I am still trying to wrap my brain around black liberation theology. I write, of course, about the religious doctrine practiced at the Trinity United Church of Christ, where Barack Obama is a member and was preached to by its outspoken former pastor Jeremiah Wright. 

I certainly understand and even agree that a Christianity that is relevant and strong must be a Christianity that defends the weak and fights against oppression. It is indeed one of the puzzlements of history that down through time that so many “good friends of Jesus” have used their Christianity as a pretext to enslave and oppress other human beings. So there is something very compelling about any theology -- black or otherwise -- that says the church must be a source of power for the powerless. There is something very persuasive in the belief that God must be about liberty, must be about uplifting the downtrodden and must ultimately be about salvation for all men regardless of race.

The problem with black liberation theology (at least as we understand it through the words of the Rev. Wright) is that it rejects the universal God, the god of all children, and instead casts him as a black tribal champion. In order to be relevant to this community, God must be African centered, must be for the goals of the black community -- though what those might be depends a great deal on whom you ask -- and must oppose our enemies, which, again, no doubt means those enemies of those defining the “black agenda." This doctrine is problematic, given that mainstream Christians like to imagine their God as God of all mankind. 

Mainstream Christianity also teaches that the mind of man is too limited to fully understand the infinite nature of God and that our suffering is redemptive -- that ultimately, God uses us to his purpose, and our sufferings often become blessings. To suppose that a God that allows suffering is unjust and that, in the words of James Cone, Wright’s spiritual mentor, therefore “we had better kill him,” implies that we have power to impart human reason to a God that often appears irrational.  

But it is the tribal aspect of this vision of God’s work here on earth that presents the greatest problem for the political aspirations of Barak Obama. Few Christians would take issue with a church that boldly proclaims the god we worship is a god of justice. Plenty have difficulty with a church that says the god we worship is for us and against you. For a candidate that positions himself as a healer and unifier, that is a problem.

More problematic is that as Obama continues to implore the nation to have a new conversation about race, he continues to see race through the same old lens. He supports racial preferences and has opposed passage of civil rights initiatives slated to be on the ballot in five states in the November elections.

The initiatives say that “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group n the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. …” Oddly enough, this language is almost identical to the language of the original civil rights act, language now found disagreeable by preferentialists, which includes the post-racial candidate Barack Obama.

In what is sure to be a great irony, the lure of electing the first black president of the United States is bound to move voters in those five states to conclude that indeed discrimination based on race is unconscionable and therefore ought to be outlawed.

I will let Jeremiah Wright fight it out with the Aryan Nation as to whether God is black or white. But the post-racial -- or as some have termed him, the post-racism candidate -- must decide whether he is afoot or on horseback. Certainly, he realizes that he can no longer have it both ways.  He can’t demand that the nation judge him based on his values, abilities and talent, while at the same time campaigning against non discrimination laws. Nor can he be the candidate of change as long as he embraces Rev. Wright of the church of “get back Whitey.”  

---

Joseph C. Phillips is the author of “He Talk Like a White Boy."