Know Your TRC-Reconciliation-Fraud History: Liberation Theology, Kairos, White Guilt, and Black Victimology Power

[Great Tribal Forgetting: Salvation from Law of Limited Competition] :: [Black Liberation Mythology & Black Power] :: [Liberating Black Victim Theology] :: [Black Liberation Theology: Kairos & Reconciliation] :: [The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology] :: [See also at Jus Sanguinis: Boer Volkstaat 10/31/16 Theses Briefing Paper: [B] Politically Incorrect Truths About Apartheid Conflict: (6) Black Consciousness & Fanon’s Handbook for Black Liberation: ‘Violence as a cleansing Liberating Force’; [C] Rainbow Illusions: Truth and Reconciliation Fraud: (1) TRC Social Contract provides NO Definitions for Multi-Cultural Multi-Interpretation of Key Concepts of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Closure and Ubuntu; (3) Black Liberation Theology: Salvation/Liberation by Marxist/Fanon Class Struggle, not Reconciliation/Forgiveness of Sins, and (5) Was Truth and Reconciliation Seen to be Done; by the Ubuntu Black Liberation Theology Truth Commission?]

“With complete freedom in reproduction, conscientious people will be eliminated.”
-- Garrett Hardin, The Feast of Malthus: Living within Limits

“What becomes of the surplus of human life? It is either, 1st. destroyed by infanticide, as among the Chinese and Lacedemonians; or 2d. it is stifled or starved, as among other nations whose population is commensurate to its food; or 3d. it is consumed by wars and endemic diseases; or 4th. it overflows, by emigration, to places where a surplus of food is attainable.”
-- James Madison, 1791, U.S. President

In the fourth century A.D., one of the Fathers of the Christian church, Tertullian, a Montanist preached the social contract counsels of strict ascetism and chastity, warning his flock to transform the human condition of their sexuality from the ‘state of nature’, to one constrained by ethical conscience. He clearly warned how in a world addicted to warlike breeding, excess populations were culled either by mother nature’s plagues or ‘Conquer and Multiply’ Power and Domination addict resource wars, as proverbial cannon fodder.

In a book review of the The Ostrich Factor: Our Population Myopia, Garrett Hardin writes that Tertullian shocked many traditionalists over the centuries, in a passage where he asked, why is the human population so vast [perhaps 150 million at that time] that we are a burden to the earth, which can scarcely provide for our needs? In a short passage of De Anima, Tertullian explained the very real value of events that are customarily viewed with dismay.

What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint), is our teeming population: our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race....”

According to Hardin, Tertullian was thinking in terms of ecological limits and carrying capacity. The paramount assumption of practical population theory (toward the expression of which both Tertullian and Malthus were struggling) can be added to an Ecological Decalogue:

“Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity.”

******

Liberation Theology and the Marxism Leninism Worldview: Economic Salvation to replace Theological Salvation

Poverty, n. A file provided for the teeth of the rats of reform. The number of plans for its abolition equals that of the reformers who suffer from it, plus that of the philosophers who know nothing about it. Its victims are distinguished by possession of all the virtues and by their faith in leaders seeking to conduct them into a prosperity where they believe these to be unknown.
-- The Devils Dictionary

“In communities where a witchcraft paradigm informs understandings about other peoples’ motives and capacities, life must be lived in terms of a presumption of malice.” -- AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa, by Adam Ashforth. An exploration of the spiritual insecurity origins of African occult violence, the preference for victimhood decision-making: i.e. to blame all problems on evil external forces contributes to spiritual insecurity. An example how the inability and failure of personal responsibility decision-making denies the individual or group psychological and spiritual security.

"The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep. We shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record. There will be electrifying overtures and unheard-of concessions. The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction. They will leap at another chance to be friends."
-- Dmitriy Manuilsky, or Dmytro Zakharovych Manuilsky (3 October 1883, Sviatets near Kremenets - 22 February 1959, Kiev), a prominent Soviet professor at the School of Political Warfare

The Great Tribal Forgetting:

Salvation from the Law of Limited Competition

Excerpts from: Ubuntu Brief of Amicus Curiae: Bushido Dischordian Futilitarian In Support Of: Radical Honesty Common Sense Population Policy Social Contract Interpretations of Promotion of National Unity & Reconciliation Act, 34 of 1995 (PDF)

1. The Truth About All Cultures & Their Mythologies
   
2. Judaism X Manifesto Mythology: Divine Law of Melchizedek – Ecological War
   
3. Eve’s Mission Impossible: Cracking the Lebensraum Right-to-Breed Code
   
4. An ABC’s of Ecology Systems Approach to a Sui Generis Agriculture Mythology When did We become We?
   
5. Identity and Dignity in Ubuntu Mythology
   
6. Black Liberation Mythology and Black Power
   
7. Liberating Black Victim Theology
   
8. Black Liberation Theology: Kairos & Reconciliation

D.6: Black Liberation Mythology and Black Power

Black Theology and Black Power, By James H. Cone [*Amazon*]

Give a young boy — 16 years old — from the ghetto of Soweto, an
opportunity to drive a car for the first time in his life.
This boy is from a poor working class family.
Give him money to buy any type of liquor and good, expensive clothes.
This boy left South Africa during the Soweto schools uprising in 1976.
He doesn't know what is an employer.
He never tasted employer-exploitation.
Give him the right to sleep with all these women.
Give him the opportunity to study in Party Schools and well-off
military academies in Eastern Europe.
Teach him Marxism-Leninism and tell him to defend the revolution
against counter-revolutionaries.
Send him to the Stasi to train him to extract information by force from
enemy agents. He turns to be a torturer and executioner by firing squad.
All these are the luxuries and the dream-come-true he never thought
of for his lifetime...
This Security becomes the law unto itself.
-- Olefile Samuel Mngqibisa, a former soldier in the ANC army Umkhonto we Sizwe, describes the education of an Imbokodo officer, which he presented to the Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses in ANC detention camps, chaired by Mr Sam Motsuenyane



a: What is Black Liberation Theology & Black Power?

“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white.”
-- James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation

“Victimology condones weakness in failure. It tacitly stamps approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns that are self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or are presented as unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns.”
-- Anthony Bradley, Liberating Black Theology

According to James. H. Cone and others, black liberation theology was the theological arm of black power seeking to relate the black struggle for freedom to the biblical claim regarding the justice of God. Black power itself was the political challenge to the non-violence preached by Martin Luther King. Decision making in favour of violence, was provided for within the tenets of black liberation theology.

Modern American origins of contemporary black liberation theology can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 black pastors, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full page ad in the New York Times to publish their “Black Power Statement,” which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.


b: A Black Theology of Liberation

38th Trinity Institute: National Theological Conference: Trinity Institute's Bob Scott talks with theologian James H. Cone about race, religion and violence.

According to A Black Theology of Liberation, by James H. Cone:

Oppressors never like to hear the truth in a socio-political context defined by their lies. That was why a Black Theology of Liberation was often rejected as racism in reverse by many whites, particularly theologians. For example, Father Andrew M. Greeley referred to my perspective on black theology as a "Nazi mentality," "a theology filled with hatred for white people and the assumption of a moral superiority of black over white."' White reactions to black theology never disturbed me too much, because Malcolm X had prepared me for them. "With skilful manipulating of the press," said Malcolm, "they're able to make the victim look like the criminal and the criminal look like the victim."' (p.xii)

It is unthinkable that oppressors could identify with oppressed existence and thus say something relevant about God's liberation of the oppressed. In order to be Christian theology, white theology must cease being white theology and become black theology by denying whiteness as an acceptable form of human existence and affirming blackness as God's intention for humanity.(p.09)

Black theology will not spend too much time trying to answer its critics, because it is accountable only to the black community. Refusing to be separated from that community, black theology seeks to articulate the theological self-determination of blacks, providing some ethical and religious categories for the black revolution in America. It maintains that all acts which participate in the destruction of white racism are Christian, the liberating deeds of God. All acts which impede the struggle of black self determination-black power-are anti-Christian, the work of Satan. (p10)

That white America has issued a death warrant for being black is evident in the white brutality inflicted on black persons. Though whites may deny it, the ghettos of this country say otherwise. Masters always pretend that they are not masters, insisting that they are only doing what is best for society as a whole, including the slaves. This is, of course, the standard rhetoric of an oppressive society. Blacks know better. They know that whites have only one purpose: the destruction of everything which is not white. (p.11)

A Black Theology of Liberation, By James H. Cone [*Amazon*]

In this situation, blacks are continually asking, often unconsciously, "When will the white overlord decide that blackness in any form must be exterminated?" The genocide of Amerindians is a reminder to the black community that white oppressors are capable of pursuing a course of complete annihilation of everything black. And the killing and the caging of black leaders make us think that black genocide has already begun. (p.11)

With the assurance that God is on our side, we can begin to make ready for the inevitable-the decisive encounter between black and white existence. White appeals to "wait and talk it over" are irrelevant when children are dying and men and women are being tortured. We will not let whitey cool this one with his pious love ethic but will seek to enhance our hostility, bringing it to its full manifestation. Black survival is at stake here, and we blacks must define and assert the conditions necessary for our being-in-the world. Only we can decide how much we can endure from white racists. And as we make our decision in the midst of life and death, being and nonbeing, the role of black theology is to articulate this decision by pointing to the revelation of God in the black liberation struggle. (p.12)

Black thinkers are in a different position. They cannot be black and identified with the powers that be. To be black is to be committed to destroying everything this country loves and adores. Creativity and passion are possible when one stands where the black person stands, the one who has visions of the future because the present is unbearable. And the black person will cling to that future as a means of passionately rejecting the present. (p.20)

The black experience is the feeling one has when attacking the enemy of black humanity by throwing a Molotov cocktail into a white-owned building and watching it go up in flames. We know, of course, that getting rid of evil takes something more than burning down buildings, but one must start somewhere. (p.25)

Being black is a beautiful experience. It is the sane way of living in an insane environment. Whites do not understand it; they can only catch glimpses of it in sociological reports and historical studies. The black experience is possible only for black persons.(p.25)

Blacks need to see some correlations between divine salvation and black culture. For too long Christ has been pictured as a blue-eyed honky. Black theologians are right: we need to dehonkify him and thus make him relevant to the black condition. (p.28)

And yet, what other name is there? The name of Jesus has a long history in the black community. Blacks know the source from which the name comes, but they also know the reality to which that name refers. Despite its misuse in the white community (even the devil is not prohibited from adopting God's name), the black community is convinced of the reality of Jesus Christ's presence and his total identification with their suffering. They never believed that slavery was his will. Every time a white master came to his death, blacks believed that it was the work of God inflicting just judgment in recompense for the suffering of God's people. Black theology cannot ignore this spirit in the black community if it is going to win the enthusiasm of the community it serves. (p.37)

James H. Cone and Black Liberation Theology, By Rufus Burrow Jr [*Amazon*]

Black theology must realize that the white Jesus has no place in the black community, and it is our task to destroy him. We must replace him with the black messiah, as Albert Cleage would say, a messiah who sees his existence as inseparable from black liberation und the destruction of white racism. (p.38)

What does the name (Christ) mean when black people are burning buildings and white people are responding with riot-police control? Whose side is Jesus on? The norm of black theology, which identifies revelation as a manifestation of the black Christ, says that he (Christ) is those very blacks whom white society shoots and kills. The contemporary Christ is in the black ghetto, making decisions about white existence and black liberation.

Of course, this interpretation of theology will seem strange to most whites, and even some blacks will wonder whether it is really true that Christ is black. But the truth of the statement is not dependent on white or black affirmation, but on the reality of Christ himself who is presently breaking the power of white racism. This and this alone is the norm for black-talk about God. (p.38)

According to black theology, the sin of the oppressed is not that they are responsible for their own enslavement-far from it. Their sin is that of trying to "understand" enslavers, to "love" them on their own terms. As the oppressed now recognize their situation in the light of God's revelation, they know that they should have killed their oppressors instead of trying to "love" them. (p.51)

It is not the task of black theology to remove the influence of the divine in the black community. Its task is to interpret the divine element in the forces and achievements of black liberation. Black theology must retain God-language despite its perils, because the black community perceives its identity in terms of divine presence. Black theology cannot create new symbols independent of the black community and expect blacks to respond. It must stay in the black community and get down to the real issues at hand ("cutting throats" to use LeRoi Jones's phrase) and not waste too much time discussing the legitimacy of religious language. (p59)

Marx and the Bible, By Jose P. Miranda [*Amazon*]

The legitimacy of any language, religious or otherwise, is determined by its usefulness in the struggle for liberation. That the God language of white religion has been used to create a docile spirit among blacks so that whites could aggressively attack them is beyond question. But that does not mean that we cannot kill the white God, so that the presence of the black God can become known in the black-white encounter. The white God is an idol created by racists, and we blacks must perform the iconoclastic task of smashing false images. (p.59)

The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods. The God of black liberation will not be confused with a bloodthirsty white idol. Black theology must show that the black God has nothing to do with the God worshiped in white churches whose primary purpose is to sanctify the racism of whites and to daub the wounds of blacks. (p.62)

Because blacks have come to know themselves as black, and because that blackness is the cause of their own love of themselves and hatred of whiteness, the blackness of God is the key to our knowledge of God. The blackness of God, and everything implied by it in a racist society, is the heart of the black theology doctrine of God. There is no place in black theology for a colorless God in a society where human beings suffer precisely because of their color. The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism. (p.63)

In contrast to this racist view of God, black theology proclaims God's blackness. Those who want to know who God is and what God is doing must know who black persons are and what they are doing. This does not mean lending a helping hand to the poor and unfortunate blacks of society. It does not mean joining the war on poverty! Such acts are sin offerings that represent a white way of assuring themselves that they are basically "good" persons. Knowing God means being on the side of the oppressed, becoming one with them, and participating in the goal of liberation. We must become black with God!. (p.65)

Black theology cannot accept a view of God which does not represent God as being for oppressed blacks and thus against white oppressors. Living in a world of white oppressors, blacks have no time for a neutral God. The brutalities are too great and the pain too severe, and this means we must know where God is and what God is doing in the revolution. There is no use for a God who loves white oppressors the same as oppressed blacks. We have had too much of white love, the love that tells blacks to turn the other cheek and go the second mile. What we need is the divine love; as expressed in black power, which is the power of blacks to destroy their oppressors, here and now, by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject God's love. (p.70)

Black theology will accept only a love of God which participates in the destruction of the white oppressor. With Fanon black theology takes literally Jesus' statement, "the last will be first, and the first last:" Black power "is the putting into practice of this sentence."" (p.72)

That is why it is necessary to speak of the black revolution rather than reformation. The idea of reformation suggests that there is still something "good" in the system itself, which needs only to be cleaned up a bit. This is a false perception of reality. The system is based on whiteness, and what is necessary is a replacement of whiteness with blackness. God as creator means that oppressed humanity is free to revolutionize society, assured that acts of liberation are the work of God. (p.74)

Certainly if whites expect to be able to say anything relevant to the self determination of the black community, it will be necessary for them to destroy their whiteness by becoming members of an oppressed community. Whites will be free only when they become new persons-when their white being has passed away and they are created anew in black being. When this happens, they are no longer white but free, and thus capable of making decisions about the destiny of the black community. (p.97)

c: Freedom and Blackness

Farewell to Innocence: A Socio-Ethical Study on Black Theology and Black Power, By Allan A. Boesak [*Amazon*]

According to A Black Theology of Liberation, by James H. Cone:

What does freedom mean when we relate it to contemporary America? Because blackness is at once the symbol of oppression and of the certainty of liberation, freedom means an affirmation of blackness. To be free is to be black-that is, identified with the victims of humiliation in human society and a participant in the liberation of oppressed humanity. The free person in America is the one who does not tolerate whiteness but fights against it, knowing that it is the source of human misery. The free person is the black person living in an alien world but refusing to behave according to its expectations. (p.101)

Being free in America means accepting blackness as the only possible way of existing in the world. It means defining one's identity by the marks of oppression. It means rejecting white proposals for peace and reconciliation, saying, "All we know is, we must have justice, not next week but this minute" Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, and Denmark Vesey are examples of free persons. They realized that freedom and death were inseparable. The mythic value of their existence for the black community is incalculable, because they represent the personification of the possibility of being in the midst of nonbeing-the ability to be black in the presence of whiteness. Through them we know that freedom is what happens to blacks when they decide that whitey has gone too far and that it is incumbent upon them as the victims of humiliation to do something about the encroachment of whiteness. Freedom is the black movement of a people getting ready to liberate itself, knowing that it cannot be unless its oppressors cease to be. (p.101)

Black empowerment is the black community in defiance, knowing that he who has become one of them is far more important than threats from white officials. The black Christ is he who nourishes the rebellious impulse in blacks so that at the appointed time the black community can respond collectively to the white community as a corporate "bad nigger," lashing out at the enemy of humankind. (p121)

To be a disciple of the black Christ is to become black with him. Looting, burning, or the destruction of white property are not primary concerns. Such matters can only be decided by the oppressed themselves who are seeking to develop their images of the black Christ.

Guerrillas of Peace: Liberation Theology and the Central American Revolution, By Blase Bonpane [*Amazon*]

What is primary is that blacks must refuse to let whites define what is appropriate for the black community. Just as white slaveholders in the nineteenth century said that questioning slavery was an invasion of their property rights, so today they use the same line of reasoning in reference to black self-determination. But Nat Turner had no scruples on this issue; and blacks today are beginning to see themselves in a new image. We believe in the manifestation of the black Christ, and our encounter with him defines our values. This means that blacks are free to do what they have to in order to affirm their humanity. (p.123)

The kingdom is not an attainment of material security, nor is it mystical communion with the divine. It has to do with the quality of ones, existence in which a person realizes that persons are more important than property. When blacks behave as if the values of this world have no significance, it means that they perceive the irruption of God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is a black happening. It is black persons saying no to whitey, forming caucuses and advancing into white confrontation. It is a beautiful thing to see blacks shaking loose the chains of white approval, and it can only mean that they know that there is a way of living that does not involve the destruction of their personhood. This is the kingdom of God. (p.124)

The kingdom is what God does and repentance arises solely as a response to God's liberation.(p.125)

That is why Jesus compared the kingdom with a mustard seed and with yeast in dough. Both show a small, apparently insignificant beginning but a radical, revolutionary ending. The seed grows to a large tree, and the bread can feed many hungry persons. So it is with the kingdom; because of its small beginning, some viewers do not readily perceive what is actually happening.

The black revolution is a continuation of that small kingdom. Whites do not recognize what is happening, and they are thus unable to deal with it. For most whites in power, the black community is a nuisance-something to be considered only when the natives get restless. But what white America fails to realize is the explosive nature of the kingdom.

Although its beginning is small, it will have far-reaching effects not only on the black community but on the white community as well. Now is the time to make decisions about loyalties, because soon it will be too late. Shall we or shall we not join the black revolutionary kingdom? (p.126)

The interpretation of salvation as liberation from bondage is certainly consistent with the biblical view. (p.127)

Because the work of God is not a superimposed activity but a part of one's existence as a person, pious frauds are caught in a trap. They are rejected because they failed to see that being good is not a societal trait or an extra activity, but a human activity. They are excluded because they used their neighbor as an enhancement of their own religious piety. Had they known that blacks were Jesus, they would have been prepared to relieve their suffering. But that is just the point: there is no way to know in the abstract who is Jesus and who is not. It is not an intellectual question at all. Knowledge of Jesus Christ comes as one participates in human liberation. (p.135)

d: Black Theology and Black Power

The late Khalid Abdul Muhammad (born Harold Moore Jr.; January 12, 1948–February 17, 2001), speech at Kean College in Union Township, New Jersey, 1993, wherein he calls for the extermination of white people in South Africa. At the time he was National Assistant to Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam (NOI). He then served as the National Chairman of the New Black Panther Party from 1993 until his death in 2001.

According to Black Theology and Black Power, by James H. Cone:

The same is true of the words "Black Power:" To what "object" does it point? What does it mean when used by its advocates? It means complete emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary. The methods may include selective buying, boycotting, marching, or even rebellion. (p.06)

One of the most serious charges leveled against the advocates of Black Power is that they are black racists. Many well-intentioned persons have insisted that there must be another approach, one which will not cause so much hostility, not to mention rebellion. Therefore appeal is made to the patience of black people to keep their "cool" and not get too carried away by their feelings. These men argue that if any progress is to be made, it will be through a careful, rational approach to the subject. These people are deeply offended when black people refuse to listen and place such white liberals in the same category as the most adamant segregationists. (p.12)

It is interesting that most people do understand why Jews can hate Germans. Why can they not understand why black people, who have been deliberately and systematically dehumanized or murdered by the structure of this society, hate white people? The general failure of Americans to make this connection suggests that the primary difficulty is their inability to see black men as men.

When Black Power advocates refuse to listen to their would-be liberators, they are charged with creating hatred among black people, thus making significant personal relationship between blacks and whites impossible. It should be obvious that the hate which black people feel toward whites is not due to the creation of the term "Black Power." Rather, it is a result of the deliberate and systematic ordering of society on the basis of racism, making black alienation not only possible but inevitable. For over three hundred years black people have been enslaved by the tentacles of American white power, tentacles that worm their way into the guts of their being and "invade the gray cells of their cortex." For three hundred years they have cried, waited, voted, marched, picketed, and boycotted, but whites still refuse to recognize their humanity. In light of this, attributing black anger to the call for Black Power is ridiculous, if not obscene. "To be a Negro in this country," says James Baldwin, "and to be relatively conscious is to be in rage almost all the time." (p.13)

And James Baldwin was certainly expressing the spirit of black hatred when he said: The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated; however unwilling white men may be to hear it. In the beginning-and neither can this be overstated-a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not know what he has done to merit it. And when he realizes that the treatment accorded him has nothing to do with anything he has done, that the attempt of white people to destroy him-for that is what it is-is utterly gratuitous, it is not hard for him to think of white people as devils. (p.15)

But the charge of black racism cannot be reconciled with the facts. While it is true that blacks do hate whites, black hatred is not racism. (p.15)

White people should not even expect blacks to love them, and to ask for it merely adds insult to injury. "For the white man," writes Malcolm X, "to ask the black man if he hates him is just like the rapist asking the raped ... `Do you hate me?' The white man is in no moral position to accuse anyone else of hate." Whatever blacks feel toward whites or whatever their response to white racism, it cannot be submitted to the judgments of white society. (p.21)

e: How Does Black Power Relate to White Guilt?

Inconvenient Truth: Black Racism and White Guilt

According to Black Theology and Black Power, by James H. Cone:

When white do-gooders are confronted with the style of Black Power, realizing that black people really place them in the same category with the George Wallaces, they react defensively, saying, "It's not my fault" or "I am not responsible." Sometimes they continue by suggesting that their town (because of their unselfish involvement in civil rights) is better or less racist than others. (p.23)

Second, all white men are responsible for white oppression. It is much too easy to say, "Racism is not my fault," or "I am not responsible for the country's inhumanity to the black man." The American white man has always had an easy conscience. But insofar as white do-gooders tolerate and sponsor racism in their educational institutions, their political, economic, and social structures, their churches, and in every other aspect of American life, they are directly responsible for racism. "It is a cold, hard fact that the many flagrant forms of racial injustice North and South could not exist without their [whites'] acquiescence," 47 and for that, they are responsible. If whites are honest in their analysis of the moral state of this society, they know that all are responsible. Racism is possible because whites are indifferent to suffering and patient with cruelty. (p.24)

f: Black Power and the White Liberal

Marxist Feminist Criticism of the Bible (Bible in the Modern World), From Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd [*Amazon*]

According to Black Theology and Black Power, by James H. Cone:

In time of war, men want to know who the enemy is. Who is for me and who is against me? That is the question. The asserting of black freedom in America has always meant war. When blacks retreat and accept their dehumanized place in white society, the conflict ceases. But when blacks rise up in freedom, whites show their racism. (p.26)

The liberal, then, is one who sees "both sides" of the issue and shies away from "extremism" in any form. He wants to change the heart of the racist without ceasing to be his friend; he wants progress without conflict. Therefore, when he sees blacks engaging in civil disobedience and demanding "Freedom Now," he is disturbed. Black people know who the enemy is, and they are forcing the liberal to take sides. But the liberal wants to be a friend, that is, enjoy the rights and privileges pertaining to whiteness and also work for the "Negro." He wants change without risk, victory without blood.

The liberal white man is a strange creature; he verbalizes the right things. He intellectualizes on the racial problem beautifully. He roundly denounces racists, conservatives, and the moderately liberal. Sometimes, in rare moments and behind closed doors, he will even defend Rap Brown or Stokely Carmichael. Or he may go so far as to make the statement: "I will let my daughter marry one," and this is supposed to be the absolute evidence that he is raceless.

But he is still white to the very core of his being. What he fails to realize is that there is no place for him in this war of survival. Blacks do not want his patronizing, condescending words of sympathy. They do not need his concern, his "love;" his money. (p.27)

Moreover, it seems to me that it is quite obvious who is actually engaged in the task of liberating black people from the power of white racism, even at the expense of their lives. They are men who stand unafraid of the structures of white racism. They are men who risk their lives for the inner freedom of others. They are men who embody the spirit of Black Power. And if Christ is present today actively risking all for the freedom of man, he must be acting through the most radical elements of Black Power. (p.40)

If the riots are the black man's courage to say Yes to himself as a creature of God, and if in affirming self he affirms Yes to the neighbor, then violence may be the black man's expression, sometimes the only possible expression, of Christian love to the white oppressor. (p55)

Black Power, then, is God's new way of acting in America. It is his way of saying to blacks that they are human beings; he is saying to whites: "Get used to it!" Whites, as well as some blacks, will find the encounter of Black Power a terrible experience. Like the people of Jesus' day, they will find it hard to believe that God would stoop so low as to reveal himself in and through black people and especially the "undesirable elements." If he has to make himself known through blacks, why not choose the "good Negroes"? But, that is just the point: God encounters men at that level of experience which challenges their being. The real test of whether whites can communicate with blacks as human beings is not what they reply to Ralph Bunche but how they respond to Rap Brown. (p.61)

Communism in the Bible, By Jose P. Miranda [*Amazon*]

It is important to remember that the preaching of the Word presents a crisis situation. The hearing of the news of freedom through the preaching of the Word always invites the hearer to take one of two sides: He must either side with the old rulers or the new one. "He that is not far me is against me:" There is no neutral position in a war. Even in silence, one is automatically identified as being on the side of the oppressor. There is no place in this war of liberation for nice white people who want to avoid taking sides and remain friends with both the racists and the Negro. To hear the Word is to decide: Are you with us or against us? (p.67)

There is a need for a theology of revolution, a theology which radically encounters the problems of the disinherited black people in America in particular and the oppressed people of color throughout the world in general. (p.88)

It (the black church) is revolutionary in that it seeks to meet the needs of the neighbor amid crumbling structures of society. It is revolutionary because love may mean joining a violent rebellion. (p.113)

Just as the black revolution means the death of America as it has been, so it requires the death of the Church in its familiar patterns. (p116)
If eschatology means that one believes that God is totally uninvolved in the suffering of men because he is preparing them for another world, then Black Theology is not eschatological. Black Theology is an earthly theology! It is not concerned with the "last things" but with the "white thing." Black Theology like Black Power believes that the self-determination of black people must be emphasized at all costs, recognizing that there is only one question about reality for blacks: What must we do about white racism?

Because Black Theology is biblical theology seeking to create new value-perspectives for the oppressed, it is revolutionary theology. It is a theology which confronts white society as the racist Antichrist, communicating to the oppressor that nothing will be spared in the fight for freedom. It is this attitude which distinguishes it from white American theology and identifies it with the religionists of the Third World. (p.135)

Whether the American system is beyond redemption we will have to wait and see. But we can be certain that black patience has run out, and unless white America responds positively to the theory and activity of Black Power, then a bloody, protracted civil war is inevitable. There have occasionally been revolutions -massive redistributions of power without warfare. It is passionately to be hoped that this can be one of them. The decision lies with white America and not least with white Americans who speak the name of Christ. (p.143)

The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us. Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto).

To be sure, this is not easy. But whoever said the gospel of Christ was easy?

Obedience always means going where we otherwise would not go; being what we would not be; doing what we would not do. Reconciliation means that Christ has freed us for this. In a white racist society, Christian obedience can only mean being obedient to blackness, its glorification and exaltation. (p.150)

Therefore, God's Word of reconciliation means that we can only be justified by becoming black. Reconciliation makes us all black. Through this radical change, we become identified totally with the suffering of the black masses. It is this fact that makes al white churches anti-Christian in their essence. To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people! (p.151)

D.7: Liberating Black Victimology Theology

vic•tim•ol•ogy noun: .status as a victim; specif., such status arising from membership in an ethnic, religious, etc. group regarded as historically victimized: usually an ironic or dismissive usage.
-- Webster's New World College Dictionary

Victimology: a view to foster and nurture an unfocused brand of resentment and sense of alienation from the mainstream; not of forging solutions. It is a subconscious psychological gangrene that, has become a keystone of cultural blackness to treat victimhood not as a problem to be solved but as an identity to be nurtured
-- John H. McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America

“Victimology condones weakness in failure. It tacitly stamps approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns that are self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or are presented as unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns.”
-- Anthony Bradley, Liberating Black Theology

Those of us who have discovered our own authority in our lives have compassion for those who haven't, but we don't buy into their tales of woe-is-me. We often make fun of each other as much or more than we feel sorry for each other. When we get over the stories about the past that we have been living in, what used to be tragic often turns out to be more funny than tragic.
-- Brad Blanton, Practicing Radical Honesty


a: Liberating Black Theology: Victimhood & Insecurity

In Liberating Black Theology: The Bible and the Black Experience in America, Anthony Bradley uses the principles enunciated by John McWhorter, in his book Losing the Race: Self Sabotage in Black America:

Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, By John H. Mcwhorter [*Amazon*]

John McWhorter’s articulation of victimology will be used in this study to denote a more robust understanding of the victimologist’s way of thinking. McWhorter’s description provides a critical con¬text for comprehending the long-term effects of reducing the black experience to that of victim. In the end, victimology perpetuates a separatist and elitist platform that provides no opportunity for racial reconciliation.

Victimology is the adoption of victimhood as the core of one’s identity. It is a subconscious, culturally inherited affirmation that life for blacks in America has been in the past and will be in the future a life of being victimized by the oppression of whites. In today’s terms, it is the conviction that, forty years after the Civil Rights Act, conditions for blacks have not substantially changed. It is most clearly seen in race-related policy and through interpersonal evaluation among blacks. Ironically, notes McWhorter, the forced desegregation of the United States in the 1960s actually exacer¬bated victimology. During this time period, it became acceptable for blacks to confront whites with their frustration and resentment. This freedom of expression gained in the 1960s, coupled with a postcolonial inferiority complex, provides the historical basis for victimology.

McWhorter raises good concerns about grounding one’s identity in the condition of being a victim despite abundant evidence to the contrary. The overall result, says McWhorter, is that “the rem¬nants of discrimination hold an obsessive indignant fascination that allows only passing acknowledgment of any signs of progress.” Many blacks, infused with victimology, wield self-righteous indig¬nation in the service of exposing the inadequacies of the “other” (e.g., white person) rather than finding a way forward. The per¬petual belief in a racial identity born out of self-loathing and anxiety often leads to more time spent inventing reasons to cry racism than working toward changing social mores and often inhibits movement toward reconciliation and positive mobility.

Focusing on one’s victimhood often addresses a moral desire - it is a salve for insecurity. McWhorter maintains that many blacks are rarely able to see racial issues outside of the victimologist milieu and are trapped into reasoning racially in terms of the permanent sub¬jugation of blacks by whites. He concludes that holding so tightly to the remnants of discrimination often creates more problems than it solves.

McWhorter goes on to explain that victimology often perpetuates racial tension. Blacks are encouraged by one another to “know your history.” The communicative function of said mantra is not aimed toward knowledge per se but toward remembering oppres¬sion and iniquity so it does not happen again. The irony of victimol¬ogy is its tendency toward revisionist histories and creating an ethos that, a hundred years ago, would have precluded racial equality. Victimology, in other words, is perpetuating problems for black America, not solving them.

A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, By Gustavo Gutierrez [*Amazon*]

McWhorter articulates three main objections to victimology: (1) Victimology condones weakness in failure. It tacitly stamps approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns that are self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or are presented as unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns. (2) Victimology hampers progress because, from the outset, it focuses attention on obstacles. For example, in black theology the focus is on the impediment to black freedom because of the Goliath of white racism. (3) Victimology keeps racism alive because many whites are constantly painted as racist with no evi¬dence provided. These charges may create a context for backlash and resentment, which may fuel attitudes in the white community not previously held or articulated.

Perhaps the most significant tragedy of a victimologist’s approach, in McWhorter’s view, is that it creates separatism. Separatism is a suspension of moral judgment in the name of racial solidarity that is an integral part of being culturally black in America today. The black experience is the starting point and the final authority for interpreting moral prescriptions, both personally and structurally. Separatist morality is not a deliberate strategy for accruing power; rather, it is a cultural thought—a tacit conviction that has imbued the culturally black psyche. Separatism is a direct result of victimology because whites are viewed in eternal opposi¬tion to the black experience; black America construes itself (albeit in many cases unintentionally) as a sovereign, cultural authority.

Separatism generates a restriction of cultural authority, a nar¬rowing of intellectual inquiry, and the dilution of moral judgment.

In doing so, he squelches intellectual curiosity (a basic good) outside the purview of the black American agenda.14 Separatism is the sense that to be truly black, one must restrict his allegiance to black-oriented culture and assent to different rules of argumentation and morality. Few blacks, however, would admit that this is true. The truth, writes McWhorter, is that “the culturally black person is from birth subtly inculcated with the idea that the black person—any black person—is not to be judged cold, but considered in light of the acknowledgment that black people have suffered.”15 In the vic¬timologist’s worldview, black suffering is the proper lens through which all else is to be evaluated.

Ultimately, McWhorter warns against separatism. Separatism has, in the name of self-protection, encouraged generations of blacks to set low goals. Blacks have settled for less, not just in respect to racial integration, but also in respect to being human persons.

What James Cone and those who followed him came to develop is not only a theology predicated on the autonomous black person as a nearly permanent victim of white aggression but also a sepa¬ratist theological system, all in the name of contextualization. This newly developed theology, based on victimology, not only jettisons orthodox Christianity but also impedes opportunities for ecclesial reconciliation.

D.8: Black Liberation Theology: Kairos & Reconciliation

“The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning.” -- Barack Obama

a: ANC Theology:

“We are engaged in something too urgent to wait for the approbation of the West or those who would blindly follow western standards of acceptability and play western games using western rules.”
-– Bishop Tutu, shortly after Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians, December 17–24, 1977


b: Kairos Document, 1985 & Reconciliation:

Much of the Kairos Document published in 1985, and allegedly initiated by Rev. Frank Chicane, which was founded on African and Black Liberation Theology principles, calls for, as the IFP said ‘the violence of the ANC’.

Succinctly, its views on Reconciliation, were that forgiveness would only be given, once complete and utter repentant submission had been provided; for no negotiations should be allowed with the Apartheid Devils:

“'Church Theology' takes 'reconciliation' as the key to problem resolution. It talks about the need for reconciliation between white and black, or between all South Africans. 'Church Theology' often describes the Christian stance in the following way: "We must be fair. We must listen to both sides of the story. If the two sides can only meet to talk and negotiate they will sort out their differences and misunderstandings, and the conflict will be resolved." On the face of it this may sound very Christian. But is it?

“The fallacy here is that 'Reconciliation' has been made into an absolute principle that must be applied in all cases of conflict or dissension. But not all cases of conflict are the same. We can imagine a private quarrel between two people or two groups whose differences are based upon misunderstandings. In such cases it would be appropriate to talk and negotiate to sort out the misunderstandings and to reconcile the two sides. But there are other conflicts in which one side is right and the other wrong. There are conflicts where one side is a fully armed and violent oppressor while the other side is defenseless and oppressed. There are conflicts that can only be described as the struggle between justice and injustice, good and evil, God and the devil. To speak of reconciling these two is not only a mistaken application of the Christian idea of reconciliation; it is a total betrayal of all that Christian faith has ever meant. Nowhere in the Bible or in Christian tradition has it ever been suggested that we ought to try to reconcile good and evil, God and the devil. We are supposed to do away with evil, injustice, oppression and sin--not come to terms with it. We are supposed to oppose, confront and reject the devil and not try to sup with the devil.

“In our situation in South Africa today it would be totally unChristian to plead for reconciliation and peace before the present injustices have been removed. Any such plea plays into the hands of the oppressor by trying to persuade those of us who are oppressed to accept our oppression and to become reconciled to the intolerable crimes that are committed against us. That is not Christian reconciliation, it is sin. It is asking us to become accomplices in our own oppression, to become servants of the devil. No reconciliation is possible in South Africa without justice.

“What this means in practice is that no reconciliation, no forgiveness and no negotiations are possible without repentance. The Biblical teaching on reconciliation and forgiveness makes it quite clear that nobody can be forgiven and reconciled with God unless he or she repents of their sins. Nor are we expected to forgive the unrepentant sinner. When he or she repents we must be willing to forgive seventy times seven times but before that, we are expected to preach repentance to those who sin against us or against anyone. Reconciliation, forgiveness and negotiations will become our Christian duty in South Africa only when the apartheid regime shows signs of genuine repentance.

In Theologies: Liberation vs. Submission, by Jean-Pierre Cloutier :, says:

The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory, By Christian Smith [*Amazon*]

Liberation Theology, like it or not, is a fact of life in Latin America. But it is also present in South Africa where apartheid, white minority rule supported by armed repression, is being fought by some progressive sectors of the clergy. South African theologians issued in October, 1985, the Kairos (Moment of Truth) document. It asserted that "Both oppressor and oppressed claim loyalty to the same Church.

[It concludes]: “Liberation versus Submission. The balancing act is proving hazardous. Either the Church endorses Liberation Theology in clear and un-ambiguous terms, or it risks losing its membership to more active and radical ways of effecting change. With or without Rome, the trend is too strong be be halted now and looks likely to be a determining factor until the current state of things becomes more oriented towards a better repartition of wealth and resources, a trend that seems bound to carry us through to the turn of the twentieth century.”

The Marxist Roots of Black Liberation Theology

April 2, 2008
Anthony B. Bradley
Acton Institute Commentary

Glenn Beck: Black Liberation Theology. Includes excerpts of James Cone interviews, excerpts of James Cone's books: A Black Theology of Liberation and Black Theology and Black Power, and an interview of Anthony Bradley, author of Liberating Black Theology. [01/04] [02/04] [03/04] [04/04]

What is Black Liberation Theology anyway? Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright catapulted black liberation theology onto a national stage, when America discovered Trinity United Church of Christ. Understanding the background of the movement might give better clarity into Wright's recent vitriolic preaching. A clear definition of black theology was first given formulation in 1969 by the National Committee of Black Church Men in the midst of the civil-rights movement:

Black theology is a theology of black liberation. It seeks to plumb the black condition in the light of God's revelation in Jesus Christ, so that the black community can see that the gospel is commensurate with the achievements of black humanity. Black theology is a theology of 'blackness.' It is the affirmation of black humanity that emancipates black people from White racism, thus providing authentic freedom for both white and black people. It affirms the humanity of white people in that it says 'No' to the encroachment of white oppression.

In the 1960s, black churches began to focus their attention beyond helping blacks cope with national racial discrimination particularly in urban areas.

The notion of "blackness" is not merely a reference to skin color, but rather is a symbol of oppression that can be applied to all persons of color who have a history of oppression (except whites, of course). So in this sense, as Wright notes, "Jesus was a poor black man" because he lived in oppression at the hands of "rich white people." The overall emphasis of Black Liberation Theology is the black struggle for liberation from various forms of "white racism" and oppression.

James Cone, the chief architect of Black Liberation Theology in his book A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), develops black theology as a system. In this new formulation, Christian theology is a theology of liberation -- "a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ," writes Cone. Black consciousness and the black experience of oppression orient black liberation theology -- i.e., one of victimization from white oppression.

One of the tasks of black theology, says Cone, is to analyze the nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ in light of the experience of oppressed blacks. For Cone, no theology is Christian theology unless it arises from oppressed communities and interprets Jesus' work as that of liberation. Christian theology is understood in terms of systemic and structural relationships between two main groups: victims (the oppressed) and victimizers (oppressors). In Cone's context, writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the great event of Christ's liberation was freeing African Americans from the centuries-old tyranny of white racism and white oppression.

American white theology, which Cone never clearly defines, is charged with having failed to help blacks in the struggle for liberation. Black theology exists because "white religionists" failed to relate the gospel of Jesus to the pain of being black in a white racist society.

For black theologians, white Americans do not have the ability to recognize the humanity in persons of color, blacks need their own theology to affirm their identity in terms of a reality that is anti-black -- “blackness” stands for all victims of white oppression. "White theology," when formed in isolation from the black experience, becomes a theology of white oppressors, serving as divine sanction from criminal acts committed against blacks. Cone argues that even those white theologians who try to connect theology to black suffering rarely utter a word that is relevant to the black experience in America. White theology is not Christian theology at all. There is but one guiding principle of black theology: an unqualified commitment to the black community as that community seeks to define its existence in the light of God's liberating work in the world.

As such, black theology is a survival theology because it helps blacks navigate white dominance in American culture. In Cone's view, whites consider blacks animals, outside of the realm of humanity, and attempted to destroy black identity through racial assimilation and integration programs--as if blacks have no legitimate existence apart from whiteness. Black theology is the theological expression of a people deprived of social and political power. God is not the God of white religion but the God of black existence. In Cone's understanding, truth is not objective but subjective -- a personal experience of the Ultimate in the midst of degradation.

The echoes of Cone's theology bleed through the now infamous, anti-Hilary excerpt by Rev. Wright. Clinton is among the oppressing class ("rich white people") and is incapable of understanding oppression ("ain't never been called a n-gg-r") but Jesus knows what it was like because he was "a poor black man" oppressed by "rich white people." While Black Liberation Theology is not main stream in most black churches, many pastors in Wright's generation are burdened by Cone's categories which laid the foundation for many to embrace Marxism and a distorted self-image of the perpetual "victim."


Black Liberation Theology as Marxist Victimology

Liberating Black Theology: The Bible and the Black Experience in America, By Anthony B. Bradley [*Amazon*]

Black Liberation Theology actually encourages a victim mentality among blacks. John McWhorters' book Losing the Race, will be helpful here. Victimology, says McWhorter, is the adoption of victimhood as the core of one's identity -- for example, like one who suffers through living in "a country and who lived in a culture controlled by rich white people." It is a subconscious, culturally inherited affirmation that life for blacks in America has been in the past and will be in the future a life of being victimized by the oppression of whites. In today's terms, it is the conviction that, 40 years after the Civil Rights Act, conditions for blacks have not substantially changed. As Wright intimates, for example, scores of black men regularly get passed over by cab drivers.

Reducing black identity to "victimhood" distorts the reality of true progress. For example, was Obama a victim of widespread racial oppression at the hand of "rich white people" before graduating from Columbia University, Harvard Law School magna cum laude, or after he acquired his estimated net worth of $1.3 million? How did "rich white people" keep Obama from succeeding? If Obama is the model of an oppressed black man, I want to be oppressed next! With my graduate school debt my net worth is literally negative $52,659.

The overall result, says McWhorter, is that "the remnants of discrimination hold an obsessive indignant fascination that allows only passing acknowledgement of any signs of progress." Jeremiah Wright, infused with victimology, wielded self-righteous indignation in the service of exposing the inadequacies Hilary Clinton's world of "rich white people." The perpetual creation of a racial identity born out of self-loathing and anxiety often spends more time inventing reasons to cry racism than working toward changing social mores, and often inhibits movement toward reconciliation and positive mobility.

McWhorter articulates three main objections to victimology: First, victimology condones weakness in failure. Victimology tacitly stamps approval on failure, lack of effort, and criminality. Behaviors and patterns that are self-destructive are often approved of as cultural or presented as unpreventable consequences from previous systemic patterns. Black Liberation theologians are clear on this point: "People are poor because they are victims of others," says Dr. Dwight Hopkins, a Black Liberation theologian teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Second, victimology hampers progress because, from the outset, it focuses attention on obstacles. For example, in Black liberation Theology, the focus is on the impediment of black freedom in light of the Goliath of white racism.

Third, victimology keeps racism alive because many whites are constantly painted as racist with no evidence provided. Racism charges create a context for backlash and resentment fueling new attitudes among whites not previously held or articulated, and creates "separatism" -- a suspension of moral judgment in the name of racial solidarity. Does Jeremiah Wright foster separatism or racial unity and reconciliation?

For Black Liberation theologians, Sunday is uniquely tied to redefining their sense of being human within a context of marginalization. "Black people who have been humiliated and oppressed by the structures of White society six days of the week gather together each Sunday morning in order to experience another definition of their humanity," says James Cone in his book Speaking the Truth (1999).

Many black theologians believe that both racism and socio-economic oppression continue to augment the fragmentation between whites and blacks. Historically speaking, it makes sense that black theologians would struggle with conceptualizing social justice and the problem of evil as it relates to the history of colonialism and slavery in the Americas.

Is Black Liberation Theology helping? Wright's liberation theology has stirred up resentment, backlash, Obama defections, separatism, white guilt, caricature, and offense. Preaching to a congregation of middle-class blacks about their victim identity invites a distorted view of reality, fosters nihilism, and divides rather than unites.


Black Liberation Is Marxist Liberation

The Hon. James David Manning, PhD gives a call to arms for white people of truth. This message was preached on 12 June 2008 on the Temple Hour of Prayer Show at 3PM EST

One of the pillars of Obama's home church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is "economic parity." On the website, Trinity claims that God is not pleased with "America's economic mal-distribution." Among all of controversial comments by Jeremiah Wright, the idea of massive wealth redistribution is the most alarming. The code language "economic parity" and references to "mal-distribution" is nothing more than channeling the twisted economic views of Karl Marx. Black Liberation theologians have explicitly stated a preference for Marxism as an ethical framework for the black church because Marxist thought is predicated on a system of oppressor class (whites) versus victim class (blacks).

Black Liberation theologians James Cone and Cornel West have worked diligently to embed Marxist thought into the black church since the 1970s. For Cone, Marxism best addressed remedies to the condition of blacks as victims of white oppression. In For My People, Cone explains that "the Christian faith does not possess in its nature the means for analyzing the structure of capitalism. Marxism as a tool of social analysis can disclose the gap between appearance and reality, and thereby help Christians to see how things really are."

In God of the Oppressed, Cone said that Marx's chief contribution is "his disclosure of the ideological character of bourgeois thought, indicating the connections between the 'ruling material force of society' and the 'ruling intellectual' force." Marx's thought is useful and attractive to Cone because it allows black theologians to critique racism in America on the basis of power and revolution.

For Cone, integrating Marx into black theology helps theologians see just how much social perceptions determine theological questions and conclusions. Moreover, these questions and answers are "largely a reflection of the material condition of a given society."

In 1979, Cornel West offered a critical integration of Marxism and black theology in his essay, "Black Theology and Marxist Thought" because of the shared human experience of oppressed peoples as victims. West sees a strong correlation between black theology and Marxist thought because "both focus on the plight of the exploited, oppressed and degraded peoples of the world, their relative powerlessness and possible empowerment." This common focus prompts West to call for "a serious dialogue between Black theologians and Marxist thinkers" -- a dialogue that centers on the possibility of "mutually arrived-at political action."

In his book Prophesy Deliverance, West believes that by working together, Marxists and black theologians can spearhead much-needed social change for those who are victims of oppression. He appreciates Marxism for its "notions of class struggle, social contradictions, historical specificity, and dialectical developments in history" that explain the role of power and wealth in bourgeois capitalist societies. A common perspective among Marxist thinkers is that bourgeois capitalism creates and perpetuates ruling-class domination -- which, for black theologians in America, means the domination and victimization of blacks by whites. America has been over run by "White racism within mainstream establishment churches and religious agencies," writes West.

Perhaps it is the Marxism imbedded in Obama's attendance at Trinity Church that should raise red flags. "Economic parity" and "distribution" language implies things like government-coerced wealth redistribution, perpetual minimum wage increases, government subsidized health care for all, and the like. One of the priorities listed on Obama's campaign website reads, "Obama will protect tax cuts for poor and middle class families, but he will reverse most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers."

Black Liberation Theology, originally intended to help the black community, may have actually hurt many blacks by promoting racial tension, victimology, and Marxism which ultimately leads to more oppression. As the failed "War on Poverty" has exposed, the best way to keep the blacks perpetually enslaved to government as "daddy" is to preach victimology, Marxism, and to seduce blacks into thinking that upward mobility is someone else's responsibility in a free society.

Anthony B. Bradley is a research fellow at the Acton Institute, and assistant professor of theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. His Ph.D. dissertation is titled, "Victimology in Black Liberation Theology."

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