I've begun making a case that to understand Barack Obama, it is important to understand that he is informed by Jeremiah Wright (it's amazing how fast some entries in the Wikipedia are updated isn't it?) and further, that he is informed by James Cone (and other more significantly Marxist black intelligentsia like Cornel West and Anthony Pinn).

For Obama to pretend that Wright is like a sometimes bumbling uncle, and that familial disagreement is really all there is in reference to the controversial videos that most of us have seen in the last few weeks, is disingenuous. Jeremiah Wright is not a singular voice, he voices the sentiments of those who founded Black Theology, and those who follow it, and his praxis explicates what he has been taught and what he believes.

Obama may disavow certain inflammatory remarks that Wright makes, but that is really a matter of adroit packaging because Obama believes in the same underlying theology that Wright does and has consistently repeated the same message - just purposefully packaged to make it more palatable to a broader base of potential voters.

In the NYT article (requires login) A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith, by Jodi Kantor that introduced Obama's faith in the mainstream media - this in April of 2007:

When Mr. Obama arrived at Harvard Law School later that year, where he fortified himself with recordings of Mr. Wright’s sermons, he was delivering stirring speeches as a student leader in the classic oratorical style of the black church.

Clearly, Obama has been informed by Jeremiah Wright. Further into the article:

Still, Mr. Obama was entranced by Mr. Wright, whose sermons fused analysis of the Bible with outrage at what he saw as the racism of everything from daily life in Chicago to American foreign policy...Mr. Wright preached black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as the story of the struggles of black people, who by virtue of their oppression are better able to understand Scripture than those who have suffered less.

If you haven't already done so, please read my post referenced above to underscore that the 'gospel' of Black Theology is the primacy of the experience of the oppressed black identity group. This is the central thesis of the systematized theology expounded by James Cone.

In Seattle's underground paper The Stranger, Jonathan Raban pens in The Church of Obama, How He Recast the Language of Black Liberation Theology into a Winning Creed for Middle-of-the-Road White Voters:

The title of Obama's book The Audacity of Hope is an explicit salute to a sermon by Wright called "The Audacity to Hope," and his speeches are peppered with Wrightisms, like his repeated claim that "There are more young black men in prison than there are in college," but his debt to the preacher goes much deeper. While Wright works his magic on enormous congregations, with the basic message of liberation theology, that we are everywhere in chains, but assured of deliverance by the living Christ, Obama, when on form, can entrance largely white audiences with the same essential story, told in secular terms and stripped of its references to specifically black experience. When Wright says "white racists," Obama says "corporate lobbyists"; when Wright speaks of blacks, Obama says "hard-working Americans," or "Americans without health care"; when Wright talks in folksy Ebonics, of "hos" and "mojo," Obama talks in refined Ivy League. But the essential design of the piece follows the same pattern as a Wright sermon, in its nicely timed transition from present injustice and oppression to the great joy coming in the morning.

Obama's political strategy is to bring nationalist black theology into a broad constituency. In our culture of identity politics it's not a stretch to broaden the social gospel for one identity group to all of the oppressed identity groups that have identified themselves. To the extent that these groups are receptive to the statist progressive promises of government coddling will determine Obama's strategic success.

All of this raises a rich plethora of issues for discussion, but, for the purpose of this post, we can certainly say that Barack Obama's characterization of his relationship with Wright is devoid of transparency.

In further posts we'll examine this and other issues in more detail.

H/T for the Cornel West reference: Cobb.