4um: Obama's church was founded on radical creed; Rooted in 'black power'

Title: Obama's church was founded on radical creed; Rooted in 'black power'
Source: Wash Times
URL Source: [None]
Published: Apr 1, 2008
Author: S.A. Miller
Post Date: 2008-05-02 12:59:44 by Jethro Tull
Keywords: None
Views: 125
Comments: 4

Obama's church was founded on radical creed; Rooted in 'black power'.(PAGE ONE)

Byline: S.A. Miller, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The church where Sen. Barack Obama has worshipped for two decades publicly declares that its ministry is founded on a 1960s book that espouses "the destruction of the white enemy."

Trinity United Church of Christ's Web site says its teachings are based on the black liberation theology of James H. Cone and his 1969 book "Black Theology and Black Power."

"What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love," Mr. Cone wrote in the book.

Mr. Cone, a professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, added that "black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

Mr. Obama's campaign, which for weeks has weathered criticism about inflammatory racial language by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. at Trinity, said the candidate "vehemently disagrees" with those tenets.

"It's absurd to suggest that he or anyone should be held responsible for every quote in every book read by a member of their church," said Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin.

"Barack Obama is not a theologian, and what he learned in church is to love Jesus Christ and work on behalf of his fellow man, regardless of race, class or circumstance. This is a faulty and disingenuous approach to a church, and a flawed way to judge a candidate," he said.

Mr. Obama has been a member of Trinity, on Chicago's South Side, since finding religion there 20 years ago under Mr. Wright's mentorship. Mr. Wright married the Obamas and baptized their children, and a sermon of his inspired Mr. Obama to title his book "The Audacity of Hope."

There is no evidence to date in any of Mr. Obama's public comments or speeches that he espouses the radical features of the black liberation theology practiced at his church.

Critics say Trinity's message verges on separatist philosophy and at the very least advocates exclusively for blacks.

"The liberation theology and the black-values system to which his membership ascribe is a clear commitment to the social and spiritual enhancement of only the black race," the Rev. Corey J. Hodges, who is black, wrote last year in the Salt Lake Tribune. "Even more troubling is Wright's use of the pulpit to perpetuate racial division."

For years, Mr. Wright delivered sermons and endorsed articles in the church bulletin that called the United States and Israel racist regimes.

The bulletin's "pastor's page" included essays that said Israel and South Africa "worked on an ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs," compared Israel to Nazi Germany and quoted leaders of the terrorist group Hamas calling Israel a "deformed modern apartheid state."

In a bulletin last year, Mr. Wright lashed out at the news media for scrutinizing the church, blaming "racist United States of America" and "white arrogance" for distracting the country from more important issues, such as the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina victims.

The church declined to comment for this article, but the Rev. Otis Moss III, the church's junior pastor, who took over for Mr. Wright, wrote in the bulletin in October that media conglomerates "operate with contempt and disdain for the black community, women, and people of the African Diaspora."

Conrad Worrill, a leader of the Chicago-based National Black United Front, said attention directed at Trinity United demonstrates that racist attitudes persist in the United States.

"Even if [Mr. Obama] did support some of the tenets of some of the ideas embedded in that theology, I still don't think it has anything to do with his vision and his candidacy," said Mr. Worrill, whose organization promotes black political and cultural education and activism.

"I think most black people would agree that what Jeremiah Wright said is the truth. ... What we see playing out on the public stage is how black people still see America and the world and how white people cannot see the truth It has nothing to do with Barack Obama."

Mr. Wright, who recently retired as the church's pastor after 36 years, defended Trinity's religious views in "talking points" posted on the church's Web site (www.tucc.org).

"To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African-American people are superior to anyone else," he said.

Mr. Cone recently told Forbes magazine that he doesn't know how much Mr. Obama knows about black-liberation theology.

"I've read both of Barack Obama's books, and I heard the speech [on race]. I don't see anything in the books or in the speech that contradicts black liberation theology. If he had it explained to him, I think he would [understand it]," he said.

Mr. Cone calls his own teachings a fusion of teachings of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

In a debate last month with his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Mr. Obama rejected the church's decision last year to honor Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who is known for anti-Semitic remarks.

The senator also disavowed some of Mr. Wright's racist sermons after

they were publicized in video clips on television and the Internet and on talk radio.

But in a March 18 speech on race, Mr. Obama said he could not sever ties with the pastor. He said Mr. Wright is like family and that the pastor's outlook is scarred by civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Mr. Obama said he was unaware until last month that his longtime spiritual mentor and friend used incendiary racist rhetoric in his sermons, such as denouncing the "U.S. of KKKA" and proclaiming, "God damn America."

Mr. Obama said rants against whites were never part of the Sunday services he attended.

"I don't purchase all the DVDs [of Mr. Wright's sermons], and I didn't read all the church bulletins," Mr. Obama said Friday on ABC's "The View." "It's not to excuse it."

Mr. Obama said his mixed-race heritage - his mother was white and his father black - gives him a unique vantage point from which to help bridge the nation's racial divides.

"The church itself, though, is a wonderful, welcoming church. And if you guys went there on a Sunday, you would feel right at home," he told the panelists on TV's "The View," most of them white. "You would see people talking about Jesus, and mercy, and sin, and family ... and forgiveness"

"That doesn't excuse what [Mr. Wright] said, but I do think it's important just to put it in context."

The Rev. Jane Fisler Hoffman, a member of Trinity who serves as a pastor in Southern California, said the Chicago church does not follow a radical doctrine, despite the angry words of Mr. Cone's treatise.

"It may have had some influence on what unfolded, but [Trinity] is a wonderful church, not a separatist church," said Mrs. Hoffman, who is white. "Anyone who tries to paint the church as hateful would be missing the mark."

CAPTION(S):

Wright [NO CREDIT]

NO SEPARATIST: Seen here speaking at Trinity United Church of Christ in 2004, Sen. Barack Obama has not publicly espoused the radical tenets of black liberation theology practiced there. [Photo by Associated Press]

During his appearance last week on ABC's "The View," Sen. Barack Obama tells hosts (from left) Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck that if they visited his "wonderful, welcoming church" on any given Sunday, the themes of mercy, sin, family and forgiveness would make them "feel right at home." [Photo by ABC-TV via Associated Press]

WASHINGTON, May 1 /Christian Newswire/ -- In a recorded conference call recently posted on the Internet, four African-American church leaders debunk the claim by Reverend Jeremiah Wright that attacks against him are actually attacks on the black church. The group also examines Wright’s liberation theology and how it contradicts the historic Christian message and that of the black church. The 18-minute audio file can be accessed at www.faithandaction.org or www.faithandaction.org/in...re.display&feature_id=555

The call is moderated by Rev. Rob Schenck (pronounced SHANK), president of Faith and Action, America’s only Christian missionary outreach to elected and appointed officials located across the street from the United States Supreme Court. Schenck and his organization routinely partner with African-American congregations, ministers and organizations to promote the sanctity of life, marriage and the family and the public acknowledgment of God.

Ms. Day Gardner Founder and President of the National Pro-Life Black Union Washington, DC

Bishop Van Gayton International Community of Christian Churches and Adjunct Professor of Black Studies, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL

A reparations plan for blacks could extract several trillion dollars from American taxpayers’ pockets.

Barrack Obama’s pastor not only spews anti-American rhetoric from the pulpit but favors shaking down U.S. taxpayers for “reparations” for slavery. The Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright was the keynote speaker at the 2007 annual conference of N’COBRA, which stands for the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.

Wright’s talk, “A Call for Justice and Repair,” followed a statement in which he declared that “The Biblical principle of true repentance is that the offended party is given compensation to make up for that which has been stolen from them, the losses that have been inflicted upon them and their families.”

A reparations plan for blacks could extract several trillion dollars from American taxpayers’ pockets.

But Wright isn’t the only controversial member of Obama’s church. Dr. Iva Carruthers, who describes herself as an active member of the church, is an outspoken advocate of reparations for blacks and was a participant in N’COBRA’s 2004 conference.

Carruthers was identified, along with Wright, as a member of Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee. Wright has since been dropped from the group. But Carruthers is sometimes referred to as a spokesman for Wright and works with him closely.

Indeed, Carruthers may be even more controversial, especially on the issue of reparations. She wrote The Church and Reparations53;An African American Perspective, which was reportedly “distributed by her denomination” at the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The conference was considered so extreme that the U.S. delegation, led by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, walked out.

Not only are members of his church involved in the reparations movement; Obama is said to have been politically close to former Chicago Alderman Dorothy Jean Wright Tillman, who led an effort by the Chicago City Council to demand reparations for slavery. “Chicago has become the de facto center of the slavery reparations movement,” noted a journalist for the far-left In These Times.

The Obamas’ just-released 2006 income tax return shows that they gave $22,500 to Trinity United Church of Christ, which they attended with such figures as Wright and Carruthers.

Despite going to the same church, however, Carruthers told me that she has no idea as to where Obama stands on the controversy. “I don’t have any insight at all,” she said, before saying that she had to leave for another engagement.

Carruthers is the General Secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, which includes Wright on its board and describes itself as a social justice organization. The website of the group includes a statement that “Dr. Wright represents the best among us, one of the best in this tribe of prophetic preachers. He has made his church a place where one could express the centuries- old pain of being Black in America, while finding strength for a brighter day. An attack on this man of the God is an attack on all those of the cloth who believe in the social Gospel of liberation.”

Both Wright and Carruthers were involved in the Illinois Transatlantic Slave Trade Commission, established by the Illinois State Legislature in 2005. Its purpose was to examine the “past and present effects on African-Americans” of the slave trade and it issued a report in 2007. Wright was an “associate” of the commission while Carruthers was the “senior research consultant.”

Its findings included that Christopher Columbus was part of the Catholic Church’s “century of blood” in the establishment of the slave trade system, and that civil war U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, acknowledged to be “the most famous son of Illinois,” didn’t morally object to slavery but only wanted to “restore the Union to white consensus.”

In 2003, Carruthers spoke on behalf of Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ at a “summit on reparations” opened by Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Another group represented at the Farrakhan summit was the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), which seeks the creation of a black nation in the U.S. in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

In 2007, Carruthers endorsed a document urging that “Financial and human resources be identified and made available, in trust and otherwise, with appropriate church, community, and academic entities to effect institutional development and remedies from the Transatlantic slave trade system and colonialism at the local, national and global levels.” The document said that reparations should be “offered for the healing of peoples who were once enslaved.”

Like Obama, Carruthers and Wright have been deeply involved in African affairs. They traveled to the “motherland,” as they call it, where Wright was photographed in Ghana in “full ceremonial regalia” as a “development chief” and Carruthers was elevated to the position of “queen mother.” Obama’s wearing of African garb became a national controversy.

But the more important issue, from a public policy perspective, is how he would handle taxpayer dollars.

While Carruthers said she did not know where Obama stood on the issue of reparations, the Chicago Tribune reported that he was asked in 2004 about the matter and “spoke about how slavery had left a stain on the country that has yet to be eradicated.” Nevertheless, he said that he opposed “just signing checks over to African-Americans.”

During the presidential campaign, the issue came up during a Democratic presidential debate and only Dennis Kucinich said he favored reparations. Obama changed the subject, saying he favored more spending on schools.

Carruthers told AIM that reparations have to include much more than financial payments.

She may have in mind not only an apology from the federal government but some form of spiritual or psychological help for black victims of the slave trade.

In this regard, the N’COBRA conference that featured Wright also included a panel discussion of “Post-Traumatic Slavery Syndrome.” In a variation of this theme, the Philadelphia branch of N’COBRA had advertised a sold-out lecture on the subject of “Post-Traumatic Slavery Disorder (PTSD),” described as one of the Psycho-Racial Spiritual Diseases of Americanized Africans (PRSDAA). The speaker, a psychologist, said that black-on-black violence could even be attributed to undiagnosed PRSDAAs.

While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now engaged in a fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, it was the Clinton Administration that helped to make reparations into a national issue. President Clinton had proposed a $10 million federal research program to study the problem of racism in America. It was described by the Associated Press as “a way to measure the impact of racial bias in everyday life” and was seen as potential backing for legislation proposed by Rep. John Conyers to establish a national commission to study the matter.

Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has endorsed Obama for president.

Conyers’ bill to create a “Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans” was first introduced in 1989. He praised N’COBRA in a statement he issued in 1999 and sponsored a subsequent event, “Capitalizing on Our Strength53;Empowering the Reparations Movement,” featuring a representative of N’COBRA.

The issue became so big that the CBS Evening News, then hosted by Dan Rather, did a story about the controversy, highlighting the fact that the Chicago City Council has become the fourth major city to pass a resolution calling for reparations.

Randall Robinson, the director of the group known as Trans Africa, wrote a book, The Debt, on the subject, and hosted a conference on reparations featuring such luminaries as actor Danny Glover.

One of the liberals’ favorite television shows, “West Wing,” about a fictional White House, also examined the controversy in the context of a controversial nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights who advocated financial reparations for slavery.

At the time, we noted that three veteran Democrats were advisers to the show. They were former Clinton White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, former Carter official Patrick Caddell, and former Senate Democratic aide Lawrence O’Donnell. Time magazine reported that Conyers’ staff had sent along “200 pages of material on the issue of paying reparations to black Americans as compensation for slavery” to the producers.

Interestingly, it has now been reported by The Guardian that one of the characters in the show, a presidential candidate, was modeled by one of the Democratic writers after Obama. The character in the program wins the presidency.

If this happens in real life, we may finally find out where Obama really stands on the issue of reparations.

One thing is certain: Carruthers is hoping for an Obama win. Federal Election Commission records show that she gave his Illinois Senate campaign $500 and his presidential campaign $2300. She gave contributions to no other candidates.

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)‡