more damning (you'll forgive the expression) than the original YouTube videos. The full story of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's theology and church adds considerable urgency to already-pressing questions about Barack Obama's judgment in choosing this man as his mentor and pastor.Wright's defenders have portrayed Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ as "well within the mainstream of the black church" while downplaying its militancy and politicization. In fact, Wright's church is not only thoroughly politicized, but is arguably the most radical black church in the country. The substance and style of Wright's infamous remarks are part and parcel of a broader, and proudly radical, theology. The bold denunciations are not distractions or somehow beside the point, but are the culmination and justification of Wright's prophetic vocation. Even his famous "Audacity to Hope" sermon, which led to Obama's conversion and baptism, fits into this framework.A scarcely concealed, Marxist-inspired indictment of American capitalism pervades contemporary "black-liberation theology." Far from the mainstream, Trinity (and the relatively small band of other churches that share its worldview) sees itself as marginalized and radical, struggling in the face of an overwhelming rejection of its political theology by mainstream black churches.THE FOUNDERJames H. Cone (is) founder and leading light of black-liberation theology....Wright acknowledges Cone's work as the basis of Trinity's perspective, and Cone points to Trinity as the church that best exemplifies his message. Cone's 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power is the founding text of black-liberation theology, predating even much of the influential, Marxist-inspired liberation theology that swept Latin America in the 1970s. Cone's work is repeatedly echoed in Wright's sermons and statements. While Wright and Cone differ on some minor issues, Cone's theology is the first and best place to look for the intellectual context within which Wright's views took shape.Cone credits Malcolm X -- particularly his famous dismissal of Christianity as the white man's religion -- with shaking him out of his theological complacency. In Malcolm's words:1. The white man has brainwashed us black people to fasten our gaze upon a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus! We're worshiping a Jesus that doesn't even look like us! Oh, yes! . . . The blond-haired, blue-eyed white man has taught you and me to worship a white Jesus, and to shout and sing and pray to this God that's his God, the white man's God. The white man has taught us to shout and sing and pray until we die, to wait until death, for some dreamy heaven-in-the-hereafter . . . while this white man has his milk and honey in the streets paved with golden dollars here on this earth!??In the late 1960s, Malcolm X's criticisms (Wright calls them "devastating") were adopted by the founders of the black-power movement, such as Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, and Ron Karenga. Shaken by Malcolm's rejection of Christianity and taken with the movement for black power, Cone, a young theologian and initially a devout follower of Martin Luther King Jr., set out to reconcile black power with Christianity. He did not reject Malcolm's disdain for a "blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus" -- rather, he came to believe that Jesus was black, and that an authentic Christianity, grounded in Jesus's blackness, would focus with full force on black liberation. Authentic Christianity would bring radical social and political transformation and, if necessary, violent revolution in the here and now.Cone understood his task as both "radical" and "prophetic." It was radical in demanding deep transformation in the structure of society and prophetic in its determinedly angry and denunciatory tone. Black Theology and Black Power, says Cone in the book's introduction, is "written with a definite attitude, the attitude of an angry black man." Cone demands and commends anger, criticizes contemporary theologians for the "coolness" of their writings, and notes that "there is some evidence that Jesus got angry." In the book, Cone sometimes addresses or refers to whites as simply "the oppressor" or "Whitey."The black intellectual's goal, says Cone, is to "aid in the destruction of America as he knows it." Such destruction requires both black anger and white guilt. The black-power theologian's goal is to tell the story of American oppression so powerfully and precisely that white men will "tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil." In the preface to his 1970 book, A Black Theology of Liberation, Wright wrote: "There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: 'How can we become black?'"....LIBERAL RACISTSWhile Cone asserts that blacks hate whites, he denies that this hatred is racism. Black racism, says Cone, is "a myth created by whites to ease their guilt feelings." Black hatred of whites is simply a legitimate reaction to "oppression, insult, and terror." Cone derides accusations of black racism as a mere "device of white liberals."....Well before it became a clich, Cone boldly set forth the argument for institutional racism -- the notion that "racism is so embedded in the heart of American society that few, if any, whites can free themselves from it."For Cone, the deeply racist structure of American society leaves blacks with no alternative but radical transformation or social withdrawal. So-called Christianity, as commonly practiced in the United States, is actually the racist Antichrist. "Theologically," Cone affirms, "Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'" The false Christianity of the white-devil oppressor must be replaced by an authentic Christianity fully identified with the poor and oppressed....Cone's radicalism is evident in his categorical rejection of anything short of total social revolution.....In 1998, in anticipation of the book's 30th anniversary, the University of Chicago held a three-day conference in honor of Black Theology and Black Power. Martin Marty, the prominent University of Chicago historian of Christianity who once taught, and has lately defended, Wright, was a key sponsor of that conference....What exactly would Cone's ideal, post-revolutionary society look like? Cone has no better answer to that than did other Sixties revolutionaries, yet his fundamental social and economic perspective is Marxist. He would like to see capitalism replaced by some form of "democratic socialism." His nod to revolution in Black Theology and Black Power was not systematically Marxist, but after extended encounters with liberation theologians from Latin America in the 1970s, Cone took up Marx more seriously.In his 1982 book, My Soul Looks Back, Cone updates us: "The black church cannot remain silent regarding socialism, because such silence will be interpreted by our Third World brothers and sisters as support for the capitalistic system, which exploits the poor all over this earth." And: "We cannot continue to speak against racism without any reference to a radical change in the economic order. I do not think that racism can be eliminated as long as capitalism remains intact."The problem, says Cone, is not liberation theology but the false Christianity of middle-class blacks who are "upset with American society only because they want a larger piece of the capitalistic pie." Cone concludes: "Perhaps what we need today is to return to that 'good old-time religion' of our grandparents and combine with it a Marxist critique of society. Together black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society.".....Although Trinity had brought on Wright with change in mind, the original congregants were not prepared for the extremes to which Wright's "Africentrism" and black-liberation theology would take him. Wright arrived in 1972, and by 1975 nearly all of the members who had originally invited him had left. In 1983 a group of particularly active and prominent members uncomfortable with Wright left Trinity and the UCC for a local Pentecostal Apostolic church.In 1978 there was trouble with the UCC as well, as a national-level official attempted to distance the church from Trinity. Says Speller, "Trinity was accused of being a cult (only three months after Jim Jones and Jonestown!) and Wright of having an 'ego problem.'" The unnamed official failed in his efforts, and after church-sponsored attempts at "reconciliation" offered an apology to Trinity.....The 1988 "Audacity to Hope" sermon invoked the privation and oppression of "black and brown" citizens in Africa and the rest of the world. To a superficial ear, the sermon may seem simply to call for aid to the world's hungry. For those attuned to Wright's theology, however, it contains a scarcely veiled attack on Western capitalism, which Wright believes is the true cause of the suffering and privation of the "black and brown" world.There are several different transcripts of the "Audacity" speech -- Wright gave it multiple times, changing it along the way, and some published versions may be toned down for general consumption. But the one included in What Makes You So Strong?, a collection of Wright speeches, attacks "white America's corporate dollars that hold and pull the purse strings of so many national black organizations." For Wright, this corporate money turns middle-class blacks into "slaves."....Wright's Cone connection remains strong. Cone's recent work argues that the crucifixion of Jesus was essentially a public lynching, with the Romans anticipating the role of modern white Americans. ......Wright's denunciation of America for bringing 9/11 on itself explicitly invokes Malcolm X's notorious claim that John F. Kennedy's assassination was a case of America's chickens coming home to roost. Wright's tale of America's long history of "terrorism" -- from our attacks on the Indians, to our attacks on Cubans in Grenada (Wright has visited Cuba three times), to our bombing of Muammar Qaddafi, to America's support for Israel's "state terrorism" -- comes straight out of Cone's historical playbook.....CONTEXTWhen we consider that nearly the whole of Wright's original congregation left, that other active members departed, and that Wright's radicalism made relations in the United Church of Christ rocky, Barack Obama's decision to stay appears all the more striking. Indeed, Blow the Trumpet in Zion is filled with attempts by Cone's followers to come to grips with their rejection by the broader black community. Nearly every sermon Wright preaches, as well as his now-infamous bulletins and church magazines, is filled with his radicalism, and it's therefore impossible not to conclude that Obama was broadly attracted to Wright's politics. Interestingly, Obama's remarks on unemployed workers' clinging to conventional religion as a sop are not at all inconsistent with Cone's or Wright's -- or for that matter Malcolm X's -- views.Obama has now attempted to distance himself from Wright, claiming to be "outraged" by the reverend's recent comments. Yet it's hard to believe that Obama heard anything in the past few weeks that he hadn't heard before. What gives outrage only now has been going on for decades.In his rejection of the path of assimilation; in his contempt for "middle-classness" and the capitalist system it sustains; in his pursuit of a separate, black Christianity and his hostility to conventional religion; in his bitter and "prophetic" denunciations of America's history, its founding icons and its anti-Qaddafi, pro-Israel foreign policy; in his conviction that the U.S. government is responsible for genocide against blacks; and in his insistence that Americans are collectively guilty for 9/11, Jeremiah Wright is a true follower of James Cone's theology of black liberation. It would seem the only thing worse than quoting Jeremiah Wright out of context is quoting him in context.-- Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.http://www.eppc.org/.../pub_detail.asp Edited by RichClem, 22 February 2012 - 07:43 PM.