Rev. Wright and Black Liberation Theology

For those following the election, and specifically the flap over Reverend Wright... a few thoughts.

I heard almost his entire sermon from Palm Sunday (the one where he likened what "we are doing to what Al Quaeda is doing under a different colored flag").

Strangely, as I was listening to it, I found myself agreeing with him! He started with his central point. Don't confuse God with government, and look to the government to solve your problems. He was preaching about the emotion of the crowd on Palm Sunday, and the resulting emotion Jesus showed in seeing that they were looking for a military messiah.

He then began to liken it to us, to how we have confused government with God, to the point of thinking we can go into Iraq and change it with military force. He comment about the flags comes in that context, we don't see how we are ruining peoples lives just like Al Quaeda through military force.

Now, I wouldn't go that far, but I agree with him on his central point, and I was tracking with him up to there.

What actually got me mad, and where I saw him becoming what he is characterized as, was when he then went into a tirade on how the US government caused AIDS to put down the black man, a very bad history lesson on why the Constitution has blacks listed as being 3/5ths of a person and the whole background on slavery, and a bunch of other paranoid views on a host of issues.

It is clear that he is a proponent of Black Liberation Theology. What is it? Well, this post at Between Two Worlds does a nice job of summarizing the problems from a theological point of view.

"Black theology," says Cone [Wright's mentor], "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." And again: "Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy." And again: "In the New Testament, Jesus is not for all, but for the oppressed, the poor and unwanted of society, and against oppressors."

But the deepest flaws in black liberation theology are theological, not political. Jesus did advocate a special concern for the rights and welfare of the poor and helpless. But he specifically rejected a faith defined by social and political struggle, much to the disappointment of his more zealous followers. The early church, in its wrenching decision to include gentiles as equals, explicitly rejected a community defined by ethnicity. No Christian theology that asserts "Jesus is not for all" can be biblical.

You could see this in Wright's sermon. His point was good, but how he fleshed it out and applied it was wrong. I totally agree with him, don't confuse the government with God. Some of his sub-points were good to (government can be changed, for the good or the bad) but his application of his points is the problem.