Ken Concannon
Published: May 2, 2008

“What we have here is a failure to communicate!”
— Strother Martin in “Cool Hand Luke.”

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former spiritual mentor of Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama and pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, has been described as an albatross around the neck of Senator
Obama. Wright has earned the albatross label because of a variety of public statements he’s made that suggest that (a) he hates the United States, (b) he hates all white people, (c) he’s a lunatic, (d) he’s in the employ o f Obama’s political opponents, and/or (e) all of the above.

Obama, because of his twenty-year association with the outspoken Reverend, has been forced to explain Reverend Wright, explain his association with the reverend, explain race relations within the United States, and finally denounce his former pastor for statements he continues to make that shock and enrage unhappy listeners, among them conservative television and radio commentator Sean Hannity, who, despite a couple of interviews with Reverend Wright, has failed to discover why the reverend says what he says.

At the heart of the “failure to communicate” are a few terms that mean different things to different people. One of those terms is “black church.” Most white people — including, I suspect, Sean Hannity — think of a “black church” as one where the congregation is predominantly black, but the message is inherently the same as that found in churches where the congregations are predominantly white. It’s a term that’s been used by both Reverend Wright and Senator Obama. And it doesn’t mean what regular white folks think it means.

Google “black church” on the Internet and you’ll find any number of dissertations on the “black church” and “black liberation theology.”

What you’ll find is a warped definition of another word that means something different to Reverend Wright than it does to the rest of us — “Christianity.” Most Christians believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross to save our souls — all of our souls, regardless of our race or ethnicity. 

Reverend Wright and other adherents of black liberation theology don’t see it that way. In their world God is on the side of the oppressed, black people, and he is opposed to the oppressors, white people. Reverend Wright is a follower of black liberation theologian James Cone has been espousing afrocentric Christianity since the 1960s. 

In his treatise “A Black Theology of Liberation” Cone describes his black church this way:
“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 t heir disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.”

In the interviews with Hannity, Reverend Wright has repeatedly asked the commentator “How many of Cone’s books have you read?” Hannity never answered the question. I suspect he hasn’t read any. And the Reverend Wright has never explained black liberation theology to Hannity’s audience.  Actually, I don’t think Hannity ever asked him to explain it.

I wish he would, using that quote from James Cone as a starting point. It would certainly explain why the bombastic reverend says the silly things he says, and it might shine light on the “real Obama” that Hannity is trying to find.  Although
Senator Obama has finally denounced the troublesome reverend and his ridiculous statements about the United States of white America, the government’s involvement in the Aids epidemic, etc., we don’t know if Obama, like his former pastor, endorses the basic premise of James Cone’s black theology. But we should!

Ken Concannon is a resident of Prince William County. E-mail him at .