Timely warning from the 13th century

Blessed Humbert of Romans was a Dominican preacher who died in 1277. He, along with how many thousands of other holy men and martyrs who devoted their lives to establishing Christianity over the last 2000 years, is now virtually forgotten. Fifty to seventy years of toil, strife, and heroism by Humbert can hardly be summed up in a small paragraph. But part of his undying legacy is a prediction that certain things would come to pass if we lost the Gospel:

* That demons would rule. Certainly this video on "Hamas Kindergarten" is that!

* That the world would be sterile. The plummeting birthrate across post-Christian Europe is this fulfillment.

* That hearts would have neither hope nor joy in their salvation. Western society living as though there were no tomorrow becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My sister lives half her time in France and the rest in London. She and her friends are the educated Western European elite. I am sure their attitudes are indicative of many.

I point out the growing Islamization, the falling birthrate, and ask: "What kind of world are you bequeathing to the grandchildren? Their answer: "That's their problem!"

As to Islamization, "It won't happen in my lifetime." Maybe. But is this not an inter-generational betrayal? The old cliché "the future belongs to those who prepare for it" holds too true.

My experience with black liberation theology

What kind of Christianity did Wright teach Obama, that this man can believe a politician can be a Christian by tolerating hatred and endorsing abortion? The two men are part of an international, godless, socialist worldview, anti-free-society and anti-American. Editor: Hilmar von Campe, onetime member of the Hitler Youth, now a US citizen and Alabama resident, author of several books including the forthcoming "Defeating the Lie," wrote this piece for his website, voncampe.com.

The senior pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. stated that his theology “is based upon the systemized liberation theology that started 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book, ‘Black Power and Black Theology’”. He explains on his website that he has a church the theological perspective of which starts from the vantage point of black liberation theology. With ‘systemized” he means that his theology integrates centuries of similar theological movements.

Black theology, however, is not the beginning of modern liberation theology it is a local version of the Latin American original which is aimed at Catholics. Black theology is aimed at Africans, for instance in South Africa, and African-Americans. There are other versions for American Natives, Asians and Women. The liberation they are talking about is not the teaching of liberation from selfishness and sin through Jesus Christ but of economic exploitation by capitalists, whites or males respectively. The message is divisive and subversive. “We are agents of change for God,” says the mission statement of Obama’s church, “who is not pleased with America’s economic mal-distribution.” Maybe they listen to Satan and not to God. They are no agents of God.

Reading or listening to the explanations of what liberation in this context means by their Spanish- German-, English speaking professionals you notice the same line of argument – abundant Christian language, themes and apologetics but underneath a subtle shift to liberation as an economic criteria. We are dealing here with fake Christians, a class war being waged against their specific different “oppressors”, which in America is disguised as race issue.

I spent a great part of my adult life in various countries of Latin America. That’s where I came across liberation theology. In my first book “Cowardice and Appeasement” which was published 1989 in Germany I have a whole chapter about it. I had read their literature and listened to their leaders like the Brazilian Franciscan priest Leonardo Boff, visited the priest Gustavo Gutierrez in his home in Peru, and discussed this theology in UNAM, the state university of Mexico, with the German Theology Professor Johann B. Metz. I counted 18 books he had written but it could be more. The ideas in his book “Political Theology” led to the articulation of the liberation theology. During this discussion in Mexico the Argentine Enrique Dussel named Communist leader Che Guevara and the top Sandinista Thomas Borge as the new types of man for the society of tomorrow. This event, like many others, served as instrument to attack “American Imperialism” and make Soviet agents acceptable to Catholics,

Gustavo Gutierrez is acknowledged as founder of the theology of liberation. He made a good impression on me. He lived a great part of his life as a priest among the very poor in Peru, in other words, he had his heart where his mouth was. His concern was how to make the poor into a power for economic change through political and social liberation. He had a list of priorities but unfortunately the liberation from selfishness came at the end of it. The Vatican sanctioned Boff and many others because of heresy but not Gutierrez as they most likely had the same impression as I had.

What happened then, I believe, was that Marxists without interest in the liberation from selfishness picked up the idea of social and political liberation and pushed the movement to the left into the global establishment of class war but without getting rid of the religious label. It is now a political leftwing movement, not a serious theology. Julio Giradi defined: “Christian love only is a historical force if it takes up class warfare.” That of course is complete nonsense. I have been in many of these “favelas”, the living areas of the poor in Latin America. It is true, that they live in sub-human conditions and your heart goes out to them. But morally they are no different from the “rich”. They steal and lie as Western politicians do. In Rio de Janeiro I was in the home of the leader of such a settlement. From the outside his “house” looked as terrible as all the others. But inside it was a normal comfortable home. He was rich compared to the poor since he took a cut for himself from the collections he was authorized to make for the payment of electricity, garbage removal etc. It is like Congress taking our payment to Social Security for their re-election. In Sao Paulo I was with the Communist leaders of the Port Workers Union. Their wives were not hungry but resented their husbands having other women besides them – a vice also very popular in this country - and were unhappy in their marriage and their lives. That changed as the husbands realized that the new world order they were promoting did not even work in their own families. They changed.

Barack Hussein Obama has been a member of the Trinity Church of Christ church for 20 years. He was baptized and got married there. I have seen and read about its liberation fundamentals: hatred and class war. It is more than doubtful that he as an extraordinary intelligent person has not become aware in 20 years of the ideological orientation of his church. In an interview in the “Hannity & Colmes” show of Fox News on March 2, 2007 the Rev. Wright expressed himself as a trained ideologist and not as a pastor. The video with a “sermon” he made in another church is even worse. He must have a strange view of God’s commandments. Obama’s explanation that he does not agree with everything that Wright says is no explanation at all. We are not talking about occasional anger but about the moral and religious fundament of a church. To escape into a racial issue and throw the ball into the camp of the whites is a brilliant attempt to fool everybody. His and Wright’s ideology is socialist world power.

What kind of Christianity did Wright teach Obama that this man can believe that a politician can be a Christian by tolerating hatred and at the same time endorsing abortion to his voters? His voting record is morally as terrible as Wright’s communications. Most likely, it seems to me, that the two men are part of an international godless Socialist world view, which is anti free-society and also anti-American. It presents itself as Christian, like the “German Christians” movement under the Nazis who promoted Nazi philosophy with a religious label. Barack Obama has a hidden agenda.

Barack spins for survival

Obama on the campaign trail isn't practicing what he preached (pun intended) in last week's widely praised speech where he sought a more open, honest dialogue about race in America. Barack Obama was in North Carolina yesterday, giving a new version of his stump speech. The senator has apparently found the Lord, and wants to share with his audiences just how pure and mainstream a religious man he is. He's on a new strategy to downplay his 20+ year association with Reverend Wright of the Trinity United Church in Chicago. The four-part spin goes something like this:

(1) Minimize it: In comments to one crowd, Obama called this whole issue of Wright an unnecessary "distraction" from the real problems people face in this country. "We can't lose sight of America's real issues -- like the War in Iraq -- every time someone says something stupid".

Now, calling Wright's sermons simply "stupid" is, in my view, a significant back-track from the major speech he gave last week on the issue of race, when he rejected Wright's views and condemned them.

Obama also stressed that Wright has given three sermons a week for 30 years and that those opposed to his candidacy had found "five or six of his most offensive statements" and "boiled" them down to play over and over. "I hope people don't get distracted by that."

Why should people get distracted by the fact that the spiritual adviser to the presumptive Democrat candidate for President of the United States should blame white America for 9/11, the Palestinian problem and all the problems of blacks in this country?

(2) Mainstream it: Yesterday, Obama spoke of the Trinity United Church as if it were the most tolerant, open congregation in the country. "Everybody is welcome to come to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street. It is a wonderful, welcoming church," he said. "If you were there on any given Sunday, folks would be doing the same things in church at Trinity as they do everywhere else. They're praising Jesus. They've got a choir singing. It's a very good choir. And the pastor is trying to teach a lesson to connect scripture to our everyday lives."

Unfortunately, Obama stopped short of citing the specific scriptures that tells us that the U.S. government created AIDS to destroy the black community, or that introduced drugs into black neighborhoods.

(3) Backtrack from it: Though in his widely reviewed speech on Race last week Obama admitted to having attended some of the Wright sermons that were universally found offensive, yesterday he backtracked, saying that Wright had said some "very objectionable things when I wasn't in church on those particular days."

I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "in" is...if it means "in church" as actually sitting in the pews, or if it means "in church" as in standing in the parking lot where he couldn't really hear the sermon going on inside. Bill Clinton would be proud of such practiced dissembling.

(4) If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em: In Greensboro, Obama's campaign staff has found the Lord as well, now using prayer before his events, something that began since the controversy over Wright and his remarks. "Thank you for this time of excitement and enthusiasm," a local reverend prayed. "I pray a special blessing, oh God, a special blessing, on Barack Obama." The audience was then led in the Pledge of Allegiance. And if there was any question that Obama is a religious and patriotic American, he ended his speech with a "God bless America."

So, the candidate who wouldn't wear an American flag on his lapel pin is now cloaking himself in both the bible and the flag at his campaign events. Does this not strike you as a cold and calculating way of actually avoiding that real discussion of race that he says he so desperately wants in America?

This strikes me as disingenuous, and I hope most of America will not buy what Obama is selling now: a "slick Willie" style attempt to triangulate his position and his beliefs, with an obvious hope that the public will eventually be so confused by the ever-changing position that they will simply remember the last thing that the candidate says.

We've had enough dissembling in the White House. It is time for some straight talk!

Obie didn't make the sale

Obama failed to explain how a church can harmonize Wright's "God damn America" with Christ's "blessed are the peacemakers." My own limited experience worshiping in a black inner-city church has been diametrically different. Rather than Wright's hateful condemnation of white people, the message at this church contained not a tinge of racial exclusivity. [Editor: That's from Mark Hillman's latest Capitol Review column. Here's the column in full.]

Obama not so different rationalizing race, Wright

"If you really believe black people are 'fellow Americans,' then treat them as such." - John McWhorter, "Losing The Race"

If Barack Obama truly wants to transcend race, he would do well to apply the words of John McWhorter to his "explanation" of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama is supposed to be different: a messenger of hope and change, not just another beltway politician; an agent of reconciliation not grievances and reparations; a unifier who transcends partisan and racial divides.

That's why many gave him the benefit of the doubt when he explained that he didn't wear a U.S. flag lapel pin because he viewed it as a "substitute for ... true patriotism."

That's why some gave Michelle Obama a mulligan when she said, "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country."

That's why Obama's rating as the most liberal senator in 2007 by the respected National Journal never seemed to resonate beyond conservative circles.

However, in addressing his 20-year relationship with Wright, whom he calls his spiritual mentor, Obama sounded like every other scripted politician snared by a public relations debacle. Obama's devotion to Wright peeled back the veneer in a way that voters of every stripe could not ignore.

If he was prescient enough, according to fellow travelers, to have foreseen the perils of war in Iraq, how can he imagine that Jeremiah Wright never talked "about any ethnic group in derogatory terms" in private conversations?

If he really possesses "judgment to lead," why wasn't his judgment as keen as that of Oprah Winfrey who left Trinity United Church of Christ several years ago?

If his oratorical skills are so remarkable, why didn't he explain how sermons referring to the "US of KKKA" or "a world ... where white folks' greed runs a world in need" can conceivably coincide with aims for racial harmony?

The insurmountable obstacle for people who previously extended to Obama the benefit of the doubt is that the aforementioned can no longer be easily dismissed as aberrations or gaffes. Instead, they fit more easily into a profile of someone who doesn't afford that same benefit to others.

If U.S. flag lapel pins are symbols of superficial jingoism, were we to ignore that Obama surrounded himself with at least a half-dozen full-size flags for his speech explaining his relationship with Rev. Wright? Equally conspicuous was the absence of trademark signs sloganeering for Hope, Change, Judgment and Leadership.

Absent, too, was evidence of the courage so often assigned to Obama. Few people who take their faith seriously would continue to attend - much less donate $20,000 to - a church where the pastor regularly punctuates his sermons with rants like those Obama described as "not only wrong but divisive."

The very public rift between the Catholic church and parishioners who disagree with church doctrine on abortion and gay marriage is a marked contrast to Obama's supposed silent disapproval of Wright's message.

Moreover, Obama's assertion that Wright's church contains "the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America" should be insulting to black congregations that, regardless of their political ideology, recognize that the universal message of Jesus Christ compels Christians to preach the truth in love and to embrace forgiveness.

Obama failed to explain how a church can harmonize Wright's "God damn America" with Christ's "blessed are the peacemakers." My own limited experience worshiping in a black innercity church has been diametrically different.

Rather than Wright's hateful general condemnation of white people, the message at this church whose congregants were almost certainly aligned to the political left was vibrant, both spiritually and personally challenging, and although socially candid, contained not a tinge of racial exclusivity.

Accepting Obama's contention that Wright's public pronouncements do not square with his private persona requires, to quote Hillary Clinton, "a suspension of disbelief."

Obama's white grandmother, he says, confessed a fear of black men and uttered racial stereotypes. But she did so privately. People are generally more coarse and unguarded on any subject in their private utterances than in their public pronouncements. Obama would have us believe that Wright said things from the pulpit that he would never say privately.

The candidate who would unify us by transcending race has, unfortunately, resorted to the same race-based rationalizations that perpetuate division and thwart hopes for a post-racial society.

"A person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect," McWhorter writes. Obama's desire to be elected appears to have surpassed his desire to be respected.