How not to do religion
By now the whole world, or at least that part of it concerned with US politics, knows that for two decades Barack Obama has been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the Reverend Jeremiah Wright has delivered a number of stem-winding sermons on the issues of the day. Among many other things, Wright has claimed that the CIA invented the HIV virus; he has expressed satisfaction in the 9/11 attacks; and he has declared that instead of blessing our country, we ought to say, "God damn America."
Put on the defensive by these revelations, Obama has argued that Wright is like a crazy old uncle tolerated for his eccentricities. This analogy falls short for two reasons. First, we tolerate crazy relatives because we have no choice. We don't get to pick our relatives. We do, however, get to pick our pastor. Obama could have left his church at any time. If he has remained in the congregation for nearly 20 years, it's because he felt comfortable there and liked what he heard.
Second, Wright is not a crazy old eccentric. He is an important figure in a nationwide movement called black liberation theology. Trinity United Church is considered one of black liberation theology's prime clearinghouses. That's why Wright's sermons have been recorded and disseminated on videotape, and are now showing up on YouTube. He is a leader in a movement, and by the standards of that movement he is not eccentric, not an outlier, not a crazy old uncle at all.
What is black liberation theology? As best I can judge, it is a black supremacist movement brewed up in the racial cauldron of the 1960s. One of its leading lights and formative intellectuals is James Hal Cone, whom Wright has cited as an inspiration. Cone, in turn, has praised Trinity United Church as embodying his theological ideas.
Here are some of Cone's reflections on the liberation movement he helped to found:
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.
There is no use for a God who loves white oppressors the same as oppressed blacks. We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile.
Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man "the devil."
Now, I understand that it may be unseemly for someone outside this church to criticize its theology. And I know that African-Americans have been subjected to indignities, abuses, and victimization unlike those perpetrated on any other ethnic or racial group in US history. Only black Americans were slaves, bought and sold as chattel. The lynchings and cross burnings, the Jim Crow laws and whites-only restrooms, are a shameful part of this country's past. Although things are much better today, some racist attitudes unquestionably persist and continue to hold back the progress of the black community.
All that being said, however, there are ways of dealing with this history and moving forward, and the sentiments expressed in the quotes given above are not the way.
Religion at its best encourages us to rise above the ego-driven concerns that ordinarily rule our lives. It urges us to let go of grievances instead of bearing grudges, to love rather than hate, to eschew revenge and retribution in favor of forgiveness and compassion. Where the ego says, "I will never forget and never forgive," and jealously nurses its rage, true religion says, "We are all one, I am thou, and in hating or hurting you I only injure myself."
But religion at its best is rarer than it should be. Too often, religion devolves into yet another vehicle of ego-gratification, with the resentments and grievances so precious to the ego given new and larger life in the person of an angry, vindictive, and viciously partisan God. Then we have the spectacle of religious extremists calling down death and hellfire on anyone they define as the enemy. God becomes only a projection of the narrow parochial interests and fears of a particular community, the ego writ large, a bully in the clouds, a tyrant on a heavenly throne shoveling sinners into the furnaces of hell for the amusement of the remnant who are saved.
When religion becomes just another revenge fantasy for the (individual or collective) the ego, it is religion gone bad. And I believe black liberation theology fits this bill.
Look again at the quotes from Cone. If they are indeed an accurate reflection of black liberation theology's principal tenets, then it is hard to see how that movement could be spiritually elevating. Instead of uniting, it divides; instead of forgiving, it accuses and blames; instead of subordinating the ego to higher spiritual impulses, it does the opposite -- explicitly stating that if God is not in line with the ego's agenda, then the ego will have to "kill" God.
This is an inversion of religion in its proper sense. This kind of religion does not inspire or uplift.
Obama has based his campaign on transcendent themes and a message of hope and healing. His 17-year association with a church whose message is altogether different calls into question the whole rationale for his candidacy. The damage to his prospects is, I think, irreparable.
It turns out that Obama was right. Words do matter. Including the words spoken from the pulpit of Trinity United Church.
For further reading:
Wikipedia on black liberation theology
"The peculiar theology of black liberation," by Spengler (Asia Times)
"The insanity of 'black liberation theology'," by Rod Dreher
'Africentric Church,' in The Christian Century
On Jan 1 or 2 famous late-night talk-show host Art Bell predicted, on his 2008-predictions show, that Al Gore would offer himself to the convention as a candidate.
That's a possibility to keep in mind. (Bell rarely makes predictions, so I suspect he may have had an ESP-type flutter on this matter. He's looking prescient to me now.)
If Ralph Nader hadn't run as an independent, he'd be better positioned than Gore to emerge as a dark horse candidate. (Timing, timing, timing.)
Posted by: Roger Knights | March 23, 2008 at 09:50 PM