Black Liberation Theology, Defending Reverend Jeremiah Wright - Blackprof.com
What Is Black Liberation Theology?
Jeremiah Wright – In Context
Black Prof
by Christopher Bracey
The segments of Wright’s sermon – endlessly recycled by the media – were largely devoid of context. That context is critical to a full appreciation of Wright’s comments. In traditional media outlets, there was no mention of the Psalm that grounded Wright’s discussion of violence; no mention of the apolitical teaching that violence often begets violence; no mention of Wright’s rather modest claim that the Sept. 11th attacks should trigger a moment of self-reflection among Americans; and perhaps most disappointingly, no mention that Wright’s description of the Sept. 11th attacks as “chickens coming home to roost” was explicitly borrowed from Edward Peck, former Ambassador to Mauritania and former Chief of the Mission to Iraq.
Reasonable minds continue to disagree on whether “The Speech” helped Obama’s candidacy. But is it reasonable to take Wright’s comments completely out of context, then threaten to derail the candidacy of the leading democratic candidate if he does not respond satisfactorily (whatever that might mean in the eyes of mainstream media)?
The video below (above) places the media snippets of Wright in their proper context. Did the media act irresponsibly by fabricating the Jeremiah Wright controversy? Was Obama’s “Speech on Race” an opportune response or a mistake? Will this controversy (including Obama’s response) prove decisive in this race?
Obama sometimes echoes Cone in his message,
“Hope is the expectation of that which is not. It is the belief that the impossible is possible, the ‘not yet’ is coming in history.”
Those words are not from Obama’s latest campaign speech. They’re from a memoir Cone wrote in the 1980s.
Cone said blacks shouldn’t limit their hope to what the Republican and Democratic parties stand for.
“Together, black religion and Marxist philosophy may show us the way to build a completely new society.”
