The part of Michelle Obama will be played by Oprah Winfrey for the duration of the campaign schedule.
Posted on 03/21/2008 1:10:35 PM PDT by SJackson
Our Jeremiah By Melissa Harris-Lacewell Why Obama's pastor matters.
Type Size March 17, 2008--A black orator stood before a rapt audience, his voice rising to a crescendo as he made this fiery statement: "Statesmen of America beware what you do! The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow.
The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder today at the harvest of blood sown in the springtime of the Republic by your patriot fathers."
Sound familiar?
These are not the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the embattled minister of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. These words were uttered by Frederick Douglass in his appeal to the U.S. Congress for African-American voting rights.
Douglass, like Wright, was speaking as a patriot and as a Christian. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking out of an honored tradition in black church life. Douglass, like Wright, was speaking in the tradition of biblical prophets.
In his 1993 text, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth, historian Wilson Moses labeled this tradition the black jeremiad. Like Rev. Wright himself, it is named for the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.
Jeremiah was among the biblical truth tellers who regularly warned the government that divine destruction was imminent if the nation continued to oppress the powerless. Frederick Douglass was a master of the jeremiad.
He called slavery a curse to the nation and argued that, "we shall not go unpunished." He said it was the patriotic duty of blacks "to warn our fellow countrymen" of the impending doom they courted and to dissuade America from "rushing on in her wicked career" along a path "ditched with human blood, and paved with human skulls."
Jeremiah Wright is a modern Douglass. Both men are like the Old Testament prophets who condemn the injustice and corruption of the rulers of their government.
Let's be clear. American democracy has always coexisted with vicious, state-sponsored racism. The nation's first presidents worked to establish an innovative, flexible, radical democratic republic while simultaneously codifying enslaved blacks as a fraction human and relegating them to intergenerational chattel bondage.
After emancipation, as blacks helped make America the greatest industrial and military power on earth, the country stripped blacks of the right to vote, segregated public accommodations, provided inferior education to black children, and allowed and promoted the terrorist rule of lynch-mob violence.
This week Barack Obama was pressured to denounce Jeremiah Wright. But in the hundred years following the end of the Civil War more than five thousand African Americans were lynched and not a single president denounced the atrocities. Because of this history, black patriotism is complicated.
Black patriots love our country, even though it has often hated us. We love our country, even while we hold it accountable for its faults.
I understand why the Obama campaign felt they had to distance themselves from Wright's post 9-11 comments. But I am worried that Obama has missed a chance to talk about the rich and complex tapestry of black religious life. Not all black people are Christian. Not all belong to large, urban churches. Even fewer worship with such an outspoken, unapologetically political minister. But Trinity UCC does represent an important segment of black religious tradition. It is not scary, racist or un-American. Quite the opposite, Rev. Wright is integral to the broad prophetic tradition that informs many black churches.
Prophetic Christianity allowed African Americans to retain a sense of humanity in the face of our country's racism. Like many people of faith, black Americans have to grapple with how an all-loving and all-powerful God can coexist with evil.
For African Americans, evil takes the very specific and identifiable form of white supremacy, first through enslavement, then through Jim Crow and lynch mob rule, and into what many today experience as seemingly intractable racial inequality. Black Americans struggle to reconcile the sin of racism with the idea of a loving and powerful God. Different churches resolve this issue in various ways.
In churches like Trinity UCC, black folks read the Bible with an eye on what it has to say about experiences of bondage and oppression. In this way the Bible is both a moral guide and a political text. Even though slaveholders declared that God wanted slaves to obey their masters, black people believed that God wanted them to be free. They believed this because they read the story of Moses.
Though the confederate states claimed that God instituted segregation; black Americans believed differently because they read Amos. Today many black Americans worry when our country engages in self-righteous foreign policy because we have read Isaiah.
African American religious traditions are rich and complex. The hope-filled candidacy of Barack Obama is also part of our tradition. Obama's broad multi-racial coalition makes many African Americans feel like part of the Joshua generation finally laying claim to the American promised land. But we cannot enter that promised land together if white America refuses to acknowledge the prophetic truths of black religiosity.
We cannot learn from our prophets if we denounce them. Silencing Jeremiah Wright will not makes us forget hundreds of years of racial inequality. Now is the time to listen to each other carefully.
I attended Trinity United Church of Christ during the seven years I lived in Chicago. Although I do not know him personally, I heard Rev. Wright preach on dozens of Sundays. His sermons soothed my broken heart while I divorced, they eased my mental anguish when my sister was ill, and they helped give me strength as I watched the destructive power of racism, sexism and homophobia within my Chicago community. In short, his words did what a pastor's words are supposed to do. I am grateful for Jeremiah Wright and for his prophetic witness.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University. She is also a seminarian at Union Theological Seminary in New York City
Black Liberation Theology in Spotlight
Union's scholars offer insight in the wake of media firestorm over Rev. Wright and Barack Obama. Read more.
Difference is, Jeremiah was a Prophet of God, Wright isn’t.
Too bad they won’t apply all that passion to abortion which really is destroying this country.
And, if nobama doesn’t get the nomination watch these godless people riot, burn and loot in the name of God. You see, we just don’t understand.
say a lot
He called slavery a curse to the nation and argued that, "we shall not go unpunished."
This is in line with "O"'s thinly veiled threat of riots to come - in his speech before a conclave of friendly racist black ministers.
He alludes to the "Quiet Riot" that was simmering in LA before the Rodney King riots - and he reminds them the "Quiet Riot" is still simmering just below the surface across this country.
Beware this man and his group. Be aware...
watch the video
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/Obama.Blacks.Quiet.2.337535.html
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/Obama.Blacks.Quiet.2.337535.html
beware the “Quiet Riot” theat by “O”
Divine destruction was imminent if the nation continued to disobey God, which they did in many different ways. Not just by "oppressing the powerless". Isolating verses of scripture is what cults do. To sum up Jeremiah's witness as warnings against slavery is ridiculous.
Where is Michelle?
You post:
“And, if nobama doesn’t get the nomination watch these godless people riot, burn and loot in the name of God. You see, we just don’t understand.”
nobama has said it - listen to the video and note the threat of the “Quiet Riot” = http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/Obama.Blacks.Quiet.2.337535.html
Don't tell Obama supporters that, it might upset their messianic fantasies. After all prophets prophesize, in this case the coming of Obama, or his failure.
A couple interesting lines.
American democracy has always coexisted with vicious, state-sponsored racism….For African Americans, evil takes the very specific and identifiable form of white supremacy, first through enslavement, then through Jim Crow and lynch mob rule, and into what many today experience as seemingly intractable racial inequality. …African Americans feel like part of the Joshua generation finally laying claim to the American promised land. But we cannot enter that promised land together if white America refuses to acknowledge the prophetic truths of black religiosity.Clearly Obama’s faith is intertwined with the secular, and in ways that aren’t particularly pretty. With this at his core, I don’t see how he can govern all Americans. More accurately represent their various and often competing interests, governing isn’t a problem at all.
Tough enough for a Republican to be a Mormon.
[...]
"..Let us recall the fact that atheism and the denial of the human person, his liberty and rights, are at the core of the Marxist theory. This theory, then, contains errors which directly threaten the truths of the faith regarding the eternal destiny of individual persons. Moreover, to attempt to integrate into theology an analysis whose criterion of interpretation depends on this atheistic conception is to involve oneself in terrible contradictions. What is more, this misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of the person leads to a total subordination of the person to the collectivity, and thus to the denial of the principles of a social and political life which is in keeping with human dignity. ...
[...]
"..We are facing, therefore, a real system, even if some hesitate to follow the logic to its conclusion. As such, this system is a perversion of the Christian message as God entrusted it to His Church. This message in its entirety finds itself then called into question by the "theologies of liberation."
[...]
"...As a result, participation in the class struggle is presented as a requirement of charity itself. The desire to love everyone here and now, despite his class, and to go out to meet him with the non-violent means of dialogue and persuasion, is denounced as counterproductive and opposed to love.
If one holds that a person should not be the object of hate, it is claimed nevertheless that, if he belongs to the objective class of the rich, he is primarily a class enemy to be fought. Thus the universality of love of neighbor and brotherhood become an eschatological principle, which will only have meaning for the "new man", who arises out of the victorious revolution. ...
[...]
"..But the "theologies of liberation", which reserve credit for restoring to a place of honor the great texts of the prophets and of the Gospel in defense of the poor, go on to a disastrous confusion between the poor of the Scripture and the proletariat of Marx.
In this way they pervert the Christian meaning of the poor, and they transform the fight for the rights of the poor into a class fight within the ideological perspective of the class struggle. For them the Church of the poor signifies the Church of the class which has become aware of the requirements of the revolutionary struggle as a step toward liberation and which celebrates this liberation in its liturgy. ...
[...]
"..The new hermeneutic inherent in the "theologies of liberation" leads to an essentially political re-reading of the Scriptures. Thus, a major importance is given to the Exodus event inasmuch as it is a liberation from political servitude. Likewise, a political reading of the "Magnificat" is proposed. The mistake here is not in bringing attention to a political dimension of the readings of Scripture, but in making of this one dimension the principal or exclusive component. This leads to a reductionist reading of the Bible.
Likewise, one places oneself within the perspective of a temporal messianism, which is one of the most radical of the expressions of secularization of the Kingdom of God and of its absorption into the immanence of human history.
In giving such priority to the political dimension, one is led to deny the radical newness of the New Testament and above all to misunderstand the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, and thus the specific character of the salvation he gave us, that is above all liberation from sin, which is the source of all evils. ..
[...]
"...Faith in the Incarnate Word, dead and risen for all men, and whom "God made Lord and Christ" is denied. In its place is substituted a figure of Jesus who is a kind of symbol who sums up in Himself the requirements of the struggle of the oppressed.
An exclusively political interpretation is thus given to the death of Christ. In this way, its value for salvation and the whole economy of redemption is denied. ...
[...]
"..For them, the struggle of the classes is the way to unity.
The Eucharist thus becomes the Eucharist of the class. At the same time, they deny the triumphant force of the love of God which has been given to us.
[...]
"...the source of injustice is in the hearts of men. Therefore it is only by making an appeal to the moral potential of the person and to the constant need for interior conversion, that social change will be brought about which will be truly in the service of man.
For it will only be in the measure that they collaborate freely in these necessary changes through their own initiative and in solidarity, that people, awakened to a sense of their responsibility, will grow in humanity.
The inversion of morality and structures is steeped in a materialist anthropology which is incompatible with the dignity of mankind.
[...]
".. the overthrow by means of revolutionary violence of structures which generate violence is not ipso facto the beginning of a just regime. A major fact of our time ought to evoke the reflection of all those who would sincerely work for the true liberation of their brothers: millions of our own contemporaries legitimately yearn to recover those basic freedoms of which they were deprived by totalitarian and atheistic regimes which came to power by violent and revolutionary means, precisely in the name of the liberation of the people.
This shame of our time cannot be ignored: while claiming to bring them freedom, these regimes keep whole nations in conditions of servitude which are unworthy of mankind. Those who, perhaps inadvertently, make themselves accomplices of similar enslavements betray the very poor they mean to help.
The class struggle as a road toward a classless society is a myth which slows reform and aggravates poverty and injustice.
Those who allow themselves to be caught up in fascination with this myth should reflect on the bitter examples history has to offer about where it leads.
They would then understand that we are not talking here about abandoning an effective means of struggle on behalf of the poor for an ideal which has no practical effects. On the contrary, we are talking about freeing oneself from a delusion in order to base oneself squarely on the Gospel and its power of realization. ...
[...]
~ Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (nka Pope Benedict XVI) August 6, 1984
“Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.” ~ Pope Benedict XVI
“...After all, every normal person wants to help the poor and needy, but helping them at the end of a gun, as the left always want us to do, renders any spiritual benefit inoperative for both parties. .... What we hear from Obama is the eternal mantra of the socialists; America is broken, millions have no health care, families cannot afford necessities, the rich are evil, we are selfish, we are unhappy, unfulfilled, without hope, desperate, poverty stricken, morally desolate, corrupt and racist. This nihilism is the lifeblood of all the democrat candidates, even ‘hope you can believe in’ performers like Obama. When Michelle Obama claims she is only newly proud of her country, she does not exaggerate. In her world as in Obama’s, they believe we are a mess, a land filled with the ignorant and unenlightened, filled with despair” ..." (Fairchok).
She's been locked up in a closet with bubba.
They don't dare let her out in public - unlike her husband, she won't pretend to be anything but what she is = a whitey hating, America hating, racist
The part of Michelle Obama will be played by Oprah Winfrey for the duration of the campaign schedule.
One of the strangest dialogues in American political history ensued on March 15 when Fox News interviewed Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, of Chicago’s Trinity Church. Wright asserted the authority of the “black liberation” theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins: [snip] ...
James H. Cone http://www.utsnyc.edu/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=353&srcid=297 is now distinguished professor at New York’s Union Theological Seminary. They promote a “black power” reading of Christianity, to which liberal academic establishment condescends. [snip] Continue here: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC18Aa01.html
*
Dwight N. Hopkins
Professor of Theology in the Divinity School
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/faculty/hopkins.shtml
M.Div., M.Phil., Ph.D. (Union Theological Seminary, New York)
Ph.D. (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Dwight Hopkins is a constructive theologian working in the areas of contemporary models of theology, black theology, and liberation theologies. He is interested in multidisciplinary approaches to the academic study of religious thought, especially cultural, political, economic, and interpretive methods. His latest works are Being Human: Race, Culture, and Religion; Walk Together Children: black and womanist theologies, church and theological education; Another World Is Possible: Spiritualities and Religions of Global Darker Peoples; Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic (coeditor); Heart and Head: Black Theology-Past, Present, and Future; Introducing Black Theology of Liberation; Down, Up and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology; and Black Faith and Public Talk: Essays in Honor of James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power (editor). His previous texts include Black Theology USA and South Africa: Politics, Culture, and Liberation; Shoes That Fit Our Feet: Sources for a Constructive Black Theology; and We Are One Voice: Essays on Black Theology in South Africa and the USA (coeditor). He is an editor of Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases; Changing Conversations: Religious Reflection and Cultural Analysis; and Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas. Professor Hopkins is senior editor of the Henry McNeil Turner/Sojourner [Jim Wallis] Truth Series in Black Religion (Orbis Books). He is an ordained American Baptist minister.
“Black Theology: The Notion of Culture Revisited,” Reglion and Culture Web Forum, January 2004.
*
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
http://www.utsnyc.edu/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=256&srcid=-2
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Theological_Seminary_in_the_City_of_New_York
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York is a preeminent independent graduate school of theology, located in Manhattan between Claremont Avenue and Broadway, 120th to 122nd Streets. The seminary was founded in 1836 under the Presbyterian Church [1], and is currently affiliated with the nearby Columbia University.
On July 1, 2008, prolific feminist theologian Serene Jones will becomes Union’s first female president in its 172-year history. She will be replacing Joseph Hough.
[snip]
Columbia University Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University
Nonsense on steroids. I believe every Republican president of the 19th centuury asked for anti-lynching legislation, which was frequently passed by the House, but stopped by Democrats in the Senate.
Grant got the KKK Bill and the Force Act passed, which authorized federal troops to be used against lynchers, and to try them in federal courts. Of course, the only reason he was able to get them passed was that Democrat votes were still artificially and arguably unconstitutionally suppressed in the South.
I'm not sure what more the author wants presidents to have done.
“Jeremiah Wright is a modern Douglass”
I’m tired of this re-writing of history.
Let me lay down the truth: Jeremiah Wright is a modern Hitler.
This article must come from one of Wrights protege’s.
I don't recall reading that Douglass ever said "God D@*& America".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.