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
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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