Free Republic

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: Wright: How many of Cone's books have you read? How many of Cone's book have you read? Sean Hannity: Reverend, Reverend? (crosstalk) Wright: How many books of Cone's have you head? Hannity: I'm going to ask you this question ... Wright: How many books of Dwight Hopkins have you read? Hannity: You're very angry and defensive. I'm just...

The influence of the black liberation theology of James H. Cone appears in the political philosophy of Barack Obama as well as in the recent controversial statement about national pride made by Michelle Obama.  The spiritual role that Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC) and its just-retired pastor Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright have played in the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama is well-established, as is the Africentric theology that is the cornerstone of the church's self-proclaimed identity. One largely unexamined element of that Africentric theology, though, is the pivotal role that black liberation theologian Dr. James H. Cone,...

Filed at 1:28 p.m. ET In his famous, fervent speeches of the 1960s, Malcolm X described the difference between house slaves, who lived in comfortable conditions in the master's house and loved the master, and slaves laboring in the field, who hated the master. The house slaves, he implied, were mainstream civil rights groups and leaders, who he thought were too closely aligned with whites. Now it's a term being used by activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte to describe Secretary of State Colin Powell. And Belafonte, who opposes a war on Iraq, isn't apologizing. Belafonte told The Associated Press he...