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

[Brad Haslett]

Ed,

It doesn't look like the O'Messiah is going to be the great racial healer
everyone was hoping for, and certainly not his wife.  Don't despair, help is
on the way.  Watch how this 8th grader slam-dunks a Detroit city Councilman
(and wife of a Congressman).  I say this little girl has a future!

http://reason.com/blog/show/126316.html

Be sure and read the coverage and watch the additional video from the link
to the Detroit News.  (BTW, youtube's server was down earlier so you may
have to wait for the main video, the DTW video works.

Brad

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 6:48 AM, Tootle <ekroposki at charter.net> wrote:

>
> 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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> Sent from the Rhodes 22 mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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