A Theological Look at Barack Obama’s Speech on Race

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Ever since the video clips surfaced of Barack Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preaching a fiery brand of black liberation theology at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, I’ve had flashbacks to my student days at United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, Minn. Obama’s speech in Philadelphia today has prompted me to review my own tenuous connections to liberation theology and my reasons for choosing the alternative.

I attended United (a seminary coincidentally affiliated with the UCC) in the late 1980s when liberation and process theology dominated the curriculum. As you might expect, students debated one another strenuously over the merits of the two theological perspectives. As I recall, my friends at seminary unanimously preferred liberation theology for its strong emphasis on social justice and although I felt very much alone at the time, I chose to pursue process theology.

Liberation theology characteristically appeals to groups of people who have experienced some form of oppression, so there are feminist, ethnic, class, geographical, and racial versions. As the child of a large Appalachian family who migrated to northwestern Ohio to eke out a living as sharecroppers, I’ve known my share of oppression. I credit my childhood experiences of poverty and discrimination with teaching me compassion for the suffering of others.

It’s been a few years since I graduated from seminary, but I still recall a discussion I had one afternoon with an African-American student advocating black liberation theology. I balked at the idea of God taking sides, even on behalf of the oppressed, and I refused to condone the use of force to overcome those labeled as oppressors. To support my position, I cited historical examples of violent upheavals, such as the French Revolution, in which the oppressed in turn ultimately became the oppressors.

Further, I resisted the notion of an all-powerful God who could or would intervene at will to overthrow evil regimes. If that were so, I argued, why has God allowed Nazis, fascists, and one corrupt dictator after another to rule enslaved people for decades?

My classmate that day was not persuaded and since then liberation theology as demonstrated by the Rev. Wright has obviously continued to take root in various places around the globe.

It was no surprise to discover that James Cone, a well-known black liberation theologian I was once assigned to read in seminary, has influenced Wright’s theological development. Cone currently teaches Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Cone points to Luke 4:18-19:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Reminding me of what I’d learned about liberation theology in the past, Cone claims, "In Christ, God enters human affairs and takes sides with the oppressed. Their suffering becomes his; their despair, divine despair."

For a refresher course in process theology, I turned to my own ordination paper:

“As I progressed in my studies {at seminary}, it became increasingly clear to me that how we individually and collectively understand ourselves in relationship to God, whether consciously or unconsciously, informs our relationships to ourselves, to community, and to nature. For this reason, perceiving God from the point of view of process theology has been particularly helpful to me.

“Process theology offers a holistic image of God, large enough to encompass the variety of characteristics ascribed to divinity throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. God is the source of all creativity and novelty in the universe where all of life is seen as interconnected and in the process of becoming. God knows at every moment what has been, what is, and what most likely will be.

“God relates to humans in faithful partnership in which God shares our suffering as well as our joy. God is in continuous communication with each person, ceaselessly inviting, but never using force, the best possible response to each newly arising set of circumstances, the response offering the greatest possible good to all those involved.

“In view of the suggestion that God communicates with us for the most part at the level of our unconscious, it follows that process theology affirms the integrated life and a “turning toward god.” The emergence of a loving invitation from God from the level of the unconscious to conscious awareness might be described as a moment of revelation.

“It’s my understanding that sin is internalized oppression or self-negation. I understand arrogance and pride as manifestations of insufficient, rather than excessive, love for the self, which decreases the capacity for love of neighbor. Evil would then result from dominant/submissive patterns of relationship found in social structures that perpetuate the oppression of individuals and groups.

“Process thought, however, avoids absolutes; to one extent or another, we are all representative of both the oppressor and the oppressed. God is therefore not on the side of one person or group. Instead, God is continuously offering salvation through grace, defined as acceptance, love, and forgiveness, to all persons.

“For Christians, the wholeness attributed to God in process theology is best exemplified in the portrait of Jesus that emerges in Scripture. Jesus embodied the biblical concept of shalom, the material and spiritual well being revealed as God’s intention for both the individual and community.

“A biblically based corollary to the above is that shalom is the God-given potential of every person, regardless of gender, race, national origin, ethnic background, or any other category used to create false positions of authority among humankind.”

As I’ve listened to Barack Obama speak at various times in this long, drawn out primary race, I’ve noted time and again the religious tone of his political rallies that seem to morph into revival meetings where participants chant in unison, “Yes, we can.” His following is often referred to as a “movement” guided by the mantra of “change you can believe in.” But I didn’t connect the subtext of his campaign of empowering the oppressed with liberation theology until I heard those revealing video clips of Pastor Wright making his incendiary comments. That’s when it all came together for me.

In his speech today in Philadelphia, Sen. Obama very likely dampened the firestorm his pastor’s words have evoked over the past several days. But I’m left wondering how much Obama, a layperson at Trinity UCC, actually knows about liberation theology, the religious perspective of his former pastor that has no doubt influenced him more than he realizes, both at the conscious and unconscious level.