Imagine if a presidential candidate were to spend their adult life in a church that had a history of racism. The candidate explains, more-or-less convincingly, that they are neither a racist nor a racialist. In fact, few people believe that the candidate is a racialist, despite the fact that they did not disassociate themselves from their church\u2019s teachings.<\/p>\n
Imagine also that they looked the other way and feigned ignorance of what their church taught or refused to directly denounce the racist teachings. How would you feel about such a politician? Would you regard them as a person of integrity? Would they be qualified to be the President of the United States?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, this is not a hypothetical question but a concern we should have about both presidential candidates\u2014Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n
As\u00a0Andrew Sullivan pointed out yesterday<\/a>, Mitt Romney \u201cbelonged to a white supremacist church for 31 years of his life, went on a mission to convert Christians and Jews and others to this church, which retained white supremacy as a doctrine\u00a0until 1978<\/em>\u2013 decades after Brown vs Board of Education, and a decade after the end of the anti-miscegenation laws.\u201d\u00a0Indeed, Sullivan is correct. Romney was well into adulthood before the\u00a0Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed its racist\u2019s \u00a0ways and proclaimed that \u201call worthy male members of the Church may be ordained to the priesthood without regard for race or color.\u201d<\/p>\n Sullivan asks \u201cwhat did the Romneys\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0to confront their own church\u2019s non-secular position on the inherent spiritual inferiority of blacks? Nothing, so far as I can find.\u201d That certainly seems to be the case. Like Barack Obama, Romney was a member of a racist church and did nothing about it.<\/p>\n During the 2008 primary and election, Obama believed\u2014as did most of the media\u2014that his biggest problem was his relationship with Rev. Wright. The real concern went largely ignored. Obama\u2019s association with the rogue pastor was forgivable; his association with Trinity United Church of Christ, however, was\u2014and remains\u2014inexcusable.<\/p>\n For over twenty years, Obama and his family were members of Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), an apostate, racialist church that makes no distinction between faith and politics. TUCC adheres to a form black liberation theology, a strain of heresy that makes Christianity subservient to a twisted, racialist political ideology. The purpose of Black theology is, as the movement\u2019s founding theologian claims, to make political \u201cliberation\u201d the \u201ccentral theme of the biblical message.\u201d<\/p>\n As James Hal Cone, the founder of Black theology and a mentor of Rev. Wright\u2019s, once wrote:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And in another book, Cone wrote:<\/p>\n For white people, God\u2019s reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people; and if they are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God\u2019s presence on earth. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In 2007 Cone told Jason Byassee, a writer for the\u00a0Christian Century<\/em>, that \u201cwhen he\u2019s asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity.\u201d An example of the influence of Cone\u2019s \u201ctheology\u201d can be found on TUCC\u2019s website, under a set of 12 concepts known as the \u201cBlack Value System.\u201d The concepts include:<\/p>\n Commitment to the Black Community. The highest level of achievement for any Black person must be a contribution of strength and continuity of the Black Community.<\/p>\n [. . .]<\/p>\n Pledge Allegiance to All Black Leadership Who Espouse and Embrace the Black Value System.<\/p>\n Personal Commitment to Embracement of the Black Value System. To measure the worth and validity of all activity in terms of positive contributions to the general welfare of the Black Community and the Advancement of Black People towards freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This dangerous distortion of the Gospel is the foundation of what Trinity United Church of Christ believes and teaches.<\/p>\n This is the crux of the problem for Obama: Set aside the inflammatory rhetoric of Rev. Wright, even concede that the president knew nothing of his mentor\u2019s hate-filled rants, and you\u2019re still left with the troubling fact that for 20 years Obama was a member of a church that is founded on this racialist theology.<\/p>\n This is the despicable theology that was being preached while Obama was apparently asleep in the pews. This is the divisive teaching that Obama\u2019s fellow church members embraced and spread throughout the black community in Chicago. I have no doubt that Obama is not a racialist and that he has never agreed with the basic tenets of his church. Yet I find the alternative explanation just as troubling.<\/p>\n Obama knew that as a modern Democrat he is not expected to believe\u2014or at least act as if he believes\u2014the teachings of TUCC or any other church. The tacit agreement between Democratic candidates and their voters is that it doesn\u2019t matter whether a politician is a Protestant, Catholic, or religiously motivated racialist since they won\u2019t let their church\u2019s teachings conflict with their political ideology. They may claim to \u201cPledge Allegiance to the . . . Black Value System\u201d but their true allegiance is to the value system of an irreligious liberalism. Religious language is still welcome if it merely substitutes for a liberal value (e.g., \u201csocial justice\u201d used to justify redistribution of wealth). But if the two conflict (e.g., sanctity of life versus abortion rights) then the religious verbiage must be discarded.<\/p>\n \u201cBarack Obama has referred to his faith more times than most presidents ever have, but for many it\u2019s the wrong kind of faith,\u201d\u00a0says Jim Wallis<\/a>, head of Sojourners. To be clear, when Wallis is referring to the \u201cwrong kind of faith\u201d he is not referring to Obama\u2019s alignment with a racialist ideology. As long as Obama is using faith in the service of liberalism, Wallis, like Andrew Sullivan, will unapologetically turn a blind eye to the president\u2019s racist associations. (Some people sell their integrity on the cheap.)<\/p>\n But while Democrats can be expected to put ideology ahead of faith, what is the GOP\u2019s excuse?<\/p>\n