Thursday, May 08, 2008
The Effect of the Liberationist Pastors
Race - Presidential Election of 2008 - Barack Obama - Hillary Clinton - Elections - Politics - Democratic Party - New York Times: "Even as Dr. Cone and others such as the Rev. William A. Jones at Bethany Baptist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, crafted a theology of black liberation, Catholic theologians in Central and South America crafted their own liberation theology, arguing that God placed the impoverished peasants closest to his heart."
Michael Powell makes this point twice. If that is so, then what we can deduce is the Church's complicity in arguing for their congregants to stay in poverty. If pastors suggest on hundreds of Sundays that their parishioners are more loved by their god as a result of their poverty, there is no impetus to remove themselves in the eyes of god. I understand that the people in this article and others would fight that conclusion, but it is logical and quite sad. What this also does at its most organic is suggests that they could not ever have confidence in themselves, as they will always be viewed as "the impoverished, down-trodden". This kind of belief perpetuates a long wrong. What we should know now, these many years after King, is that anyone of any color, creed or nationality, has a birthright to freedom and access to self-worth and success. Now, what would our nation look like if that had been the message at the pulpit over the last fifty years?
Michael Powell makes this point twice. If that is so, then what we can deduce is the Church's complicity in arguing for their congregants to stay in poverty. If pastors suggest on hundreds of Sundays that their parishioners are more loved by their god as a result of their poverty, there is no impetus to remove themselves in the eyes of god. I understand that the people in this article and others would fight that conclusion, but it is logical and quite sad. What this also does at its most organic is suggests that they could not ever have confidence in themselves, as they will always be viewed as "the impoverished, down-trodden". This kind of belief perpetuates a long wrong. What we should know now, these many years after King, is that anyone of any color, creed or nationality, has a birthright to freedom and access to self-worth and success. Now, what would our nation look like if that had been the message at the pulpit over the last fifty years?
