Neptunus Lex

Dan Brown has made oodles of money twisting the tenets of Christianity (in general) and the Catholic church (in particular) into something nearly unrecognizable the better to cudgel it for being so twisted. That sells a lot of books to folks holding a generalized loathing, dread and ignorance on the topic of godbothering christers (among others), even if it does depend upon some rather creative re-writing of history. I suppose a fellah has to make a living somehow, and it beats selling crack to school kids.

Which somehow brings to mind the aptly named Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Barack Obama’s Chicago church, and a man whose serial jeremiads on the real and imagined sins of white and middle class America came so awkwardly to light six weeks ago. Wright seems intent on remaining in the spotlight. Strangely so, for someone who claims to be a friend of the Democratic Party front-runner: Obama can’t but want to talk about something else besides the nexus of liberation theology and American flag lapel pins.

As pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago, Wright occasionally delivered sermons that Obama now calls “divisive.” One of the most controversial was delivered after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which Wright suggested were a sort of comeuppance for the United States because of its violent foreign policies.

“America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he said at the time. “The stuff we have done overseas is brought right back into our homes.”

Wright also once charged in a sermon that the U.S. government “lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.” And he railed against a government that he said discriminates against blacks “and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America,’ adding, “No, no, no, God damn America. . . . God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.”

I’m no mind reader, but it seems like this sort of thing probably didn’t help Obama in his expensive run at the Pennsylvania primaries, nor is it likely to push him over the top in white bread Indiana. It does, however, stand to help Hillary! prove her case to the super-delegates that Obama is not electable in a general election. Which maybe is the point. Wright wants Obama to lose. Needs for him to.

After all, Wright’s brand of liberation theology is defined by its architect thus:

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. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

It’s a philosophy rooted in the righteous anger of a victim class against the racist crimes of their oppressors, and perhaps it made a good bit more sense back in 1966 when James Cone, the movement’s chief theologist, came up with it (although there’s an open debate among the faithful whether or not it has any relevance today). After all, blaming someone else for your victimization at least gives you something tangible to struggle against, which is better than wallowing in self-pity or selling crack to school kids. It’s certainly helped the Reverend Wright to make a decent living, and - if Fox News is to be believed - set him up nicely for retirement.

But if Obama wins the Democratic Party’s nomination after all - as he will, absent a flight of super-delegates to Hillary! - he stands a better than even chance of being elected the first African American President of these United States. Which would put a pretty big stake through the heart of Jeremiah Wright’s version of liberation theology, based as it is on enduring opposition to a continuing, remorseless, majoritarian racism. Obama’s election would make Dan Brown’s mooings over the “sacred feminine” look like the works of a piker, doctrinally speaking.

Or rather, more so.