Senator Obama, Do Words Matter? [updated]

Senator Barack Obama apparently has paid as much attention to his campaign rhetoric as he did to the racist, hatefilled sermons of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. He has insisted in speeches before cheering throngs that “words matter.” Yet, when it comes to the words of Jeremiah Wright, not so much.

Senator Obama insisted while campaigning in Wisconsin that words matter:

the Democratic frontrunner told a packed house at an event sponsored by the Wisconsin Democratic Party, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter! ‘I have a dream’, just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self evident that all me are created equal’ – just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself?’ – just words. Just speeches?

He continued: “…It’s true that speeches don’t solve all problems, but what is also true is if we cannot inspire the country to believe again then it doesn’t matter how many policies and plans we have…That is why we just won eight elections straight, because the American people want to believe in change again. Don’t tell me words don’t matter!“

Okay. Let’s agree. Words do matter. Even after the tapes emerged documenting that Jeremiah Wright is a purveyor of antisemitism and racial hatred directed at whites, Senator Obama continues to insist that Pastor Wright is like an uncle to him. Here’s the full interview with Keith Olbermann, check it out for yourself:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk3Rra3CgMA[/youtube]

The Barack Obama is doing the okie doke, the bamboozle as he tries to explain away the recorded remarks of his “Uncle” Jeremiah. Barack asks us to believe that good old uncle Jeremiah is a kindly pastor dedicated to eradicating poverty and promoting justice for all. Barack wants us to believe that he attended uncle Jeremiah’s church for the last 17 years and never, ever heard Wright say anything hateful or controversial. On the Sundays that Wright was ranting about Jews, Israel, whites, or goddamaned America, Barack was absent. Now, Obama rejects those things if Wright said them. But he never heard them and was “shocked,” shocked I tell you, to hear Wright damning America.

Barack wrote the other day on the Huffington Post that:

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It’s a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

But the religious vision of Jeremiah Wright has not been hidden. Barack’s claim to the contrary notwithstanding, Uncle Jeremiah is not a respected, mainstream member of Christian clergy. He is widely known and respected as a proponent of Africentric Theology. Wright’s interpretation of the Bible is neither mainstream nor orthodox. It is both bizarre and extreme. Jeremiah Wright believes that the world is controlled by the white man, who in turn has appropriated all capital and all power and employed it expressly to oppress the black man. Wright teaches his congregation that Jesus of Nazereth, a Jew, was a black man.

Jeremiah Wright told Sean Hannity almost a year ago that:

No, we would call it Christianity. We’ve been saying that since there was a white Christianity; we’ve been saying that ever since white Christians took part in the slave trade; we’ve been saying that ever since they had churches in slave castles.

We don’t have to say the word “white.” We just have to live in white America, the United States of white America. That’s not the issue; you’re missing the issue.

As I was trying to say to you, liberation theology — and I thought Eric Rush has studied at a theological seminary that was considered — I’ve come to find out he doesn’t know anything more about theology than I know about brain surgery. . . .

If you’re not going to talk about theology in context, if you’re not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the 1960s, (INAUDIBLE) black liberation theology, that started with Jim Cone in 1968, and the writings of Cone, and the writings of Dwight Hopkins, and the writings of womanist theologians, and Asian theologians, and Hispanic theologians then you can talk about the black value system.

And who is Jim Cone? 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).”

Barack was not a convert to a generic, vanilla brand of Christianity. He was not responding to a Billy Graham altar call. Barack converted to a theology of Christianity that emphasized being black above all things. Unlike the theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, who focused on the content of one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin, the theology Uncle Jeremiah taught to his congregation emphasized that Jesus was black. And that to be black is to be a victim of the prejudice and persecution of the white man. Jim Cone and Jeremiah Write did not blame only white men who were slave owners or assisted in the slave trade. In their world view all whites–not just some, but all–were guilty.

Barack Obama says he rejects this kind of race baiting hatred. Those are his words. But he has almost twenty years of providing financial support to Uncle Jeremiah. He has almost twenty years of sitting under the theological instruction of Uncle Jeremiah. He asked Uncle Jeremiah to officiate at his marriage to Michelle and he asked Uncle Jeremiah to baptize his children. And he has trusted Uncle Jeremiah to teach his daughters the “gospel” of Afrocentric Christianity.

This is not an incidental, casual relationship. The problem is there is no excuse or justification to tolerate the hatred spewed by Uncle Jeremiah. Barack is supposedly a super intelligent man. Yet he spends almost twenty years going to church and listening to a man who insists that Jesus is black (a historical falsehood) and is only now learning that Jeremiah Wright is a race baiter?

In the coming days America will learn that the remarks of Jeremiah Wright have not been taken out of context. These remarks reflect the core of his theological world vision. The scrutiny of Jeremiah Wright is not just the work of rightwing bloggers. Wright’s words matter. Wright’s words express a view of history and a view of society that every member of his congregation understood. Obama will struggle in the coming days to insist he knew nothing about a man he calls Uncle. But Uncle Jeremiah is not some crazy relative living in an attic. He has been a leader in Africentric Liberation theology, a religious vision that promotes racial division and hatred. I guess Senator Obama is truly audacious because he apparently believes that America will not believe the recorded words of Uncle Jeremiah.

UPDATE:  Please check out Taylor Marsh’s terrific post on this issue.