Black Theology’s white-hating God
David G. writes:
You wrote: “Still, if this country had standards and intelligence, the revelations about Obama’s church would have sunk his candidacy.”
A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of A Black Theology of Liberation by James H. Cone (20th anniversary edition, 1990) from the discount shelf of a local book store. After reading it for a while I came across this gem:
If there is one brutal fact that the centuries of white oppression have taught blacks, it is that whites are incapable of making any valid judgment about human existence. The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods. (pp. 61-62.)
The sheer idiocy of this statement is nearly outdone by Robert McAfee Brown, a self-described white theologian from Berkeley, who counsels white readers in the tribute section (oops—I mean the Critical Reflections section of the 20th anniversary edition) to:
1. Reflect on the fact that anger, in the face of injustice, is not a vice but a virtue.
2. When encountering anger try very hard to put yourself imaginatively into the historical, economic, political and racial position of the one who is angry and see if the anger is not eminently justified.
3. Remember that with the best will in the world you will never get closer than the outermost precincts of the position proposed in (2) above.
Whites can make no valid judgments about existence and whites can’t get closer than the “outer precincts” of understanding of black rage. This is what passes for the study of “theology” on the radical left. Anyone who embraces these statements as true could only be deemed an enemy of Western society.
I do not mean to imply that Obama agrees with these particular statements, but Cone’s book abounds with such sentiments—and Cone is the man who influenced Jeremiah Wright who in turn influenced the Obamas.
BLT is a total assault on whites, Christianity, and Western society and its a huge mistake for Americans to categorize this assault as simply part of a lunatic fringe. In part, Obama deflects this assault by saying that his story could only happen in America, but that is simply paying tribute to the liberal trends that have been prevalent since his birth. In order to reject BLT, especially if one considers oneself a Christian, as Obama does, then you must have a fundamental belief in the essential goodness and virtues of Western society and historical Christianity in particular. The emphasis here is not on politics but on theology itself. Its called Black Liberation Theology and the emphasis in Cone’s book is truly on the theological component. If God is black in the sense that he is against oppression as devised by whites, then nothing is true or good in our culture. It is simply one long theological perversion
I could allow for Obama being a disinterested member of the Wright Church if he was also able to give a credible defense of Western society and thus, Western theology, beyond just those dynamic social movements which have swept him into a position of great influence. I doubt that he has such a defense—but he hasn’t really been asked to give one either. To ask Obama to give a theological defense of America and traditional Christianity is different from asking Obama to defend America and its institutions against offensive political and historical opinions.
In regard to BLT, Americans may be impervious to a theology that sees their very way of life as illegitimate and perverse because it uses a nomenclature that they have stopped investigating; the public hears words such as “Christian”, “church” and “theology” and figures that everything is copacetic. Wright’s attack on America was largely seen as a left-wing attack on our political decisions and behaviors, but underlying that attack is an entirely different theology of the relationship between God and man that legitimizes the destruction of the West.
LA replies:
Both the quotations and Mr. G.’s interpretation are very interesting.
For the moment, I would just point out that this Black Theology is not simply anti-Western society and anti-Christianity. It is a metaphysical inversion of Christian and Western truth. Christianity says that God and the Good exist, that man was created by God, and that man’s purpose in life is to follow God, participate in God’s being, and become more like him.
Black Theology replaces God with black rage. Black anger at white evil is thus the first principle of existence, the ultimate truth. As a result, blacks, unlike whites, don’t need to attempt to follow a God who is external to themselves, because they are already identical with their God, who is nothing other than their own rage at whites.
Meanwhile whites, who as whites are bound up with the very principle of evil and falsity just as blacks are bound up with the principle of goodness and truth, “are incapable of making any valid judgment about human existence.” Yes, some whites can try to separate themselves from white evil and be supportive of and sympathetic to the blacks, but even these well-meaning whites can never enter into the realm of true being, which is black rage at whites.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 11, 2008 12:42 PM | Send