Obama and Liberation Theology

I don’t think the controversy is going away over unorthodox doctrine at TUCC, Barack Obama’s church. There is too much there and it evokes too many images of the days when black activism erupted into violence. Yesterday ABC News reported that it had purchased and reviewed copies of past sermons from the pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. They found some pretty intemperate remarks, the most scandalous being that blacks should not sing God Bless America but “God Damn America.” A close second was his contention that the US was responsible for 9/11. Fox News thinks Rev. Wright’s political endorsement from the pulpit may violate tax laws. Obama has been defending himself with Jewish voters but Rev. Wright also has close ties to Louis Farrakhan who is openly racist and famously anti-Semitic. You are known by your friends and some of Obama’s friends are not people a serious presidential candidate should be close to. Rev. Wright’s comments and associations are entirely consistent with his status as a prominent black liberationist. Black Liberation Theology is central to the TUCC vision. I think it might be helpful to recount a little history. Liberation Theology became popular among Catholic Priests in Latin America shortly after Vatican II. They wanted to be social justice activists. Tactics often turned to violence and they became associated with revolutionary movements, some of which ended up oppressing those it was supposed to champion. In 1984 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, wrote a classic polemic on the subject, concluding among other things “it constitutes a fundamental threat to the faith of the Church.” It is at root Marxist: everything is expressed in terms of class struggle. Sin and redemption are replaced with oppression and liberation. All reality is political. Any personal relationship with God is secondary. Vatican opposition tended to dampen but not extinguish Catholic enthusiasm. By the time Ratzinger wrote the basic ideas had spread around the world. In the US two Jesuit priests, brothers Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, had become famous for civil disobedience, spending time in and out of jail for petty acts of trespass and vandalism, something the church had never seen before. Ratzinger pointed out that “no error could persist unless it contained an element of truth” and the strident rhetoric of the liberationists was and is certainly persistent. His issue was not with the causes the protestors espoused. It was in the absence of introspection, the imputation onto God of the political goals and prejudices being advanced, and the abandonment of traditional church teaching and authority, something dear to the heart of Catholic Bishops. Black Liberation Theology as it is known in the US was founded by James Cone, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Cone’s theology is designed to appeal specifically to blacks. He developed his work in the context of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s as promoted by Stokely Carmichael and others. The rhetoric remains consistently strident, revolutionary, anti-American and racist. Dr. Wright has been preaching it as pastor at TUCC since 1972 with phenomenal success. His congregation has grown from fewer than 100 to more than 10000. He hasn’t mellowed. Which brings me back to Sen. Obama. I don’t see how he distances himself from this. He’s been going to this church for decades. He describes Rev. Wright as his spiritual mentor. He doesn’t see his church as particularly controversial, but his message is one of hope and national reconciliation. This message is one of divisiveness and confrontation. I’m no political analyst but I see a problem here for Democrats.