The phenomenon that raised so many questions for me in January, when I visited Trinity United Church of Christ, was not Jeremiah Wright's sermon, which turned out to be just a call for all good congregants to support Barack Obama for President. It wasn't the sermon that caught me off guard; I was prepared for that. I had watched video of Wright, giving five of his fiery sermons.
The thing that really got me to thinking, reading and searching for answers was the church bookstore.
Having been a practicing Christian for more than 40 years now, and a practicing Catholic for 26 of those years, I have visited perhaps 100 various Christian bookstores, both Protestant and Catholic. In all of those places, one thing tied together the books for sale: Christianity.
Not so in Obama's church bookstore.
I spent more than an hour perusing available books, and found as many claiming to represent Muslim thought as those representing Christian thought. Black Muslim thought, to be specific.
And the books claiming to support Christianity were surprisingly of a more political than religious nature. The books by James H. Cone, Wright's own mentor, were prominent and numerous.
Now that I have read a number of the books that presumably Wright's congregants (including Barack Obama) have also read, I can only conclude that the thing tying these volumes together is not Christianity, nor any real religion, but the political philosophy of Karl Marx.
The teaching authorities of the Catholic Church, have for more than 20 years now, been attempting to stamp out these heretical liberation theologies, denouncing them as vehemently antithetical to the Catholic Christian faith, and have been strenuously combating this Marxist counterfeit Christianity on many fronts within the Church herself.
Of course, the Medieval, iron-fisted clamp of the Catholic Church's authority, even within the Church herself, is routinely overstated, and there are renegade priests all over the place (more on another of Obama's spiritual mentors, a liberation theology Catholic priest in Chicago, in Part Two next week).
Not to mention the fact that the Catholic Church has no authority whatsoever over those claiming to represent protestant interpretations of the Christian faith, such as Cone and Wright.
But it is important to note here that liberation theology, including black liberation theology, has not gone unnoticed by the learned biblical scholars within the Vatican, and liberation theology has been roundly denounced as both heretical and dangerous, not only to the authentic Christian faith, but even more so to the societies which come to embrace it.
Just one nugget from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation':
"...it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads."
- (Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, now Pope Benedict XVI; written in 1984)
Understanding that black liberation theology is Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity helps explain why there is no conflict between Cone's "Christianity" and Farrakhan's "Nation of Islam." They are two prophets in the same philosophical (Marxist) pod, merely using different religions as backdrops for their black-power aims.
As Cone himself writes in his 1997 preface to a new edition of his 1969 book, Black Theology and Black Power:
"As in 1969, I still regard Jesus Christ today as the chief focus of my perspective on God but not to the exclusion of other religious perspectives. God's reality is not bound by one manifestation of the divine in Jesus but can be found wherever people are being empowered to fight for freedom. Life-giving power for the poor and the oppressed is the primary criterionthat we must use to judge the adequacy of our theology, not abstract concepts. As Malcolm X put it: 'I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion'." (p. xii; emphases mine)
And, to drive his Marxist emphasis even further, Cone again quotes Malcolm X:
"The point that I would like to impress upon every Afro-American leader is that there is no kind of action in this country ever going to bear fruit unless that action is tied in with the overall international (class) struggle." (p. xiii)
(Ironically, considering the formal Church teaching regarding liberation theologies, this book of Cone's was published by Orbis, owned and managed by The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, a Maryknoll religious entity. So much for the totalitarianism of the Catholic Church.)
It is this subjugation of genuine Christianity to the supremacy of the Marxist class struggle, which marks the true delineation between traditional Christianity and black liberation theology, as Pope Benedict XVI (writing in 1984 as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) sums up thusly:
"For the marxist, the truth is a truth of class: there is no truth but the truth in the struggle of the revolutionary class."
Which is precisely why Cone and his disciples are able to boldly proclaim that if the Jesus of traditional Christianity is not united with them in the Marxist class struggle, then he is a "white Jesus," and they must "kill him." (Cone; A Black Theology of Liberation; p. 111)
And Cone brings it all the way home with this proclamation of liberation from traditional Christianity itself:
"The appearance of black theology means that the black community is now ready to do something about he white Jesus, so that he cannot get in the way of our revolution."
Faith becomes "fidelity to history."
We are the ones we've been waiting for, to bring about the final fruition of the class struggle.
Hope becomes "confidence in the future."
Yes, we can change the world; we don't need God. Our collective redemption comes when we engage in the Marxist class struggle.
Charity becomes "option for the poor."
All are not created equal. Special political privilege for the oppressed, socialism, will set us free.
It's the dawn of a new age.
__________________ ""Wisdom enters through love, silence, and mortification. It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others." "Look for Christ Our Lord in everyone and you will then have respect and reverence for all." St. John of the Cross, OCD. "Any fundamentalism that claims to know precisely God's will is not a viable church structure within God's evolving creation, which brings forth ever greater freedom." "The price for the ability to love God in freedom, the only way love is possible, is the enormous amount of suffering we find in creation."
Karl Schmitz Moorman, German Catholic biologist. "Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world."
from the Trisagion and the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
For the first time in my life, I feel frightened when looking at the possible presidential candidates which are being presented to us. I personally don't like any of them, and for the first time in many years, I probably won't vote in the next presidential election.
After following the Reverend Wright brouhaha, I have come to the conclusion that when people are oppressed, their churches are political.
And, in general, when people are oppressed, they are more religious and more devoted to their churches.
Dare I liken the Reverend Wright to Archbishop Karol Wotylja of Poland? In viewing his biography, I saw him criticize his nation's leaders and practice civil disobedience, and encourage his flock to practice civil disobedience. And, because his people were oppressed, they were fervent and devout.
Dare I liken the Reverend Wright to the American priests and bishops who harbor illegal immigrants, sign petitions vowing to flout restrictive immigration laws, and criticize our government and its leaders?
I am comfortable with the idea that churches of all denominations stand up for their oppressed members, even if it means that they are political (and they are.) And maybe those of us who think that the heroic actions of Catholic clergy in Communist countries and Hispanic neighborhoods are different from those of the Reverend Wright are wrong.
__________________
Theodore Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
There is a huge difference between doing what Karol Woltiwa did in Poland and praying with marxism and class and racial hatred as Liberation thelogy oftem does.
You cannot serve two opposing forces. The man made idol of the State, the Ceasar, and YHWH the real God.
That is what Liberation Theology does. Is the idolatry of the State in the name of Jesus and Social Justice.
__________________ ""Wisdom enters through love, silence, and mortification. It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others." "Look for Christ Our Lord in everyone and you will then have respect and reverence for all." St. John of the Cross, OCD. "Any fundamentalism that claims to know precisely God's will is not a viable church structure within God's evolving creation, which brings forth ever greater freedom." "The price for the ability to love God in freedom, the only way love is possible, is the enormous amount of suffering we find in creation."
Karl Schmitz Moorman, German Catholic biologist. "Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world."
from the Trisagion and the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
If a people want to exist in a permanent state of oppression, Marxism is the first ideology of choice. By destroying wealth, and sneering at middle class values it is indeed the great equalizer in its equal distribution of poverty to the masses.
Islam is a pretty good choice for that too, hence the embrace of Maxism with Black Muslims. They are both very good choices for keeping people down to the level of powelessness and servitude and submission to the higher goals. They both promise the moon, but it is always in the next life or in the glorious future when the revolution finall succeeds.
It is unclear if Obama really embraces Marxism as much as the Ayers and the Dorns and the Writghts that he associates with. It is just as likely that they were a means to his end of political power. The Reverend Wright at least seems to think so, although it is unclear who stabbed whose back first when it comes ot Obama and Teh Reverend Wright.
He is nevertheless the presidential candidate with the most liberal voting record in the US Senate, and the most left-wing presidential candidate ever. There will be much about him that his Marxists friend will continue to like about him as he ascends even higher.
He is more of an opportunist however than a Marxist. His modus operandi is more using his charm to get people to like him rather than any overriding ideological principles.
Speaking of Poland, it was John Pauls II that came out the most strongly against this Liberation theology. H e was absolutely aware of where that ideology leads to.
Bill Cosby is a one of the more enlightened voices on the subject. He burned a lot of bridges cutting through all the liberation BS that really is just a way of making the disenfrancised into a permanent caste.
For the first time in my life, I feel frightened when looking at the possible presidential candidates which are being presented to us. I personally don't like any of them, and for the first time in many years, I probably won't vote in the next presidential election.
If you not scared until now, its possible you weren't paying attention.
__________________ Catholicism - Throwing demons on their heads since 33 AD
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