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.”
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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.
Neglected to add the legislative, monetary kick-backs and Hamas columns in the bulletins.
Not to mention the, er, same-sex goings on and murders.
But then, I could go on for days.
Exactly.
Righto. And in these parts, they call him an “Uncle Tom” anyway.
That's a false dichotomy -- either religion or ideology and nothing else.
The other, missing alternative is that he picked the church for the connections and the career help it would give him in the community.
I don't know why Obama picked Wright's church, but to leave out Obama's interest in personal career advancement is to ignore what's usually the biggest part of the puzzle when it comes to politicians.
The conservative talk radio jocks are fond of saying "The American people are not stupid". It's a nice, populist thing to say. It's good for ratings, I'm sure. But, if we're not a stupid people, we do not come close to electing people like him. Or Pelosi, or Reid, or Frank, or Boxer, and on and on.
“he was twice protected as an African American and as a lefty.”
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Teflon squared, beyond the wildest dreams of Dutch Reagan.
“The other missing alternative is that he picked the church for the connection and the career help it would give him in the community...I don’t know why Obama picked Wright’s church, but to leave out Obama’s interest in personal career advancement is to ignore what’s usually the biggest part of the puzzle when it comes to politicians.”
A major point is that he picked that church because he could use it to help his agenda advance - which of course includes his career. Maybe I just assumed that was obvious and should have spelled it out more. But it wasn’t just that Obama wanted his career to advance for personal glory. He wanted to advance so he could advance his radical ideology. They are connected.
Paul Cooper
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