Beck's 'Obsession' with Black Liberation Theology is Thoroughly Justified

About 35 years ago I read James Cone's book on black liberation theology. I didn't find it too alarming, but I can't remember if I was a Christian then or just a humanist liberal. Liberation theology (the Latin American Catholic variety) has definitely had an impact on modern day Christianity--may even be part of the reason memberships are dropping so drastically. It's a tough sell to call that the gospel. And I don't think I agree with the left that Glenn Beck has an obsession with black liberation theology. He's simply calling it out for the looksee it deserves. It is marxism dressed up for Sunday morning and some gospel singing.

Kyle Anne Shiver writes: "Writing on "Faith," in The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama went to great lengths to explain that his own "conversion" was enabled not by orthodox Christian awakening, but by the explicitly political nature of the Black Liberation Theology preached by Jeremiah Wright, Jr. And the thrust of Obama's entire chapter on faith in his own book was to show how his own liberation theology should not frighten secular progressives because it bore little to no resemblance to the religion of those Bible Belt "bitter clingers." And as observant Americans know well, Barack Obama was so ardent a follower of Jeremiah Wright's brand of Christianity that he named his book after a Wright sermon, The Audacity of Hope. While it is true that Barack Obama never (that I know of) used the explicit words "Black Liberation Theology" in his speeches or his books, everything about his claims to faith in his writing, his speeches, and his current actions as president is filled with the tenets of this fringe system of beliefs.

And what was that "hope" to which Wright referred? It was not the hope of individual salvation, which is the bedrock of orthodox Christian belief. No, Wright's hope, the same hope where Barack Obama found his "conversion," was in "collective redemption" through a political, material redistribution of power and wealth from the "white oppressors" to the "black oppressed." Quite contrary to Mr. Rutten's assertion that no "evidence" ties Barack Obama to liberation theology, Obama himself has used the phrase "collective redemption" regularly."

So is that your "hope" for America? Are you so loaded with power and wealth that you want the government to redistribute it in the name of Obama's belief in "collective redemption?"

American Thinker: Beck's 'Obsession' with Black Liberation Theology Thoroughly Justified

The Obama Money Machine--Where's it coming from, where is it going?

African Americans were asking this question even before he was the chosen one. Video of Cornel West at Tavis Smiley Presents.



Comments at "The Empire and Inequality Report" via Black Agenda Reports, where it was noted that when he doodled waiting to give his speech, he drew a picture of himself.

Obama's power-worshipping campaign book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006) - the book to which Obama refers reporters asking him for policy specifics behind his often vague statements - refers to the United States' rapacious, savagely unequal and fundamentally "materialist" capitalist economy as the nation's "greatest asset."

Audacity absurdly praises the "American system of social organization" and "business culture" on the grounds that U.S. capitalism "has encouraged constant innovation, individual initiative and efficient allocation of resources" (8). It commends "the need to raise money from economic elites to finance elections" for "prevent[ing] Democrats...from straying too far from the center" and for marginalizing "those within the Democratic Party who tend toward zealotry" and "radical ideas" (like peace and justice). It praises fellow centrist Senator and presidential rival Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for embracing "the virtues of capitalism" (9) and applauds her "recognizably progressive" husband Bill Clinton for showing that "markets and fiscal discipline" and "personal responsibility [are] needed to combat poverty" (10) - an interesting reflection on the militantly corporate-neoliberal Clinton administration's efforts to increase poverty by eliminating poor families' entitlement to public cash assistance and privileging deficit reduction over social spending.

Obama's badly mis-titled book audaciously lectures poor people on their "duty" to feel "empathy" for wealthy oppressors (12) - including Bush and Cheney, who are "pretty much like everyone else"(13) - and on their need to understood how well off and "free" they are compared to their more truly miserable counterparts in Africa and Latin America (14). It deletes less favorable contrasts with Western Europe and Japan, the most relevant comparisons, where dominant norms and institutional arrangements produce significantly slighter levels of poverty and inequality than what is found in the hierarchical U.S (15).

Paul Street's article appears in Black Agenda Report --I couldn't get the link to the notes to work, put I've left in the numbers. You know how librarians swoon over bibliographies.