Filling the Space

Spengler at Asia Times gives a short overview of the Black Liberation Theology subscribed to by Jeremiah Wright's TUCC and, allegedly, by Barack Obama:

Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.

During the black-power heyday of the late 1960s, after the murder of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, the mentors of Wright decided that blacks were the Chosen People. James Cone, the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school, teaches that Jesus Christ himself is black. As he explains:

Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.

Theologically, Cone's argument is as silly as the "Aryan Christianity" popular in Nazi Germany, which claimed that Jesus was not a Jew at all but an Aryan Galilean, and that the Aryan race was the "chosen people". Cone, Hopkins and Wright do not propose, of course, to put non-blacks in concentration camps or to conquer the world, but racially-based theology nonetheless is a greased chute to the nether regions.

Spengler writes of Cone's argument about God: that He should be a god who does what humans want, be a Metaphysical Sugar Daddy or He's worthless. Cone isn't exactly by himself in that postulation.

As for Jesus Christ, He is alleged to be the Savior of the Oppressed only--as is so with all types of 'Liberation theology,' a school of belief in which the identity of the Oppressed depends on who's asking. With Black Liberation theology, Jesus is the Savior of the black oppressed--and, from what I can gather, those white persons who are willing give up the "guise of the Oppressor." Let's just say that I have more homework to do.

A cursory conclusion: it is a religion of works (as opposed to faith), of grudge-holding and of promised vengeance for wrongs done--both real and perceived, both individual and collective. But, like Shelby Steele, Spengler wonders whether Obama has merely covered himself with the coating of Black Liberation theology for his own purposes.

Whether Obama takes seriously the doctrines that Wright preaches is another matter. It is possible that Obama does not believe a word of what Wright, Cone and Hopkins teach. Perhaps he merely used the Trinity United Church of Christ as a political stepping-stone. African-American political life is centered around churches, and his election to the Illinois State Senate with the support of Chicago's black political machine required church membership. Trinity United happens to be Chicago's largest and most politically active black church.

[SNIP]

It is possible that because of the Wright affair Obama will suffer for what he pretended to be, rather than for what he really is.

Did the TUCC serve to simply allow Obama to check off “religion” on his particular “self” checklist? It seems to me that he "converted" to it without giving the matter too much thought--became a clay to be molded by humans; by his wife and by Wright. A shape-shifter.

Once people get over the outrage regarding the racism of it all, perhaps more will put together the musings of persons like Steele and Spengler in order to formulate this question: who is Obama really?

His “self” space remains yet unobserved.

(Thanks to One Cosmos)