To: Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 6, 2008; Page A01
IS BEING IMPARTIAL TO MUCH TO ASK
ST. LOUIS, July 5 – Sen. Barack Obama ended a week's focus on values by giving a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church a highly personal account of his spiritual journey and a promise that he will make "faith-based" social service "a moral center of my administration."
February 22, 2008
Obama's Mentor's Mentor
By Lee Cary
The influence of the black liberation theology of James H. Cone appears in the political philosophy of Barack Obama as well as in the recent controversial statement about national pride made by Michelle Obama.
The spiritual role that Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC) and its just-retired pastor Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright have played in the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama is well-established, as is the Africentric theology that is the cornerstone of the church's self-proclaimed identity.
The Trinity UCC website was updated early this year. Before that, Cone's book was singled out as required reading for Trinity parishioners who wished to more thoroughly understand the church's theology and mission. That highlighting was removed. Jason Byassee, of The Christian Century Magazine, wrote this about Cone and Trinity in May, 2007:
"There is no denying, however, that a strand of radical black political theology influences Trinity [UCC]. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, is a much-admired figure at Trinity. Cone told me that when he's asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity. Cone's groundbreaking 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power announced: "The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people. . . . All white men are responsible for white oppression. . . . Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'. . . Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement." Contending that the structures of a still-racist society need to be dismantled, Cone is impatient with claims that the race situation in America has improved. In a 2004 essay he wrote, "Black suffering is getting worse, not better. . . . White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it. It claims not to exist, even though black people are dying daily from its poison" (in Living Stones in the Household of God)."
Aspects of Cone's theology and words have been the subject of controversy in the political context of the 2008 Presidential campaign, as Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright noted that he had been inspired by Cone's theology.
These are some of the writings of James Cones - you can look them up:
"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer and we had better kill him.
The task of black theology is to kill gods who do not belong to the black community. Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.
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."
Dr. Cone is an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He is listed in the Directory of American Scholars, in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Religion, Who’s Who among African Americans, and Who’s Who in the World. In 2006, he was the recipient of the Paul Robeson Award from the Mother African Methodist Epicopal Zion Church.