[Rhodes22-list] Political - to the Obama supporters on this forum... Bid Al delete... another long read...

[Tootle]

Obama supporters, I found out what he believes.  See the following:

Theology of Obama's Church - Black Liberation Theology, something that was
started by the Black Panther movement.

Wright's Black Liberation Theology 
By Anthony B. Bradley 
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 

What is Black liberation theology anyway? Barrack Obama's former pastor,
Jeremiah Wright catapulted black liberation theology onto a national stage,
when America discovered Trinity United Church of Christ. Understanding the
background of the movement might give better clarity into Wright's recent
vitriolic preaching. A clear definition of Black theology was first given
formulation in 1969 by the National Committee of Black Church Men in the
midst of the civil-rights movement: 

"Black theology is a theology of black liberation. It seeks to plumb the
black condition in the light of God's revelation in Jesus Christ, so that
the black community can see that the gospel is commensurate with the
achievements of black humanity. Black theology is a theology of 'blackness.'
It is the affirmation of black humanity that emancipates black people from
White racism, thus providing authentic freedom for both White and black
people. It affirms the humanity of White people in that it says 'No' to the
encroachment of White oppression." 

In the 1960s, Black churches began to focus their attention beyond helping
Blacks cope with national racial discrimination particularly in urban areas. 

The notion of "Blackness" is not merely a reference to skin color, but
rather is a symbol of oppression that can be applied to all persons of color
who have a history of oppression (except Whites, of course). So in this
sense, as Wright notes, "Jesus was a poor black man" because he lived in
oppression at the hands of "rich White people." The overall emphasis of
Black liberation theology is the Black struggle for liberation from various
forms of "White racism" and oppression. 

James Cone, the chief architect of black liberation theology in his book A
Black Theology of Liberation (1970), develops Black theology as a system. In
this new formulation, Christian theology is a theology of liberation--"a
rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential
situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to
the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ," writes Cone. Black
consciousness and the Black experience of oppression orient black liberation
theology--i.e., one of victimization from White oppression. 

One of the tasks of Black theology, says Cone, is to analyze the nature of
the gospel of Jesus Christ in light of the experience of oppressed Blacks.
For Cone, no theology is Christian theology unless it arises from oppressed
communities and interprets Jesus' work as that of liberation. Christian
theology is understood in terms of systemic and structural relationships
between two main groups: victims (the oppressed) and victimizers
(oppressors). In Cone's context, writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
the great event of Christ's liberation was freeing African Americans from
the centuries-old tyranny of White racism and White oppression. 

American White theology, which Cone never clearly defines, is charged with
having failed to help Blacks in the struggle for liberation. Black theology
exists because "White religionists" failed to relate the gospel of Jesus to
the pain of being Black in a White racist society. 

For Black theologians White Americans do not have the ability to recognize
the humanity in persons of color, Blacks need their own theology to affirm
their identity in terms of a reality that is anti-Black--Blackness stands
for all victims of White oppression. "White theology," when formed in
isolation from the Black experience, becomes a theology of White oppressors,
serving as divine sanction from criminal acts committed against Blacks. Cone
argues that even those White theologians who try to connect theology to
Black suffering rarely utter a word that is relevant to the Black experience
in America. White theology is not Christian theology at all. There is but
one guiding principle of Black theology: an unqualified commitment to the
Black community as that community seeks to define its existence in the light
of God's liberating work in the world. 

As such, Black theology is a survival theology because it helps Blacks
navigate White dominance in American culture. In Cone's view, Whites
consider Blacks animals, outside of the realm of humanity, and attempted to
destroy Black identity through racial assimilation and integration
programs--as if Blacks have no legitimate existence apart from Whiteness.
Black theology is the theological expression of a people deprived of social
and political power. God is not the God of White religion but the God of
Black existence. In Cone's understanding, truth is not objective but
subjective--a personal experience of the Ultimate in the midst of
degradation. 

The echoes of Cone's theology bled through, the now infamous, anti-Hilary
excerpt by Rev. Wright. Clinton is among the oppressing class ("rich White
people") and is incapable of understanding oppression ("ain't never been
called a n-gg-r") but Jesus knows what it was like because he was "a poor
black man" oppressed by "rich White people." While black liberation theology
is not main stream in most black churches, many pastors in Wright's
generation are burdened by Cone's categories which laid the foundation for
many to embrace Marxism and a distorted self-image of perpetual "victim"
which we be explored in the next two columns. 
 

Wright's Theology as Victimology 
By Anthony B. Bradley 
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 

Black Liberation theology actually encourages a victim mentality among
blacks. John McWhorters' book Losing the Race, will be helpful here.
Victimology, says McWhorter, is the adoption of victimhood as the core of
one's identity--for example, like one who suffers through living in "a
country and who lived in a culture controlled by rich white people." It is a
subconscious, culturally inherited affirmation that life for Blacks in
America has been in the past and will be in the future a life of being
victimized by the oppression of Whites. In today's terms, it is the
conviction that, forty years after the Civil Rights Act, conditions for
Blacks have not substantially changed. As Wright intimates, for example,
scores of black men regularly get passed over by cab drivers. 

Reducing black identity to "victim" distorts the reality of true progress.
For example, was Obama a victim of widespread racial oppression at the hand
of "rich white people" before graduating from Columbia University, Harvard
Law School magna cum laude, or after he acquired his estimated net worth of
$1.3 million? How did "rich white people" keep Obama from succeeding? If
Obama is the model of an oppressed black man, I want to be oppressed next!
With my graduate school debt my net worth is literally negative $52,659. 

The overall result, says McWhorter, is that "the remnants of discrimination
hold an obsessive indignant fascination that allows only passing
acknowledgement of any signs of progress." Jeremiah Wright infused with
victimology, wielded self-righteous indignation in the service of exposing
the inadequacies Hilary Clinton's world of "rich white people." The
perpetual creation of a racial identity born out of self-loathing and
anxiety often spends more time inventing reasons to cry racism than working
toward changing social mores, and often inhibits movement toward
reconciliation and positive mobility. 

McWhorter articulates three main objections of victimology: First,
victimology condones weakness in failure. Victimology tacitly stamps
approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns
that are self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or presented as
unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns. Black liberation
theologians are clear on this point: "People are poor because they are
victims of others," says Dr. Dwight Hopkins, a black liberation theologian
teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School. 

Second, victimology hampers progress because, from the outset, it focuses
attention on obstacles. For example, in Black liberation theology, the focus
is on the impediment of Black freedom in light of the Goliath of White
racism. 

Third, victimology keeps racism alive because many Whites are constantly
painted as racist with no evidence provided. Racism charges create a context
for backlash and resentment fueling new attitudes among whites not
previously held or articulated, and creates "separatism"--a suspension of
moral judgment in the name of racial solidarity. Does Jeremiah Wright foster
separatism or racial unity and reconciliation? 

For black liberation theologians Sunday is uniquely tied to redefining their
sense of being human within a context of marginalization. "Black people who
have been humiliated and oppressed by the structures of White society six
days of the week gather together each Sunday morning in order to experience
another definition of their humanity," says James Cone in his book Speaking
the Truth (1999). 

Many black theologians believe that both racism and socio-economic
oppression continue to augment the fragmentation between Whites and Blacks.
Historically speaking, it makes sense that Black theologians would struggle
with conceptualizing social justice and the problem of evil as it relates to
the history of colonialism and slavery in the Americas. 

Is black liberation theology helping? Wright's liberation theology has
stirred up resentment, backlash, Obama defections, separatism, white guilt,
caricature, and offense. Preaching to a congregation of middle-class blacks
about their victim identity invites a distorted view of reality, fosters
nihilism, and divides rather than unites. 

 

Black Liberation Is Marxist Liberation 
By Anthony B. Bradley 
Thursday, March 27, 2008 

One of the pillars of Obama's home church, Trinity United Church of Christ,
is "economic parity." On the website, Trinity claims that God is not pleased
with "America's economic mal-distribution." Among all of controversial
comments by Jeremiah Wright the idea of massive wealth redistribution is the
most alarming. The code language "economic parity" and references to
"mal-distribution" is nothing more than channeling the twisted economic
views of Karl Marx. Black liberation theologians have explicitly stated a
preference for Marxism as an ethical framework for the black church because
Marxist thought is predicated on a system of oppressor class (whites) versus
victim class (blacks). 

Black Liberation theologians James Cone and Cornel West have worked
diligently to embed Marxist thought into the black church since the 1970s.
For Cone, Marxism best addressed remedies to the condition of Blacks as
victims of White oppression. In For My People, Cone explains that "the
Christian faith does not possess in its nature the means for analyzing the
structure of capitalism. Marxism as a tool of social analysis can disclose
the gap between appearance and reality, and thereby help Christians to see
how things really are." 

In God of the Oppressed, Cone said that Marx's chief contribution is "his
disclosure of the ideological character of bourgeois thought, indicating the
connections between the 'ruling material force of society' and the 'ruling
intellectual' force." Marx's thought is useful and attractive to Cone
because it allows Black theologians to critique racism in America on the
basis of power and revolution. 

For Cone, integrating Marx into Black theology helps theologians see just
how much social perceptions determine theological questions and conclusions.
Moreover, these questions and answers are "largely a reflection of the
material condition of a given society." 

In 1979, Cornel West offered a critical integration of Marxism and Black
theology in his essay, "Black Theology and Marxist Thought" because of the
shared human experience of oppressed peoples as victims. West sees a strong
correlation between Black theology and Marxist thought because "both focus
on the plight of the exploited, oppressed and degraded peoples of the world,
their relative powerlessness and possible empowerment." This common focus
prompts West to call for "a serious dialogue between Black theologians and
Marxist thinkers"--a dialogue that centers on the possibility of "mutually
arrived-at political action." 

In his book Prophesy Deliverance, West believes that by working together,
Marxists and Black theologians can spearhead much-needed social change for
those who are victims of oppression. He appreciates Marxism for its "notions
of class struggle, social contradictions, historical specificity, and
dialectical developments in history" that explain the role of power and
wealth in bourgeois capitalist societies. A common perspective among Marxist
thinkers is that bourgeois capitalism creates and perpetuates ruling-class
domination--which, for Black theologians in America, means the domination
and victimization of Blacks by Whites. American has been over run by "White
racism within mainstream establishment churches and religious agencies,"
writes West. 

Perhaps it is the Marxism imbedded in Obama's attending Trinity Church that
should raise red flags. "Economic parity" and "distribution" language
implies things like government-coerced wealth redistribution, perpetual
minimum wage increases, government subsidized health care for all, and the
like. One of the priorities listed on Obama's campaign website reads, "Obama
will protect tax cuts for poor and middle class families, but he will
reverse most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers." 

Black Liberation Theology, originally intended to help the black community,
may have actually hurt many blacks by promoting racial tension, victimology,
and Marxism which ultimately leads to more oppression. As the failed "War on
Poverty" has exposed, the best way to keep the blacks perpetually enslaved
to government as "daddy" is to preach victimology, Marxism, and seduce
blacks into thinking that upward mobility is someone else's responsibility
in a free society. 

Anthony B. Bradley is a research fellow at the Acton Institute, and
assistant professor of theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in St.
Louis. His PhD dissertation is titled, "Victimology in Black Liberation
Theology." 






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