The Rev. Jeremiah Wright joins up with Chicago Teachers Union

The Chicago Teachers Union wants a louder voice in the political world — and to kick off that campaign, it’s turning to a public figure every bit as combative as the union itself: the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright, of course, is the Chicago pastor who was a spiritual mentor to Barack Obama until the 2008 presidential campaign. Then a video surfaced of Wright shouting from the pulpit, “God damn America.” Then Wright suggested the U.S. had committed terrorism and thus brought the Sept. 11 attacks on itself. Then he opined that the government had created AIDS to kill African-Americans. Obama forcefully denounced his former pastor. And Wright gradually faded from the headlines. Now, he’s back. Wright will give a keynote address Wednesday at a breakfast the teacher’s union is holding in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. The union has invited local pastors to the breakfast in the hopes of building a coalition of Chicago clergy to support its causes. In particular, union officials are seeking allies to fight the city’s policy of shutting down dozens of neighborhood schools and opening charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed — and often, nonunion. CTU is expecting about 250 representatives from the clergy at the breakfast.

CTU President Karen Lewis — herself a fiery speaker, prone to the occasional incendiary remark — said she hopes Wright’s speech will be “stimulating, interesting, provocative” and fully in tune with King’s legacy as a crusader for social justice and union rights. She said she is “not concerned at all” that Wright might repeat some of his more inflammatory comments or reiterate controversial stances such as his embrace of Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic views. “He’s a theologian and a scholar,” Lewis said of Wright, who is pastor emeritus at Trinity United Church of Christ.

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]

(some key excerpts)

["(Jose) Diaz-Balart is the son of Rafael Diaz-Balart y Guitierrez (a former Cuban politician). He has three bothers, Rafael Diaz-Balart (a banker), Mario Diaz-Balart (a US Congressman) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (also a US Congressman). His aunt, Mirta Diaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro's first wife."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Diaz-Balart]

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.

I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."

REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."

SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."

Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html

Liberation Theology and the KGB

Jay Richards | February 2, 2010

The presence of Marxism in liberation theology is well-known, at least to seminarians who are critical readers. Practically every seminarian reads Gustavo Gutierrez’s Theology of Liberation at some point, but most laypeople find it hard to believe that there could have been (and continues to be) a widespread attempt to hybridize Christian theology and Marxism.

Marxist regimes obviously benefitted from the spread of liberation theology in the churches. Still, I was not aware of any connections between liberation theology and communist clandestine organizations until now.

A new article by Robert D. Chapman in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence begins to connect some dots. In “The Church in Revolution,” Chapman, “a retired operations officer in the Clandestine Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency,” argues that the KGB infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church through Metropolitan Nikodim, the Russian Orthodoxy’s second-ranking prelate. Nikodim was a proponent of liberation theology. Nikodim was active in the otherwise-Protestant World Council of Churches. And the WCC, of course, became an actively left-wing organization during the last half of the 20th century.

Chapman also details the growth of liberation theology in Latin America—and the Vatican’s struggles with it—and the growth of black liberation theology in the United States. Prominent proponents of the latter include James Cone and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The arguments of liberation theologians should be challenged on their merits. The source of an argument, after all, doesn’t establish its truth or falsity. Still, it’s interesting to learn that liberation theology may have been, at least in part, a project of the KGB.

Unfortunately, this isn’t just history. Chapman concludes ominously:

"the Theology of Liberation doctrine is one of the most enduring and powerful to emerge from the KGB’s headquarters. The doctrine asks the poor and downtrodden to revolt and form a Communist government, not in the name of Marx or Lenin, but in continuing the work of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary who opposed economic and social discrimination.

A friend of mine, a head of Catholic social services in my area and formerly a priest, is a liberation theologian. He has made a number of humanitarian trips to Central America and told me, ‘‘liberation theology is alive and well.’’ The same can be said of its sibling in the United States [ie, Black Liberation Theology]."

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2010/02/liberation-theology-and-the-kgb/

Here's some related info...

But first, Riverside Church is directly across the street from Columbia University. During the 1980s Obama and Bill Ayers attended college mere blocks apart from each other (at the same time), Obama at Columbia College, a part of Columbia U, and Ayers at Bank Street College, a couple blocks away. Also directly across the street from Riverside Church is the Union Theological Seminary. That is where black communist, James Cone, was teaching when he, with probable KGB assistance, concocted his Black Liberation Theology.
____________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: Institute For Policy Studies (IPS)

IPS’s [Institute For Policy Studies] Washington, DC headquarters quickly became a resource center for national reporters and a place for KGB agents from the nearby Soviet embassy to convene and strategize.

Cora Weiss headed one of the IPS's most successful forays -- into Riverside Church in Manhattan. She was invited there in 1978 by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin to run the church's Disarmament Program, which sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe -- in the name of "peace."

In 1982 Weiss helped organize the largest pro-disarmament demonstration ever held. Staged in New York City, the rally was attended by a coalition of communist organizations.

During her decade-long tenure at Riverside, which became home to the National Council of Churches, Weiss regularly received Russian KGB agents, Sandinista friends, and Cuban intelligence agents. Weiss became infamous for her role in the psychological warfare conducted against U.S. prisoners of war held in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War.

The Liberation News Service, which is a news source for hundreds of "alternative" publications nationwide (with antiwar, Marxist-oriented perspectives), was founded in 1967 with IPS assistance."

[lots more at link...]

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991

The Weather Underground also advocated communist, so-called "Black Liberation"...

"Their founding document [the Weather Underground's] called for the establishment of a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" movements[1] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."..."-Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press, 95.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_Underground#cite_ref-Berger_0-0

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Paperback) by Dan Berger
http://www.amazon.com/Outlaws-America-Underground-Politics-Solidarity/dp/1904859410
____________________________________________

From the New York Times, August 24, 2003

"they [the Weather Underground] employed revolutionary jargon, advocated armed struggle and black liberation and began bombing buildings, taking responsibility for at least 20 attacks. Estimates of their number ranged at times from several dozen to several hundred."

Article: Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E4DE1539F937A1575BC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
____________________________________________

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and Dr. William Ayers
are greeted by Rebekah Levin with the Committee
for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine.
(Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune / May 17, 2009)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ayers_wrightmay18,0,6689521.story

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
__________________________________

Catholics for Marx [Liberation Theology]
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD

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