Black liberation theology has its appeal

By Harold Jackson

The comments on racism of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., deemed so inflammatory that his former congregant Barack Obama was forced to address them, brought back a flood of memories for me.

I was first exposed to “black liberation theology,” the apparent basis for many of Wright’s most biting remarks on race, while a student at, of all places, a small, predominantly white college in the Midwest.

Baker University, the oldest four-year college in Kansas, had only about 800 students in 1971; fewer than 60 of us were African American, but that was the most black students ever at the school founded in 1858.

We called our black student union Mungano, part of a longer Swahili term roughly meaning “a coming together of black people.” Several Mungano members were religion majors planning careers in the clergy. Some were also Black Power advocates.

Baker is a United Methodist school and some members of Mungano had ties to Black Methodists for Church Renewal, an advocacy organization for African Americans in the denomination. We petitioned for funding for Mungano at the United Methodist annual conference, so as not to be dependent on the Baker administration. After all, it’s hard to fight the power if you must look to it for sustenance.

I mention all of this to note the close relationship between religion and black empowerment, of which our little BSU at Baker served as just one tiny example.

Leading the charge

The black church had long led the charge for civil rights, with leaders such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But after King was killed in 1968, many black church leaders turned to a different, more confrontational approach, demanding — rather than asking — for equal treatment in America.

That approach is capsuled in a book that black religion students loved to quote 37 years ago at Baker — “Liberation: A Black Theology of Liberation” by the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. It’s been reported this week that Wright, who recently retired as pastor of Obama’s church in Chicago, studied Cone and consulted him.

Published in 1970, Cone’s second book (preceded by his “Black Theology and Black Power”) was billed as the “first black theology ever written.” In it, he said, the “struggle for political, social, and economic justice is consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. ... In a society where men are oppressed because they are black, Christian theology must become Black Theology, a theology that is unreservedly identified with the goals of the oppressed community and seeking to interpret the divine character of their struggle for liberation.”

Cone explained: “This book is written primarily for the black community and not for white people. Whites may read it and to some degree render an intellectual analysis of it, but an authentic understanding is dependent on the blackness of their existence in the world. There will be no peace in America until white people begin to hate their whiteness, asking from the depths of their being: How can we become black?”

Cone makes a final appeal based on the Christian belief that there is a heaven for adherents. “If we really believe that death is not the last word, then we can fight, risking death for the freedom of man. ... Therefore it does not matter that white people have all the guns. ... There comes a time when a people must protect their own, and for black people, the time is now.”

That’s 1970s rhetoric and it was inflammatory even then. In 2008, to hear a black minister philosophize from a similar bent — as has Wright — sounds like heresy to those who believe Obama is the embodiment of all their hopes for a truly color-blind America where any child can grow up to be president.

Calming oratory

Obama rested their souls Tuesday with calming oratory at the National Constitution Center, reassuring them that while he understood why Wright still sees America through 1970s lenses, he does not. It was an excellent speech that Obama should have made before now. It’s laudable that he wants to keep race out of his presidential campaign. But he’s black, so that’s impossible. He needs to speak loudly and clearly about what he believes or others will do it for him.

As for liberation theology, it also served as the basis for the efforts of Catholic and Protestant clergy who into the 1980s fought for the rights of the oppressed in several Latin American countries.

The language of liberation theology is appealing wherever people are mistreated or denied their rights. There are still Americans who fit that description, or think they do. For them, speakers like Wright make a lot of sense. So long as racial disparities exist, he will find receptive audiences.

X Harold Jackson is editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.