The Theology Behind Obama's Church

The May 19, 2008 edition of National Review contains a cover story by Stanley Kurtz surveying the black liberation theology behind President Barack Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ.  Kurtz investigates the theology of James Cone, whose thought undergirds Trinity and has a devoted student in Trinity's recently retired pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  This story is not available online. 

In Kurtz's account, James Cone was highly influenced by Malcolm X's condemnation of Christianity as a "white man's religion."  How, then, could Cone, a Christian and disciple of Martin Luther King reconcile Christianity and authentic blackness?  The answer is a synthesis of Christianity and Marxist politics.  Cone sought:

an authentic Christianity, grounded in Jesus’s blackness, [that] would focus with full force on black liberation. Authentic Christianity would bring radical social
and political transformation and, if necessary, violent revolution in the here and
now.

Cone advocates revolution, violent if necessary, to throw off the rule of the oppressors.  Cone writes:

“There will be no peace in America until whites begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: ‘How can we become black?’”

(Note: In the piece Kurtz attributes this quote to Jeremiah Wright, but a little research and a look at the context seems to indicate that this is a typo and these are James Cone's words). 

Cone sees white America as throughly racist, arguing that black hatred of the white man is as justified as the Jews hatred of Germans and advancing the Lerone Bennett thesis that Abraham Lincoln was really a racist who did nothing to free slaves. 

As stated, the Marxist influence in Cone's work and in Trinity's theology is unmistakable.  Kurtz writes:

A scarcely concealed, Marxist-inspired indictment of American capitalism pervades contemporary “black-liberation theology.” Far from the mainstream, Trinity (and the relatively small band of other churches that share its worldview) sees itself as marginalized and radical, struggling in the face of an overwhelming rejection of its political theology by mainstream black churches.

And here is a James Cone quote:

“The black church cannot remain silent regarding socialism, because such silence will be interpreted by our Third World brothers and sisters as support for the capitalistic system, which exploits the poor all over this earth.” And: “We cannot continue to speak against racism without any reference to a radical change in the economic order. I do not think that racism can be eliminated as long as capitalism remains intact.”

The Cone/Wright thesis is that black America has made no advancement.  Indeed, any economic advancement of blacks is just a sign that blacks are buying into the white middle-class dream.  One wonders if Cone and Wright advance the notion unfortunately popular in some black circles that denigrates education as just a way of acting white. Here's Kurtz's summary.

At the heart of Cone’s and Wright’s refusals to enter the mainstream of American culture lies the ongoing conviction that, appearances to the contrary, nothing in American race relations has improved. No matter how different things look today, it’s all just a disguised form of slavery or holocaust. Cone’s original attempt to justify black hatred of whites by equating America with Nazi Germany was unconvincing, but the slavery/Holocaust
analogy lives on as the indispensable linchpin of black-liberation theology.

Barack Obama is a smart man.  It is inconceivable that he remained ignorant of the ideology behind his church for twenty years.  What is more likely is that President Obama joined the church specifically because of its ideology.  Is not this passage from Kurtz reminiscent of Obama's "I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth" statement?

But what about Marxism’s rejection of God, and the claim that religion is the “opium of the people”? Cone concedes that white and black middle-class religion may stultify action, just as he conceded the soundness of Malcolm X’s attack on dreamy, heaven-in-the-hereafter faith.

Here is the basic theology/ideology of the next president of the United States.  Luckily he is also ambitious, so perhaps he will not govern according to this ideology.

BTW, the opening section of this video, which I have posted before, indicates that Obama is very familiar with Malcolm X and is happy to ape Malcolm's rhetoric.