Liberation Theology

Spengler of Asia Times takes a look at the theology of Rev. Wright. It is not pretty.

During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:

Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.

Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.

It all starts from: "All men are Not created equal.

Let me add that the Jewish idea of the Chosen People is widely misunderstood. It is not about special treatment. It is about being held to a higher standard and more severe punishment for failing to meet that standard. For Jews there are 613 laws that must be followed. For non-Jews only seven.

Spengler says this theology is a heresy.

In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a "drop of the bucket" and "dust on the scales", in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the "Chosen People".

Then Spengler finishes with a look into what might have motivated Obama to join Wright's church.

It cannot be in Obama's best interests to appeal to the authority of Cone, whose unapologetic racism must be repugnant to the great majority of Americans, including the majority of black Americans, who for the most part belong to Christian churches that preach mainstream Christian doctrine. Christianity teaches unconditional love for a God whose love for humankind is absolute; it does not teach the repudiation of a God who does not destroy our enemies on the spot.

Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.

Spengler then finishes with why Obama is a tragic figure.

Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s. Obama does not come to the matter with the perspective of an American black, but of the child of a left-wing anthropologist raised in the Third World, as I wrote elsewhere (Obama's women reveal his secret , Asia Times Online, February 26, 2008). It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.

Actually the church preaches a Marxist doctrine. One Obama was very friendly with due to his association with his Communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis. So in a round about way he is being punished politically for supporting a political doctrine that is anathema to the vast majority of Americans. He picked his church because it was friendly to his political beliefs. He is about to be punished most severely for it.

So perhaps Obama is one of the Chosen People after all.

If you want to learn more about this theology may I suggest:

Liberation Theology
Black Liberation Theology

Or the works of Cornell West and some of the others Spengler mentions.

Cornell West speaks about Obama

Cross Posted at Classical Values