By now most Americans know that Jeremiah Wright was Barack Obama's pastor for the last twenty years. Wright has achieved national prominence on account of some statements that he has made over the years attacking the United States of America. He has called this country the "U.S. of KKK" and has said that on 9/11 the nation's "chickens came home to roost." He has charged that the United States government deliberately developed the AIDS virus and spread it among the Black community. According to Wright, America has engaged in a war of genocide in Africa and also against the Palestinian people.
Most commentators have found Wright's comments reprehensible. Some Black ministers have come forward to defend him and to place his views "in context." That context, allegedly, is his devotion to the poor and the many benevolent ministries he has run out of his church over the years. All that sounds good but it cannot justify the vile stream of vilification and hatred that Wright has been spewing out.
Most commentators have failed to pay sufficient attention to the real reason for Jeremiah Wright's vicious diatribes. When Wright makes such statements he is voicing what he believes and what he believes arises out of the system of theology he has adopted. It is called Black Theology, which is a type of Liberation Theology and an offshoot of African Theology. Liberation Theology is a Marxist-oriented system of belief that uses Christian terminology to push a social, economic and political program. Its gospel is the message of so-called "social justice." African Theology is a synthesis of professedly Christian belief with traditional African tribal religions. Black Theology is an American version of these unscriptural theological systems that has been widely accepted also in Southern Africa. It is based on the notion that the Old Testament is the story of a black nation (Israel) written by black Jews as a history of their people. According to Black Theology, Jesus was a black Messiah who built His message on the black Old Testament and whose mission was to liberate His black people from the oppression of white Gentiles.
This is what Jeremiah Wright believes or says he believes. On one of the clips of his sermons played by the media, he expresses his gladness that he has a black God who knows what it is to be oppressed by rich white people. So the basis of all the fulminations of Jeremiah Wright is his acceptance of Black Theology.
But Jeremiah Wright is all wrong. I am not here dealing with his socialist view of government. This is not a political commentary. I am dealing with Wright's theology. It is such a wrong-headed system of belief that one wonders how an intelligent man could espouse it. Israel was not a black nation. The Old Testament was not written by black Jews. It was written in Hebrew. Has Jeremiah Wright ever known of a single black nation whose mother tongue was Hebrew? Not one. Jesus was not black. He is the Saviour of men of all colors, black included, and many of His choicest saints have been black. But to make Him a black Messiah as the basis of some racist ideology is a bad fairly tale poorly told. Once again, Jeremiah Wright is wrong.
