BUMP
Posted on 01/01/2011 6:44:06 PM PST by Ooh-Ah
Most of the the nation was shocked during the 2008 presidential campaign when videos came out of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. After all, this was candidate Barack Obama’s spiritual advisor and mentor. The initial reaction was typical of our divided nation. Conservatives pushed the Wright videos and the Left tried to silence their importance. After a while people just got sick of talking about it.
When the dust settled the accepted ‘reality’ was that Jeremiah Wright was nuts but Obama barely knew the guy and never heard any of Wright’s more extreme teaching. Today if you bring up Jeremiah Wright, eyes roll and the Left claims you’re making mountains from mole hills. But now a new book has revealed unequivocal proof that Obama was deeply connected to Wright in order to promote and push a socialist agenda.
Stanley Kurtz’s Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism is one of the most important books to come out in recent years. NewsReal Blog has already written about some of the book’s revelations here and here. David Swindle described the book well:
“What makes Kurtz’s book so unique and vital among all the other anti-Obama tomes to come out? Simple: Kurtz did original research, digging through obscure archives of socialist groups and piecing together the history of socialism in America in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s — and Obama’s extensive, overwhelming, intricate connections with it. It’s a challenging book to try and summarize adequately. (The whole point is to just try and take in all the evidence that Kurtz has assembled.)”
One of the many informative chapters of the book is chapter 8 on Wright. Kurtz shatters many of the myths used by the media and the Obama administration to try to disconnect Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Obama clearly did not believe some of the lunacy of Wright’s views (like the government creating AIDS to kill off black people). However, Obama shared a socialist worldview with Wright and knew he could use Wright “and the radical black-church movement he represented…to be an important element of Obama’s populist-bred, socialist-led coalition.”
The facts show that Obama never picked Wright’s church simply for lessons on Jesus and the Bible. He understood Wright was a champion of black liberation theology and had the connections to make things happen. Both Obama and Wright were acquainted and even fans of James Cone who wrote the founding text of black liberation theology in 1969. Cone argued that blacks are oppressed by “whitey” and that the job of the preacher is to angrily call for “the destruction of America as he knows it”.
Most mainline black churches would eventually reject Cone’s theology, but some would cling to and champion the message of rising up against a racist and oppressive government. Cone himself has proclaimed that Wright’s church (Trinity) best holds to his radical theology. So Kurtz writes bluntly but accurately that “Obama arguably belonged to the most radical black church in the country.”
Jeremiah Wright’s damning videos were obviously not slips of the tongue and momentary outbursts as the Left would have us believe. It is not as if Wright preached on the gospels every week and only shouted down with America once or twice when Obama wasn’t around. The evils of America and Zionism was the consistent message of black liberation theology and Jeremiah Wright consistently and passionately proclaimed it.
Kurtz shows that at the time Obama was meeting Jeremiah Wright he was also reading Cone’s work. Moreover, Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ gave new church members writings on Cone right at the same time Obama joined the church. Obama was reading Cone’s writings like, “Together black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society”, when he joined the church known for promoting Cone’s views. In other words, Obama did not only know about Wright’s radical black liberation views, but he joined the church because of them. As Reverend Arthur Brazier, a pastor who used to work with Saul Alinsky proclaimed: Obama preferred Wright because “Reverend Wright is more into black liberation”.
Kurtz also reveals that in 2004 Wright was in a very public battle in his church with church members who did not like his radical and political teaching. Many in the church despised Wright’s consistent talk against Jews and blaming America for 9-11. Such comments at the time were so common that Wright even defended himself in the church’s newsletter and attacked those who disagreed with him. At this very time the Chicago Sun-Times had reported that Obama was attending services on a “near-weekly basis” and described Reverend Wright as Obama’s “close confidant”. Kurtz asks:
“How likely is it, then, that Obama could have been unaware of Wright’s views of 9/11, or of the bitter internal conflict roiling his church in 2004? Yet so far from picking up and leaving the congregation (as Oprah Winfrey had years before, out of concern with Wright’s inflammatory talk), Obama went on to write a book with a title borrowed from one of Wright’s sermons.”
We know from some of Obama’s earlier writings that he saw the usefulness of churches like Wright’s. Pastors had the oratory skills and spiritual authority to spur on congregations to want to take action. But Obama needed a connection from sermons to community and political action. He saw powerful black liberation churches as a key. Such churches believed in deep political involvement.
Shortly after allying with Jeremiah Wright in 1988, Obama wrote:
“Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership and – most importantly – values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities like Chicago… Should a mere 50 prominent black churches out of thousands that exists in cities like Chicago, decided to collaborate with a trained and organized staff, enormous political changes could be wrought.”
Obama needed and longed for more churches like Trinity and more pastors like Jeremiah Wright. It is ridiculous to think Obama was clueless on the views of Jeremiah Wright. He understood everything Wright was about and joined with him hoping to use Wright as a model and tool for change. As Kurtz points out, “Obama’s greatest hope, in fact, was to build a political movement around Wright and preachers like him.”
It’s time to stop rolling our eyes about Jeremiah Wright’s connection to Barack Obama. It’s time to revisit the topic to better understand what Obama’s radical plans are. It’s time to put a magnifying glass back on the loud-mouthed Reverend and just how close to Obama he really is. “Obama’s socialist past is his secret. Reverend Wright is one of several gateways to the truth about the past.”
______________________________
Paul Cooper is a husband and father above all else. With a wife and 2 daughters he could use a dog, but sadly he only owns a cat – a female cat no less. Paul is also a pastor, blogger, and business owner. Find him on Twitter.
Yes, and...
The Black Church is not a monolith, but there is an undercurrent that can play on resentment in many traditionally black denominations.
The New Testament would have us love one another, the Old might have us exact an eye for an eye.
Derailing black Christians is as critical to the devil’s objective as derailing white Christians is.
Thanks for posting. Just added this to my reading list.
bflr
BUMP
Thanks for posting...
And some pings...
Hogwash. The truth hasn’t come out. If it had, it would be finally covered by the MSM...we outed it 2 yrs ago. Just an editorial from nowhere isn’t some new victory. I’m not mad at you, just venting.
The truth was always there, but the media protected him.
Oprah didn't want her link to Wright interrupting her money stream from crackers , or her caring front tarnished. Zero, not as smart as Oprah.
I wonder if Sean Hannity will have the author on his show and encourage people to buy it? I hope so.
Personally I don’t think Baraq embraced Wright, Muslim, or any religion. He went to Wright’s Temple of Hate for street cred, just like he married a black woman.
Thanks Pharmboy.
The “eye for an eye” meant an eye and nothing more in retribution.
Yes.
I have also a hunch that Kennedy made a deal team Obama: "I'll get you the Catholic vote if you get socialized medicine done".
Know it in my bones.
That would seem self-evident...I must be missing your point?
It’s not like the directive to drive out and kill the last remnant of the Jebusites, Hittites or Amorites.
I suppose it does someone somewhere some good to have all the facts and supporting documents laid out in academic fashion, but it amazes me that there is anyone left (not in complete denial or complicity) who either doesn’t know who Obama is, or thinks it takes more evidence to figure it out.
It’s an interesting thing, but in my psychiatric training I did a lot of ER work, and when I would get a call in the middle of the night from the ER clerk - who knew nothing about the patient and the reason for the referral - to come downstairs and evaluate someone, I would usually know the jist of the situation intuitively before I ever got to the ER, and in cases where I didn’t know it by then I almost always knew it in the first five seconds, and invariably the first five minutes were the absolute most it ever took me to size them up.
Obama’s completely transparent, and I thought the same of him from the outset as many others are starting to figure out now: A deeply flawed and most dangerous man. That even supposedly conservative people are still giving this guy a pass or the benefit of the doubt is beyond my comprehension.
Street credibility. Obama needed political support from poor urban blacks. Poor urban blacks distrust anyone from outside their community, eg, someone with less prominently black features, not born in an urban US environment, and having more education than they did.
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