[Vision2020] Politics and Religion

[No Weatherman]

Visionaries,

I am afraid that I got off on the wrong foot with some of you. They
say that if you want to keep your friends, you shouldn't talk politics
and religion with them and I made the mistake of broaching a highly
incendiary — indeed, explosive — political discussion with you when I
forced Barrack Hussein Obama's long-standing close personal
relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers to the forefront of
this conversation. This was wrong of me. If Obama does not have to
account for his friendship with a man who declared war on the US and
has not rescinded his declaration, why should any of his supporters
have to account for it? It's good enough that we pretend it never
happened and no conflicts exist. After all, what we don't know can't
hurt us.

Therefore, I wish to try again. Instead of politics, let's talk
religion — Obama's religion — as Rev. Wright's church's magazine,
Trumpet, reveals it.

Question: What do Barrack Hussein Obama and Louis Farrakhan have in common?
Answer: They both made the cover of Trumpet, except Obama didn't know
that Wright is a radical.

Jeremiah Wright's 'Trumpet'
The content of the magazine produced by Barack Obama's pastor reveals
the content of his character.
by Stanley Kurtz

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/082ktdyi.asp

To the question of the moment — What did Barack Obama know and when
did he know it? — I answer, Obama knew everything, and he's known it
for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah
Wright's disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack
Obama must have long been aware of his pastor's political radicalism.
A careful reading of nearly a year's worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine,
Wright's glossy national "lifestyle magazine for the socially
conscious," makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise.

Wright founded Trumpet Newsmagazine in 1982 as a "church newspaper" —
primarily for his own congregation, one gathers — to "preach a message
of social justice to those who might not hear it in worship service."
So Obama's presence at sermons is not the only measure of his
knowledge of Wright's views. Glance through even a single issue of
Trumpet, and Wright's radical politics are everywhere — in the
pictures, the headlines, the highlighted quotations, and above all in
the articles themselves. It seems inconceivable that, in 20 years,
Obama would never have picked up a copy of Trumpet. In fact, Obama
himself graced the cover at least once (although efforts to obtain
that issue from the publisher or Obama's interview with the magazine
from his campaign were unsuccessful).

Building on his reputation as a charismatic and "socially conscious"
preacher (and no doubt also upon the fame conferred by his Obama
connection), Wright decided several years ago to take the publication
national. In September 2005, Trumpet officially separated from
Wright's church and became an independent entity, with Wright as CEO
and his two eldest daughters managing the magazine. Then in March
2006, with key financial backing from the TV One network, Trumpet
released its first nationally distributed issue. The goal was to turn
Trumpet into "a more sophisticated publication that would speak not
just to black Christians but to the entire African-American
community." In November 2005, Wright's daughter and Trumpet
publisher/editor in chief Jeri Wright announced the goal of increasing
circulation from 5,000 to 100,000 in 10 months. Thanks to a national
publicity blitz, she was able to declare that goal had been met well
ahead of schedule.

If you've heard about the "Empowerment Award" bestowed upon Louis
Farrakhan by Wright, or about Wright's derogation of "garlic-nosed"
Italians (of the ancient Roman variety), then you already know
something about Trumpet. Farrakhan's picture was on the cover of a
special November/December 2007 double issue, along with an
announcement of the Empowerment Award and Wright's praise of Farrakhan
as a 20th- and 21st-century "giant." Wright's words about Farrakhan
were almost identical to those that, just four months later, led a
supposedly shocked Obama to repudiate Wright. The insult to Italians
was in the same double issue.

I obtained the 2006 run of Trumpet, from the first nationally
distributed issue in March to the November/December double issue. To
read it is to come away impressed by Wright's thoroughgoing political
radicalism. There are plenty of arresting sound bites, of course, but
the larger context is more illuminating — and more disturbing — than
any single shock-quotation. Trumpet provides a rounded picture of
Wright's views, and what it shows unmistakably is that the
now-infamous YouTube snippets from Wright's sermons are authentic
reflections of his core political and theological beliefs. It leaves
no doubt that his religion is political, his attitude toward America
is bitterly hostile, and he has fundamental problems with capitalism,
white people, and "assimilationist" blacks. Even some of Wright's
famed "good works," and his moving "Audacity to Hope" sermon, are
placed in a disturbing new light by a reading of Trumpet.

Getting across his political message is Wright's highest priority.
Back in May 2007, the liberal, Chicago-based Christian Century
published an extended study — really a defense — of Wright's church.
Attempting to inoculate Wright (and Obama) from critics like Sean
Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Christian Century dismissed the notion
that Wright's Trinity church "is a political organization constantly
advocating for social change." Yet in Trumpet, Wright and his fellow
columnists show themselves to be exactly that.

Wright is the foremost acolyte of James Cone's "black liberation
theology," which puts politics at the center of religion. Wright
himself is explicit:

"[T]here was no separation Biblically and historically and there is no
separation contemporaneously between 'religion and politics.' . . .
The Word of God has everything to do with racism, sexism, militarism,
social justice and the world in which we live daily."

In fact, for all his rousing rhetoric, Wright is a bit of a policy
wonk, moving fluidly and frequently from excoriations of American
foreign policy in various African countries, to denunciations of
Senate votes on the minimum wage, to fulminations against FCC
licensing policies and Clear Channel, and so much more. Wright is up
to speed on local, national, and international politics, and it's
tough to imagine him missing an opportunity to confer with Obama on
his wide array of legislative crusades.

When Trumpet surprised Wright with a "Lifetime Achievement Trumpeter
Award," it said that he "preaches a liberation theology" whose
"religious message [is] fused with political activism." Not only does
black liberation theology founder James Cone see Wright as his most
important follower, but Wright's successor as pastor at Trinity, Otis
Moss III, also views Wright as the quintessential political pastor.
Moss (himself now considered the most promising young
black-liberationist preacher in the country) turned down the
opportunity to step into the leadership of his own preacher-father's
nationally known church for a chance to serve at the still more
renowned Trinity. Wright's Trinity, affirms Moss, is "the most
socially conscious African-centered and politically active church in
the nation."

While the majority of Trumpet's articles weave radical politics into a
religious framework, some are purely political. For example, the April
2006 issue features a column entitled "Demand Impeachment Now!" The
author pointedly refuses to call Bush "president," merely referring to
him as the "resident" of the White House (and therefore as "Resident
Bush"). Another piece taunts Vice President Cheney for his shooting
accident and ends, "America, it's time for regime change." Neither
piece has so much as a religious veneer.

What about patriotism? While many consider Wright's call for God to
damn America irredeemable, others might argue that "in context,"
Wright's prophetic denunciations actually prove his love of country.
Unfortunately, neither Wright nor any of the other regular Trumpet
columnists displays a trace of this "I'm denouncing you because I love
you" stance. On the contrary, the pages of Trumpet resonate with
enraged criticism of the United States. Indeed, they feature explicit
repudiations of even the most basic expressions of American
patriotism, supporting instead an "African-centered" perspective that
treats black Americans as virtual strangers in a foreign land.

Although the expression "African American" appears in Trumpet, the
magazine more typically refers to American blacks as "Africans living
in the Western Diaspora." Wright and the other columnists at Trumpet
seem to think of blacks as in, but not of, America. The deeper
connection is to Africans on the continent, and to the worldwide
diaspora of African-originated peoples. In an image that captures the
spirit of Wright's relationship to the United States, he speaks of
blacks as "songbirds" locked in "this cage called America."

Wright views the United States as a criminal nation. Here is a typical
passage: "Do you see God as a God who approves of Americans taking
other people's countries? Taking other people's women? Raping teenage
girls and calling it love (as in Thomas Jefferson and Sally
Hemmings)?" Anyone who does think this way, Wright suggests, should
revise his notion of God. Implicitly drawing on Marxist "dependency
theory," Wright blames Africa's troubles on capitalist exploitation by
the West, and also on inadequate American aid: "Some analysts would go
so far as to even call what [the United States, the G-8, and
multinational corporations] are doing [in Africa] genocide!"

According to Wright, America's alleged genocide in Africa, as well as
its treatment of "Africans in the Western diaspora," both leads to and
flows from a single underlying truth: "White supremacy is the bed rock
of the philosophical, ideological and theological foundations of this
country." So for Wright, it's really not a question of correcting
America in the spirit of a loving patriot. America, to Wright, is a
kind of alien formation, scarcely less of a "cage" for "Africans in
the Western Diaspora" than it was during the days of slavery: "[T]his
country is built off, and continues to exist on, the premise of white
supremacy." Again and again, Wright makes the point that America's
criminality and racism are not aberrations but of the essence of the
nation, that they are every bit as alive today as during the slave
era, and that America is therefore no better than the worst
international offenders: "White supremacy undergirds the thought, the
ideology, the theology, the sociology, the legal structure, the
educational system, the healthcare system, and the entire reality of
the United States of America and South Africa!" (Emphasis Wright's.)

One of Wright's most striking images of American evil invokes
Hurricane Katrina. Here are excerpts of a piece in the May 2006
Trumpet:

"We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.

"We need to educate our children about the white supremacist's
foundations of the educational system.

"When the levees in Louisiana broke alligators, crocodiles and piranha
swam freely through what used to be the streets of New Orleans. That
is an analogy that we need to drum into the heads of our African
American children (and indeed all children!).

"In the flood waters of white supremacy . . . there are also
crocodiles, alligators and piranha!

"The policies with which we live now and against which our children
will have to struggle in order to bring about 'the beloved community,'
are policies shaped by predators.

"We lay a foundation, deconstructing the household of white supremacy
with tools that are not the master's tools. We lay the foundation with
hope. We deconstruct the vicious and demonic ideology of white
supremacy with hope. Our hope is not built on faith-based dollars,
empty liberal promises or veiled hate-filled preachments of the
so-called conservatives. Our hope is built on Him who came in the
flesh to set us free."

Given Wright's conviction that America, past and present, is
criminally white supremacist — even genocidal — to its core, Wright is
not a fan of patriotic celebration. Predictably, Columbus Day is a day
of rage for Wright. Calling Columbus a racist slave trader, Wright
excoriates the holiday as "a national act of amnesia and denial," part
of the "sick and myopic arrogance called Western History."

Strangely, given his view of this country, Wright insists that real
credit for America's discovery goes to Africans. As evidence for the
African discovery of America, Wright cites Dr. Ivan van Sertima's book
They Came Before Columbus. (Sertima's work has been severely
criticized by scholars and was dismissed by prominent British
archaeologist Glyn Daniel in a 1977 New York Times book review as
"ignorant rubbish.") Wright concludes: "Giving Columbus the credit is
called 'American History' or 'The History of Western Civilization.'
Back in the 1960's we called it what it was and is, however, and that
is 'a pack of lies.'"

Contempt for Columbus Day is hardly novel, but in the 2006 July/August
issue, regular Trumpet columnist the Rev. Reginald Williams Jr. comes
down hard on the Fourth of July, which Williams dismisses as "the
national holiday of the dominant culture." Williams invokes Frederick
Douglass's famous 1852 Fourth of July address:

"What to the slave is the 4th of July? What have I to do with your
national independence?. . . What to the American slave is your 4th of
July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in
the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant
victim. To him, your celebration is a sham . . . your national
greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and
heartless . . . your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings
. . . mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin
veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

To Williams, Douglass's words ring every bit as true today as they did
before the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. (This column is
illustrated with a large picture of slave manacles.) Williams goes on
to echo and update Douglass, condemning the Fourth as "nothing more
than a day off work and a time for some good barbeque to the millions
of African Americans who suffer and have suffered under the policies
of this government and this country." Liberation theologian that he
is, Williams is particularly hostile to those who "will even invoke
religious fervor, and biblical quotes to justify their flawed sense of
phony patriotism." No flag pins here.

Hostility to capitalism is another of Trumpet's pervasive themes. As
we've seen, Wright blames multinational corporations for conflict and
poverty in Africa. Trinity Church urges parishioners to boycott
Wal-Mart, and Wright decries what he calls "the "Wal-martization of
the world." In another one of his regular Trumpet columns, Reginald
Williams criticizes McDonald's for failing to heed leftist advocacy
groups by voluntarily raising the price it pays for tomatoes (so as to
raise the wages of tomato pickers). Williams apparently wants to
replace market mechanisms with a pricing system dictated by "human
rights groups."

While the nationally distributed issues of Trumpet in 2006 contained
no pieces blaming 9/11 on America's "terrorist" foreign policy (as
Wright did in a famous sermon), one remarkable piece defended
then-congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's suspicion that the Bush
administration knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened. This
column, "The Beloved Cynthia McKinney" (illustrated with pictures of
McKinney in model-like poses), decries the fact that McKinney was
"tarred and feathered in the press" for raising questions about
possible government foreknowledge of 9/11. The "crimes of 9/11," it
darkly announces, are "not only unsolved, but covered up by both
Democrats and Republicans."

America's justice system is another favorite Trumpet theme. Wright
likes to call it "the criminal injustice system." A piece headed "Read
Me My Rights: Protocol for Dealing with the Police" decries racial
profiling and counsels those detained to refuse to speak to police
without a lawyer present. Reginald Williams calls prisons "the new
concrete plantations" and likens the inclusion of nonvoting prisoners
in state population counts to the official counting of nonvoting
slaves in state populations before the Civil War. In other words, the
abolition of slavery and segregation notwithstanding, America is still
a fundamentally racist nation. Wright likes to call the American North
"up South."

Is Wright an anti-white racist? He would certainly deny it. In When
Black Men Stand Up for God (a book he coauthored, in praise of Louis
Farrakhan's Million Man March), Wright says, "The enemy is not white
people. The enemy is white supremacy." There are white members of
Wright's church, and black liberation theologians have always, if a
bit reluctantly, welcomed support from white radicals. Nonetheless,
the problem of reverse racism keeps coming up, abetted by episodes
like the assault on "garlic-nosed" Italians.

Wright's swipe at Italians is actually directed toward the Romans who
crucified Jesus (in what James Cone calls a "first-century lynching").
Following black liberation theology, Wright emphasizes that the black
Jesus was "murdered by the European oppressors who looked down on His
people." In a sense, then, disclaimers notwithstanding, Wright turns
the crucifixion into a potential charter for "anti-European" anger.

Wright, however, rejects the notion that "black racism" is even
possible. That is why he prefers the term "white supremacy" to
"racism." "Racism," says Wright, is a "slippery" and "nebulous" term,
precisely because it seems potentially applicable to blacks and whites
alike. The term "white supremacy" solves this problem, and Wright
deploys it at every opportunity.

Wright opposes "assimilation," expressing displeasure with the likes
of Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Colin Powell. He dismisses
such blacks as "sell outs." Wright's hostility to assimilation goes
beyond classic American expressions of pride in ethnic or religious
heritage. For example, Wright claims that "desegregation is not the
same as integration. . . . Desegregation did not mean that white
children would now come to Black schools and learn our story, our
history, our heritage, our legacy, our beauty and our strength!" This,
for Wright, is genuine "integration."

One of the most striking features of Wright's Trumpet columns is the
light they shed on his longstanding theme of "hope." Wright's
"Audacity to Hope" sermon is built around a painting he describes of a
torn and tattered woman sitting atop a globe and playing a harp that
has lost all but a single string. In that sermon, Wright's allegory of
hope amidst despair concentrates on our need to soldier on in faith
amidst personal tragedy. Yet the "Audacity" sermon also features
allusions to South Africa's Sharpeville Massacre (1960) and "white
folks's greed [that] runs a world in need."

In Trumpet, the political context of the "hope" theme is harsher
still. Instead of counseling determination amidst personal tragedy,
Wright uses "hope" to exhort his readers to boldly carry on the
long-odds struggle against white supremacist America: "We deconstruct
the vicious and demonic ideology of white supremacy with hope." Here's
another passage in the same mode:

"[O]ur fight against Wal-Mart's practices has not been won and might
never be won in our lifetime. That does not mean we stop struggling
against what it is they stand for that is not in keeping with God's
will and God's Kingdom that we pray will come every day."

In that earlier striking passage on the post-Katrina flooding in New
Orleans, Wright speaks of his determination to "drum into the heads of
our African American children (and indeed, all children!)" the idea
that America is flooded with the "crocodiles, alligators and piranha"
of white supremacy. That image creates the context for one of Wright's
most energetic invocations of "hope":

"We are on the verge of launching our African-centered Christian
school. The dream of that school, which we articulated in 1979, was
built on hope. That hope still lives. That school has to have at its
core an understanding and assessment of white supremacy as we
deconstruct that reality to help our children become all that God
created them to be when God made them in God's own image."

The construction of a school for inner city children undoubtedly falls
into the category of the "good works" which nearly everyone recognizes
as a benefit bestowed by Trinity Church on the surrounding community,
Wright's ideology notwithstanding. But is a school that portrays
America as a white supremacist nation filled with predatory alligators
and piranha a good work?

Wright's status as a father-figure comes through clearly in the pages
of Trumpet. In a Trumpet interview, Jesse Jackson characterizes Wright
as "between a huge father, pastor, preacher, [and] prophet." Wright's
young minister protégés call him "Daddy J" and "Uncle J," and perhaps
this latter name prompted Obama's reference to Wright as "like an
uncle." Obama's longing for a father figure surely gave him a great
hunger to get to know what Wright was about. In their first meeting,
Wright warned Obama that many considered him too politically radical,
and it is simply inconceivable that in 20 years' time someone as sharp
as Obama did not grasp the intensely political themes repeated in so
much of what Wright says and does. Radical politics is no sideline for
Wright, but the very core of his theology and practice.

There can be no mistaking it. What did Barack Obama know and when did
he know it? Everything. Always.

Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.