The black racist God of Black Liberation Theology

“Spengler” has stunning quotations from the Black Liberation theologians James Cone and Dwight Hopkins, on whose authority Jeremiah Wright bases his preaching. Spengler writes:

Biblical theology teaches that even the most terrible events to befall Israel, such as the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, embody the workings of divine justice, even if humankind cannot see God’s purpose. James Cone sees the matter very differently. Either God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him, Cone maintains:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

(Quoted in William R Jones, “Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology”, in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube.)

So that’s what the leading Black Liberation theologian believes. And to think that millions of Republicans refused to vote for the eminently qualified Mitt Romney because his religion is too weird for the rest of us!

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Unfortunately, having contributed something useful to the debate for once, Spengler, reverting to his usual deeply unsound judgments, adds this:

In this respect black liberation theology is identical in content to all the ethnocentric heresies that preceded it. Christianity has no use for the nations, a “drop of the bucket” and “dust on the scales”, in the words of Isaiah. It requires that individuals turn their back on their ethnicity to be reborn into Israel in the spirit. That is much easier for Americans than for the citizens of other nations, for Americans have no ethnicity. But the tribes of the world do not want to abandon their Gentile nature and as individuals join the New Israel. Instead they demand eternal life in their own Gentile flesh, that is, to be the “Chosen People”.

Americans have no ethnicity? Really? Spengler, the anonymous columnist with the pretentious pen name who gets all his ideas from “big” books which he almost invariably applies wrongheadedly (including his current use of Isaiah), has the nerve to tell us Americans what we are. This intellectual poseur mistakes neoconservative boilerplate for American reality.

Also, the fact that Spengler conceals even his own nationality shows that his nationality is unimportant to him. Therefore it is to be expected that he would be attracted to belief systems that devalue and dismiss nationality as such, including the most concrete component of nationality, which is ethnicity. So when he starts pronouncing from on high about what we Americans are, we need to remember where he is coming from—he’s coming from nowhere, from some place off the planet earth.

Instead of getting his ideas about the meaning of American nationhood from the neocons (who are as far off the planet as himself), and his ideas about the meaning of Christianity from liberal Christians (who are even worse), Spengler ought to read my article, “How liberal Christianity promotes open borders and one-worldism,” especially Part II, where I show the Bible’s deep recognition of nationhood (i.e. ethnicity) as part of God’s plan for human life. Which of course is not to justify James Cone’s and Jeremiah Wright’s black racist brand of Christianity.

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Rachael S. writes:

James Cone wrote:

“Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

What? God makes an activity holy, not men. How can a created being create truth apart from the Creator?

LA replies:

The Black God is obviously a projection of Blackness. He is an expression of the collective racial ego of Black People. That’s what he’s for.

It’s not Man in God’s image, but God in the Black Man’s image.

Rachael S. replies:

You are right, but they shouldn’t pretend to be representing truth. They should say “We are going to call ourselves God, and do whatever we want.” Instead they say, “If God is not with us, then we are not with God.” If you believe in God, then you can’t be against him.

LA replies:

They are doing a common thing: appropriating God for their own human—and, in this case, racial—purposes.

Or rather, given that amazing quote by James Cone, the like of which I’ve never seen before, they are appropriating God for their own anti-white racist exterminatist purposes:

If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.

I can’t believe what I’m reading. It’s just too far out. Maybe this quote is fraudulent. But Spengler said he found it in that collection co-edited by Cornel West.

Update: A reader has pointed me to it. Here it is, at Google books. It’s not an article by Cone, but Cone being quoted. But the surrounding discussion seems to treat Cone’s statement as though it were some ordinary, and rather obscure, academic statement, not the freakiest thing anyone has ever read.

Paul K. writes:

According to answers.com, Spengler is quoting Cone correctly:

“For Cone … blackness is a symbol for the oppressed and whiteness is a symbol for the oppressor.

… In his second book, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), Cone’s rhetoric sounds strident if one fails to understand his use of the terms black and white. For example: “To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores.”

Or again, “Black theology will accept only a love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.” In looking back on these earlier books, Cone later admitted that he would no longer use such extreme language, but, nevertheless, his condemnation of racism and oppression was as strong as ever.”

LA replies:

Answer.com’s explanation seems like doubletalk. What is the “non-strident” way of understanding: “To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores”?

LA writes:

Rod Dreher has uncovered more information about James Cone:

Here is an excerpt about Cone and his influence on Trinity UCC, Obama’s church, from a sympathetic profile in The Christian Century:

There is no denying, however, that a strand of radical black political theology influences Trinity. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, is a much-admired figure at Trinity. Cone told me that when he’s asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity. Cone’s groundbreaking 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power announced: “The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people…. All white men are responsible for white oppression…. Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man “the devil.”… Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement.” Contending that the structures of a still-racist society need to be dismantled, Cone is impatient with claims that the race situation in America has improved. In a 2004 essay he wrote, “Black suffering is getting worse, not better…. White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it. It claims not to exist, even though black people are dying daily from its poison” (in Living Stones in the Household of God).

Wright agrees. When I asked him whether white Americans are right to maintain that the racial situation has improved since the days when Africentric Christianity was born, Wright pointed to the racist remarks by radio host Don Imus: “And you say things have improved?”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 17, 2008 04:24 PM | Send