I decided to order the reflections on Liberation theology, Jeremiah Wright, James Cone, Barack Obama, and the media fiasco and to make a space for such a list. I expect such a tab to become somewhat important around November. I also have found some current readers show up at some of the less important posts, so in an effort to guide the reader towards the core, I have also emphasized certain posts on the list. Lastly, I suspect for now, the majority of people would not care for continuing posts, but I do plan on updating the list when need be in the future, say, around election time when all those negative adds slam Wright to slam Obama.
There was a decent summary piece on Black Liberation Theology in the New York Times yesterday. It attempts to locate Dr. Wright within the historical movement of Black Liberation Theology, and in order to do so, James Cone and Gary Dorrien, both professors at Union, are interviewed. Its worth a quick read and it is certainly better than much of what the media has put out so far.
Interestingly, the article covers two specific subjects that I want to make sure are addressed — one normally ignored, and the other, a focal point for controversy. The first is the acknowledgement of Catholic Liberation theology in the discussion of Black Liberation theology:
Even as Dr. Cone and others such as the Rev. William A. Jones at Bethany Baptist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, crafted a theology of black liberation, Catholic theologians in Central and South America crafted their own liberation theology, arguing that God placed the impoverished peasants closest to his heart.
There is little evidence that one liberationist talked to another; rather, these were cornstalks rising in a fertile and revolutionary field. “These were remarkable similar arguments, that oppressed people have their own way of hearing the Gospel,” said Dr. Dorrien of the Union Theological Seminary.
On this note, I’ve got a copied picture of Dorothy Sölle, Jürgen Moltmann, Gustavo Guitérrez, James Cone, and Christopher Morse from years ago taken here at Union - Cone still had his fro and some were wearing plaid. And after seeing this picture last year, I asked Dorrien, since Guitérrez spent a year at Union in the early 70s (hence the picture), if there was much talk then between Guitérrez and Cone, and Dorrien said the same thing then as he was quoted in the article, “there seemed to have been little talk, if at all.” I suppose this shows how far Liberation theology has come today, where there seems to be a lot of conversation. However, I am also wary that the article does not spend enough time on the Marxist aside. It seems that still today Marxism is a loaded term and to have such a small mention might have been irresponsible.
The second issue addressed in the article are Wright’s comments concerning AIDS as understood by Cone:
Dr. Cone, the black liberation theology theorist, has known Mr. Wright for decades and says he much admires his provocations. But when Mr. Wright opined recently that the United States government may have used AIDS as a form of biological warfare against black people (Mr. Wright notes, correctly, that the United States has tried biological warfare on foreign nations), Dr. Cone winced.
“I don’t believe that,” Dr. Cone says. “But I will say that when blacks look at what government has done to black people, the eugenics and the syphilis, it’s easy to get angry.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: I hope our government didn’t introduce AIDS, but its not like the United States has a track record that says the contrary. I don’t want to believe it happened, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore the other abuses that the United State pulled, which was so similar to the Nazi doctors in concentration camps. With all this in mind, no wonder liberation theology operates through a hermeneutic of suspicion.
A negative theology is to say what something is not. Generally understood, negative theology applies towards stating what God is not. Below is a negative theology of Dr. Wright. He isn’t a crazy person, a man with “issues”, or a reverse racist.
Last night Bill Moyers reflected on Dr. Wright, conservative preachers, and the whole continuing media debacle on race. Well done sir.
It is quite telling that every time there is a public discussion on Wright - or even a private discussion on race - we must begin with a reflection on the history of slavery. Indeed we ought to begin with an honest history, however, the reason we must today is because the grand story of America refuses to listen to horrors that America has committed. In such a refusal, the ideas that Wright is a crazy person, a black man with issues, or a reverse racist find their genesis.
Dr. Wright is angry. Yes. Or rather, can be angry, but there is nothing wrong with that. I suspect God has been as angry as Wright, and so were the prophets and Jesus. White people might find anger threatening, but Dr. Wright hasn’t lost his ability to speak in his anger. His story is still voiced and that is more threatening. However, those who refuse to hear his words at all, call him a crazy person. They make an appeal that he is out of his mind, that he is merely emotional. This simply isn’t true, rather the opposite is correct. One must simply listen to what Wright says to see this. He is too coherent to be crazy.
Others seem to think Wright has “issues.” Anne Lamott does. Thankfully she admits she isn’t a theologian (and it shows). To put it mildly, yes, Wright has issues, but not in the way we say it. In fact there is still the large issue of race that we refuse to adequately engage (hell, we haven’t even got to other forms of racism directed toward immigrants, etc.). This weighs hard of the black community, while the white community refuses to acknowledge systemic problems (to speak in broad terms - really its the black and white stories that are at odds, one more honest than the other). Of course Wright would have a few problems to shout about, because by and large America is still racist.
Dr. Wright is also not a reverse racist. This is not to say that a black person cannot be racist, however, what Newt Gingrich purports assumes that racism does not continue to exist in any large way. Yet, if what Wright does say is true, understood within a racist culture at large, than it merely rings true. However, Wright is not engaged by others at the level of his and his community’s experience. Instead, Wright’s words are taken from his mouth - from his black body and black context - and put into a white person’s body and context. In some senses, it seems that even Wright speaking cannot be understood as a black person speaking; rather, culture at large must think of him as a white person. How is that not itself racist, stripping him of his own humanity? Sure, maybe if we took Wright’s words and gave them to an oppressive people, the content of the words might sound racist, because they would be coming from the oppressive people’s lips. The body and context from whom the words come from are infinitely important. To call Wright a reverse racist merely on the basis of what he said in his speeches, based on forgetting the black community’s story and acting like he is a white man, is bullshit. This is just another way to marginalize a black man speaking prophetic truth.
With this whole hoopla around Dr. Jeremiah Wright, perhaps the most frustrating part, besides the airing of an out-of-context, five-second clip over and over, was that virtually no one talked to Wright himself. Well, thats going to change tonight. I’d heard some rumors this past week, but now even CNN is reporting that Wright will be on Moyers tonight, so I figured I would mention it as well. Moyers, 9 PM on the east coast on PBS.
I’ll post links later when the interview is up on the Moyers website. In the mean time, for those who still feel they need a first time introduction to black liberation theology, or a re-fresher course, watch Cone interview on Bill Moyer’s Journal here.
Prof. James Cone gave an interview that was aired on NPR’s Fresh Air. You can listen to it online here (about 13 minutes). The podcast is available here. Dwight Hopkins is in a follow up interview here (about 28 minutes).
Now, perhaps a fair, popular discussion can happen, or is that asking too much?
Edit: Apparently Prof. Cone gave NPR an hour and a half interview. From that time, NPR aired 13 minutes. I guess everyone fails sometime? I just wish it wasn’t on this.
It seems that people are still latching onto about Black Liberation theology. Although most seem to be Republicans now, churning up material in case Obama gets the Democratic ticket.
Politics aside, it still concerns me how much slander is involved when bringing up Black Liberation theology. See this if you feel you need yet another example. (I’m going to stop posting one-sided journalistic failures on this blog unless I’ll be examining it in the same post.)
However, I think some of you will be glad to know what was told to the Union community a few days back:
On Monday, March 31 at 3:00pm, WNYC–93.9 FM–will broadcast an extensive interview with Professor Cone on Black Liberation Theology.
It will be repeated on the AM station at 7:00pm the same day. The show originates with “Fresh Air” on WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, with Terry Gross, and will reach 500 NPR stations that day.
I have massive respect for NPR. I expect they won’t “let Cone off the hook” and will ask insightful questions, but I also expect a fair interview and one that lets Cone speak up on the radio for popular-ish consumption. I do not care where one falls on the spectrum of opinions about Cone, this I am quite sure, will be worth hearing.
Fundamentally, the myths of innocence, nature, God, chosen, and millennial are stories that alter our identity in favor of a white washed America. It is true we are exceptional – we are exceptionally bad. We have a tragic past, as I have displayed, and a tragic future, as we maintain an innocence of our past. “The American national mythos is messianic; it seeks to tell a story of freedom spread through self-sacrifice, not victories won through the spread of terror. To sustain the myth, Americans need to rewrite history just as surely as did Stalin to sustain his own version of communist orthodoxy.”1 It is incredibly telling that to confront the myths of America, Robert Hughes spoke of the prophetic, Black experience. The implication is, that the American myths are categorically racist; the American hagiographic myths hide the evil past, present injustice and the future of malevolent violence. There is very little in the myths that pushes America forward in a moral way.2 Instead the myths make it possible for America to turn a blind eye to violence, to injustice, to torture and insomuch that Christians take in these myths, they take in the blindness as well. The simulacra of American messianism subverts the real Jesus, and therefore, it unsettles and divides the body of Christ.
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1. Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 38.
2. Richard T. Hughes, Myths America Lives By, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 63.
As much as I appreciate J. Kameron Carter’s work already and look forward to his forth coming book, Race: A Theological Account, I worry that many people will simply pick up his book and begin to engage race from a contemporary starting point.
Carter is making a critique of Cone, but Carter is also indebted to Cone in a number of fundamental ways. Black theology would not exist today the way it is, if it were not for the space that Cone created (not to mention the entire tradition stretching back centuries even). I suggest that, and I myself will be doing this this summer to refresh and learn things I do not know, we must go back to reading W.E.B. DuBois and others that have carried the tradition forward. Carter, as far as I understand, is still very much in his tradition and we must seek it out. We must not be lazy. Honest theological discussion is hard work.
Also, in some respects, Carter is seeking a fulfillment to what Cone has been yelling about for years, mostly to deaf ears. Cone insists that race is a theological problem. Yet still theology by and large has avoided such a topic. Interestingly, Carter’s book, by virtue of its title alone, is addressing Cone’s direction at the same time it deconstructs and reconstructs. To understand Carter, we will need to understand Cone.
I figured it would be good for readers to be able to see all the posts I’ve done recently on this whole fiasco surrounding Wright and Obama. Heres the list so far in chronological order:
- Cone still had his fro and some were wearing plaid. And after seeing this picture last year, I asked Dorrien, since Guitérrez spent a year at Union in the early 70s (hence the picture), if there was much talk then between Guitérrez and Cone, and Dorrien said the same thing then as he was quoted in the article, “there seemed to have been little talk, if at all.” I suppose this shows how far Liberation theology has come today, where there seems to be a lot of conversation. However, I am also wary that the article does not spend enough time on the Marxist aside. It seems that still today Marxism is a loaded term and to have such a small mention might have been irresponsible.
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