[lbo-talk] Jesus Against Empire: Wright and Obama Reconsidered

Nicholas Ruiz III editor at intertheory.org
Fri May 2 13:15:12 PDT 2008


Sure, if you want to elect a self-perceived 'instrument of God', who believes that 'God intervenes in History', and wants Democrats 'to go to Church', and to more intimately 'link faith to what we do (i.e.politics)' and 'reach out to evangelicals'...:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5966727106951887477&q=compassion+forum+barack&ei=wXUbSJLZIaLaqALTtODFAg

NRIII

--- Dwayne Monroe <dwayne.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:


> I heartily recommend "God and Empire: Jesus Against
> Rome, Then and
> Now" which holds treasure for believers and
> non-believers alike:
>
>
>
<http://www.amazon.com/God-Empire-Jesus-Against-Rome/dp/0060843233>
>
>
> Its subject is especially timely in light of the
> recent dust up over
> Rev. Wright's strong challenge to media caricatures
> and Sen. Obama's
> realpolitik denunciation of his former pastor.
>
> BTW, if you haven't already done so, I suggest you
> read the full
> transcript of the Reverend's appearance before the
> Natl. Press Club:
>
>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/us/politics/28text-wright.html?_r=1&ref=politics&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin>
>
>
> It's a masterful presentation.
>
>
> About the Obama/Wright brouhaha, Charles Brown
> wrote:
>
> ...how tragic that Rev. Wright (a follower of Jesus,
> whose story
> emphasized forgiveness ) didn't use this opportunity
> to let his anger
> go ( he had adequately expressed it and correct
> criticisms of
> America), and make a speech on racial
> reconciliation and forgiveness;
> take his lead from Obama. Sure it's true that US
> has had Indian
> genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, etc. But is there any
> future in
> treating racism as permanent? The profound hope of
> O's campaign is
> once again dreaming Martin Luther King's dream,
> without denying
> history.
>
> [...]
>
>
> Which, on the face of it, seems reasonable. If you
> look more closely
> however, questions arise.
>
> Charles -- like many others -- assumes that Wright's
> challenge to, and
> unflinching description of white supremacy and
> imperial violence comes
> from little else than "anger". In fact, it's the
> core of a consistent
> and well reasoned *liberation theology* response to
> ongoing forms of
> oppression. Like Charles, many commentators are
> saying that Wright,
> as a follower of Christ, should stop mentioning
> American sins and,
> adhering to Sen. Obama's 'vision', focus on 'hope'
> and
> 'reconciliation'. (Ironically, many of these newborn
> theologians are
> otherwise unconcerned about the finer points of
> Christian thought).
>
> This is an attractive argument if, for no other
> reason, because
> obeying its reasoning would ruffle far fewer
> feathers. But it's a plea
> to put a fresh coat of paint on a neglected and
> decaying building:
> covering the glaring evidence of trouble without
> actually fixing a
> thing.
>
> This is precisely the opposite of the revolutionary
> message of Jesus
> which even a secularist such as myself can eagerly
> applaud. Indeed,
> as Crossan's "God and Empire..." asserts, Christ's
> goal was to
> supplant the brutal Roman world with the 'kingdom of
> heaven' through
> peaceful means.
>
> Fundamentalists typically describe this replacement
> as being achieved
> via the 'second coming' or the rapture (events
> which, paradoxically
> for people who often talk about peace, are
> enthusiastically
> anticipated because of the punishing violence
> thought to accompany
> them). Crossan argues that Christ was talking about
> a more earthly,
> less cosmically explosive, but no less dramatic
> process: the imperial
> system was to be undone, step by step, via the
> unprecedented creation
> of a new paradigm, centered on love. By its very
> nature, Christ's
> vision of mutual aid and submission to one another
> was a challenge to
> Roman concepts of harsh competition, martial virtue
> and 'peace' via
> war and subjugation (wasn't it Tacitus who said,
> "where they [Rome]
> make a desert, they call it peace"?).
>
> Bringing this back to Obama/Wright, we can see that
> our modern Rome
> cannot be transformed into something better by
> whitewashing the truth
> about its nature. To be faithful to not only
> Christ's message but his
> deeper goal, you cannot shrink from calling the
> invasion of Iraq a
> crime. You cannot settle for saying, as most people
> do, that it was
> merely a 'mistake'. Would Jesus be so careful? The
> trouble is, when
> you say 'crime' instead of 'mistake' you're
> vulnerable to charges of
> radicalism and wild-eyed anger.
>
> And this is what Rev. Wright has done and why he has
> been vilified; he
> has used the word 'crime' where it should be used.
> He has called
> 'supremacy by its right name instead of covering it
> with sugar.
> During his Natl. Press Club speech, the Reverend
> said:
>
>
> <snip>
>
> I call our faith tradition, however, the prophetic
> tradition of the
> black church, because I take its origins back past
> [theologian] Jim
> Cone, past the sermons and songs of Africans in
> bondage in the
> transatlantic slave trade. I take it back past the
> problem of Western
> ideology and notions of white supremacy.
>
> I take and trace the theology of the black church
> back to the prophets
> in the Hebrew Bible and to its last prophet, in my
> tradition, the one
> we call Jesus of Nazareth.
>
> The prophetic tradition of the black church has its
> roots in Isaiah,
> the 61st chapter, where God says the prophet is to
> preach the gospel
> to the poor and to set at liberty those who are held
> captive.
> Liberating the captives also liberates who are
> holding them captive.
>
> It frees the captives and it frees the captors. It
> frees the oppressed
> and it frees the oppressors.
>
> The prophetic theology of the black church, during
> the days of chattel
> slavery, was a theology of liberation. It was
> preached to set free
> those who were held in bondage spiritually,
> psychologically, and
> sometimes physically. And it was practiced to set
> the slaveholders
> free from the notion that they could define other
> human beings or
> confine a soul set free by the power of the gospel.
>
> [...]
>
>
> and later,
>
>
> God's desire is for positive, meaningful and
> permanent change. God
> does not want one people seeing themselves as
> superior to other
> people. God does not want the powerless masses, the
> poor, the widows,
> the marginalized, and those underserved by the
> powerful few to stay
> locked into sick systems which treat some in the
> society
=== message truncated ===

Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III Associate Professor Department of Humanities, Cultural and Studio Arts Daytona Beach College PO Box 2811 Daytona Beach, FL 32120-2811 Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org



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