Monday, September 15, 2008

James Cone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1X5sZ6Q4Fw

Reverend Jeremiah Wright adheres to the theology of James Cone. This is a fairly long interview the Cone.

One might conclude that since Obama had denounced Jeremiah Wright, that gets rid of everything objectionable in his beliefs, but I don’t see how it could work that way. Did Obama denounce Wright’s beliefs or Wright’s high-jacking his campaign. Obama says the latter. So what does Obama believe? What is this Black Liberation Theology that we can assume he adheres to? Is it the sort of belief that would help one be president of the United States?

I listened to Cone and heard a rather narrow emphasis. Perhaps Lefty would appreciate that emphasis, but I don’t think most Americans would. If Obama has been listening to an exemplar of Cone’s theology, which Wright is, for seventeen years; then surely it isn’t a stretch to believe that what Cone teaches is central in Obama’s life. So are we happy with the idea of a President who has a Cone emphasis?

I’m not comfortable with Cone’s emphasis. In my view we should be striving toward a color-blind society rather than a society in which we must acknowledge that just by being in the majority we are doing violence to blacks, and that we should repudiate our whiteness, those of us who are white, and make reparations to black people for what we took from them, whatever that is.

Obama denounced certain of Wright’s words. Later he denounced Wright himself. Perhaps if enough attention can be brought to Obama’s religion by people like Polly, Obama can be brought to denounce Cone’s theology as well.

Lawrence Helm

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