Ghost of a flea: Dust on the scales

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March 18, 2008

Dust on the scales

Spengler considers Senatar Barak Obama, Jeremiah Wright and the "black liberation" theology of James Cone and Dwight Hopkins, a reading of Christianity "to which liberal academic establishment condescends."

Since Christianity taught the concept of divine election to the Gentiles, every recalcitrant tribe in Christendom has rebelled against Christian universalism, insisting that it is the "Chosen People" of God - French, English, Russian, Germans and even (through the peculiar doctrine of Mormonism) certain Americans. America remains the only really Christian country in the industrial world, precisely because it transcends ethnicity. One finds ethnocentricity only in odd corners of its religious life; one of these is African-American.

Which explains part of the double-bind faced by not only Obama, but Mitt Romney, in a bid to respect the faiths of one's fathers (well, not Obama's father...) while not appearing to be a complete loon to the mass of the electorate. More importantly, it also underlines the unsettling solvent effect of Christian universalism on local particularisms and especially the apparently paradoxical universality of anti-Semitism. God really does have a chosen people and if you are Christian your people ain't it. This has been a bit much for some - just picking a nation out of a hat here - German sensitivities particularly in those times when the German people had no polity or when, later, that polity was faced with the shame of military defeat and economic ruin. Much easier to blame somebody else for one's problems; the entire Arab world being No. 1 in today's shame and blame game. Much easier to blame the Jews - Jeremiah Wright is no exception on this point, much easier to blame "white" America or Britain.

Easier even to blame God. James Cone puts it succinctly:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 18, 2008 07:04 AM

Comments

He blames Jews too that Wright. I have one question. Would be as patient with a candidate if he were white or Jewish? The media seem to be bending over backwards to allow Obama to get out of this mess.

Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge at March 18, 2008 07:29 AM

True. And many of them are engaged in Obama's precise brand of kabuki grievance theatre and consequently cannot imagine what the fuss is about.

People ask why the Clintons did not take advantage of Obama's weakness on this front - it was obvious to anyone who cared to look at his church's website - and I believe this is the reason. To Senator Clinton's eye there was nothing particularly remarkable about a "black" "nationalist" "church". Reagan Democrats will disagree.

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at March 18, 2008 08:29 AM

no, nothing particularly remarkable, sadly.

Posted by: urthshu at March 19, 2008 10:59 AM