Martin Luther King Jr. & Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant

I just came across an article I originally saw when it appeared, and it mentions me:

"How Martin Luther King, Jr. Used Nietzsche, Hegel & Kant to Overturn Segregation in America" by Josh Jones, Open Culture, February 11, 2015

I have been familiar with King's remarks about Hegel for many years. I think that the author is exaggerating about Hegel;s influence, and that the author's title is an embarrassing exaggeration. I am more impressed by the influence that various philosophers and theologians had in overturning MLK's fundamentalist indoctrination. It should also be known that MLK not only rejected fundamentalism but was an advocate of the separation of church and state, something the ignorant people I interact with in the city in which I live cannot fathom.

Here there are two links to my web site:

As King scholar John Ansbro discovered, King “stated in a January 19, 1956 interview with The Montgomery Adviser that Hegel was his favorite philosopher.” Later that year, King gave an address to the First Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change in which he used Hegelian terms to characterize the Civil Rights struggle: “Long ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus argued that justice emerges from the strife of opposites, and Hegel, in modern philosophy, preached a doctrine of growth through struggle.”

Independent scholar Ralph Dumain has further catalogued King’s many approving references to Hegel, including a paper he wrote entitled “An Exposition of the First Triad of Categories of the Hegelian Logic—Being, Non-Being, Becoming,” the “last of six essays that King wrote” for his two-semester course on the philosopher.

The author also mentions the Du Bois - Hegel connection and Susan Buck-Morss's work that argues for the influence of the Haitian Revolution on Hegel. He even mentions the little-known 1925 study The Logical Influence of Hegel on Marx by Rebecca Cooper. Among the other interesting links in this article I will mention just this one:

Martin Luther King Jr. and Continental Philosophy, Ethicist for Hire, February 7, 2015

William R. Jones, Jr. on Black liberation theology: Mao, Martin, or Malcolm?

This is an old essay. I see no indication of an earlier publication, so perhaps this is the first time it appeared; on the other hand, the subject matter suggests it was written at least a decade earlier:

Jones, William R. "Liberation Strategies in Black Theology: Mao, Martin, or Malcolm?", in Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, edited by Leonard Harris (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1983). pp. 229-241.

This concern belongs to an earlier era, but given the key role that Jones played in countering black liberation theology from within and furthering black participation in the philosophy profession, this is worth revisiting if only for the limitations of Jones's perspective, which Stephen Ferguson correctly characterized as Feuerbachian.

Jones triangulates the three key figures on their attitude to violence. Mao and Martin Luther King, Jr. are polar opposites: Mao claims that power grows out of the barrel of a gun and thus violence is the only means to fundamental change, while King categorically eschews violence as counter-productive. Malcolm X's formulation "by any means necessary" avoids either of these extremes: Malcolm advocates violence for self-defense or when all other means are exhausted, but not as a first principle.

Jones finds that black liberation theology has gravitated away from both King and Mao and has veered closer to Malcolm X. But he doesn't say anything further about black theology, as the real purpose of this article is to criticize King.

It is obvious to the average person, I would think, that all other things being equal, Malcolm's position would be the most rational and aligned with the real world. If a philosophical position on violence were the only thing that distinguished these three figures, Jones would have a good argument. But their overall political positions and relation to their own traditions differ in several ways, such that Jones's comparison ends up being superficial. We don't even learn what differentiates King's orientation from the asceticism and social backwardness of Gandhi, or Mao's vulgar nationalistic version of class struggle from the intellectual depth of Marx. Nor do we gain any knowledge about the rest of Malcolm X's politics and what he learned once he separated himself from Elijah Muhammed's petit bourgeois fascist religious cult.

A deeper analysis of King's politics might also give additional insight into what differentiates King's universalist radical Christianity from the parochial vision of the black liberation theology of James Cone et al ideologically aligned with the black power movement. King's ideological illusions aside, there is one key aspect of King's political strategy overlooked here. Once the initial legislation was passed putting an end to legal Jim Crow in the South, King turned to the intractable problems of de facto institutional racism in the rest of the country, also implicated in the perpetuation of poverty. King realized that he had to tackle the entire institutional structure of American society, rather than to carve out a petit bourgeois enclave within the black ghetto. King took a bullet for black garbagemen; at the same time King was in the process of organizing a pan-racial Poor People's Campaign

To overlook this superior aspect of King's social vision over the parochialism of black nationalism (which should not be equated with "black power" as an abstract concept) is to do a major injustice to any evaluation of political actors of the 1960s. If one wishes to pursue a critique of King's politics, the proper focal point would not be his religiously-inflected pacifism, but the perspectives for the Poor People's Campaign and what it could or could not lead to.  But now back to Jones.

Jones quotes from King's Gandhi-inspired philosophy of nonviolence, for example, by allowing violence to be inflicted on oneself refusing to strike back, one eventually shames the perpetrator. Jones convincingly demonstrates that this is nonsense, as well as the argument that a violent defensive response to violence can only perpetuate a cycle of violence. There is another aspect of a nonviolent strategy that Jones fails to consider, which is not the effect of nonviolence on one's direct oppressors, but on public opinion. (A historical fact once forgotten but recently brought to public attention in at least one new book: that many of the very same people involved in nonviolent public demonstrations had their guns ready at home to defend themselves against racist assaults.) If the public also has no conscience, then of course the situation becomes even more difficult.

The substance of Jones's case against the philosophy (call it metaphysics) of nonviolence begins on page 236. The ridiculousness of Gandhi's argument becomes evident, for example, in its practical refutation by the example of Nazi Germany. The Gandhian perspective ignores the fact that when the oppressor has classified different groups into the human and the subhuman, no appeal to conscience is possible (237). Another crucial defect of Gandhianism is its focus on the psychological, which overlooks the material imbalance of power. Violence can only be understood when contextualized, which involves configurations of power (238). Jones also points out the selective reception of King's views and the rejection of King's philosophy when it came to criticizing the Vietnam War (239). Jones also points out that King failed where Gandhi succeeded because black Americans constitute a minority, the reverse of the situation in India (235).

The black theologians' reaction against King is related to King's notion of Christian self-sacrificing love connected with his philosophy of nonviolence, which by the late 1960s was seen as ineffective.
In this essay Jones stops here, rather than proceeding onward to reject all theology as obscurantist. Elsewhere in Jones's work we learn that he is a religious humanist rather than an atheist per se, and his war against the (liberation) theology of revealed religion takes the form of an immanent critique using theodicy, or the problem of evil, as a linchpin, hence the key question embodied in the title of his book, Is God a White Racist?. It is also worth noting that Jones treats "white society" as a concept, rather than developing a social theory that would root white supremacy as a ruling class formation having grown out of the institutionalization of slavery as a foundation of the power and wealth of the emerging bourgeoisie. Again, Stephen Ferguson is the only aficionado of Jones who has recognized Jones's position as essentially Feuerbachian, opposing ideology within the realm of ideology without grounding it in a social theory.

Jones to his credit does take into account the other aspect of King's political philosophy: King acknowledges the validity of the exercise of power; nonviolent resistance does not appeal to conscience alone; it succeeds by making existing society ungovernable (234-235). In the footnotes (240-241), Jones quotes King emphasizing the exercise of power beyond the tactics of moral suasion. While some look at this as a later alteration of King's initial position, Jones rejects this interpretation. Quoting Vincent Harding, Jones maintains that King never fully incorporated an analysis of power into his thought, hence never crossed over into the terrain of "black power". Perhaps, but one might question to what extent the advocates of black power were able to craft an effective political strategy given the constraints of being a minority basing themselves in the ghetto facing the overwhelming might of police state violence. Ultimately, who had the more realistic and more profound political vision?

Liberal religion vs. the 'new atheists'

"Condescension, and thinking oneself no better, are the same. To adapt to the weakness of the oppressed is to affirm in it the pre-condition of power, and to develop in oneself the coarseness, insensibility and violence needed to exert domination . . ."

-- Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia

Should I Quit Being Christian? Some Questions for the New Atheists
Tikkun / By Be Scofield.
AlterNet, June 28, 2010

"The new atheists negate the contributions of religious people in the reforming of religion and the resisting of injustice."

A long whine about the "new atheists", with some interesting tidbits about Martin Luther King, Jr. Problem is, the historical information adduced here leads to ahistorical conclusions about the future . . . where to go now that we know what we know . . . and so the author ends up being as useless as the historically illiterate Sam Harris.

Scofield does not understand the problem with wishy-washy liberals, whether in religion or other matters. He fixates on certain statements by certain "new atheists", i.e. that moderate religionists pave the way for the extremists. He is so put out by such a blanket assertion, he seeks to disprove it with loads of historical information about the contributions of liberal religionists to progressive political action and social reform. This, I suppose, is consonant with Tikkun's soft and cuddly notion of progressive politics, a milder version of more radical liberation theology.

There is, however, a problem with this argument: the failure to distinguish between yesterday and today. Secular humanism emerged from the long and painful struggle to liberalize religion, passing through the stage of liberal religion and in the USA very much through the medium of Unitarianism. The first Humanist Manifesto of 1933, itself largely a product of social liberalism, already surpassed the level of today's whiny religious liberals. The question is not one of demanding that the past conform to the imperatives of the present and future, but of what our standards should be now.

Scofield fails to attack Dawkins and especially Harris where they are weakest: their ignorance (in the case of Harris, shameless ignorance) of history and indifference to sociological analysis. Harris is the only "new atheist" who is actually new on the scene. The others and their colleagues have been at it for decades and still show no curiosity to learn anything new about history or society. The exception to the rule is of course Christopher Hitchens, who knows more about both than the rest of the organized humanist movement combined, but who has jumped the shark and utilizes his leftist past as petty gossip.

Instead, Scofield obsesses over this one isolated idea about moderate religionists, ignoring the purport of the comment for today's world, instead escaping into the past, including the all-embracing bosom of Dr. King, to justify the squalid middle class feelgood self-indulgence in nicey-nice prettification of ugly reality.

Unfortunately, neither Scofield nor the "new atheists" seem to be aware of what's wrong with upper middle class make-nice liberal religion. What is most noteworthy here is the middle class inclination towards respectable niceness and liberal guilt. (For the panderers to liberation theology, it's radical guilt, which is liberal guilt raised to the nth power.) And characteristically disgusting is the exploitation of Dr. King, the gold standard of the social gospel. Interestingly, Scofield tells us here that the Kings seriously considered joining the Unitarian Church, but realized they could not be socially effective with black Southerners by doing so. If this is so, it's not for us to judge King in hindsight, because he was not a free agent, but what about us? Why must we be shackled with the chains of the past?

It's one thing to be Mr. Nice Humanist walking the plush grounds of the Harvard Divinity School, it's quite another to fight one's way out of the culture of poverty and struggle to transcend the abuse heaped on one by social dysfunction, bad child-rearing practices, fear-based enforcement of social conformity, and degrading assaults on psyche and intellect. Such people don't live in a nicey-nice world and know what the struggle for the human mind is worth. It's war.

Ideological obfuscation does not help anyone, and progressives reveal something about their own weak politics in so indulging. Pompous gasbags like Cornel West and Michael Lerner are quite limited in what they positively have to offer compared to the harmful nonsense they spew and their contribution to the theocratic domination of public discourse.

Ralph Ellison & black preachers

Many veterans of the black left of the 1940s were taken by surprise by the upsurge of civil rights activism in the mid-'50s.

Here's a hilarious example from Ralph Ellison. The Montgomery Bus Boycott brought Martin Luther King Jr. to the fore. Ellison was ambivalent. He was proud of the leadership shown by black ministers, but he was also rather cynical, referring to them as:

" . . .the old steady, mush-mouthed chicken hawk variety, real wrinkle headed bible pounders [who had just] caught some son of a bitch not only stealing the money, but sleeping with all their own private sisters!"

Nevertheless, Ellison was pleased with their success:

"I'm supposed to know Negroes, being one myself, but these moses [slang for black men--RD] are revealing just a little bit more of their complexity. Leader is a young cat [who is] not only a preacher but a lawyer too, probably also a[n] undertaker and an atomic scientist. And they're standing their ground in spite of threats, assassinations, economic reprisal, & destruction of property."

SOURCE: Rampersad, Arnold. Ralph Ellison: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 324.

Martin Luther King, Jr. as secular humanist

Jeff Nall,
“Remembering the Humanism of Martin Luther King.”
Toward Freedom, July 12, 2005. Feature article (alternative version of Humanist piece);
Reprint: Theocracy Alert, Online Journal, July 16, 2005.

Those invoking the name of MLK in the cause of left/liberal theocracy had better reconsider.

Another source with some information on MLK and the religious issue in the civil rights movement (including defamation of secular Jews) is:

Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.

On the role of existentialism in black thought and the civil rights movement, see:

Cotkin, George. Existential America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

For further background, see:

Allen, Norm R., Jr. “Religion and the New African American Intellectuals,” Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 9, no. 2 (1996), pp. 159-87.

Jeremiah Wright, MLK, black theology & Obama (5)

Sorry to keep you waiting for my review of Rev. Wright's notorious speech at the National Press Club and the subsequent fallout. While some of the attacks on Wright and/or Obama are askew, defense of Wright can be equally repugnant. Case in point: tonight's episode of the racial Twilight Zone:

Barack Obama, Reverend Wright and Black liberation theology
By Malik Miah
Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
"Malik Miah is editor of the US socialist magazine Against the Current, where this article first appeared."

This is one specimen of unbearable stupidity that shows that hard leftists no more than black nationalists or mainstream liberals have a firm grip on reality in their minds. First, there is the admonition to other leftists not to think like sectarians and reject mainstream electoral politics. Then Miah projects "a possible shift in political consciousness" when Obama disillusions his young supporters when he proves to be just like any other mainstream politician. Those hoping for a change might be motivated to seek a more serious change. Well, maybe, but one would have to investigate more carefully the composition and perspectives of Obama's supporters to assess this potential intelligently. Then Miah acclaims this "outstanding speech", though it doesn't go as far in denouncing institutional racism as many on the left would like to see. Obama is alleged to reveal himself as different from the run-of-the-mill mainstream politician. Well, Obama, as the would-be president of neoliberal America, said what he had to say without excessively humbling himself by disowning his pastor, and made some conventional sops to his white audience in order to defend at least a basis for a different social perspective on the part of blacks. Logically speaking, the speech left much to be desired, but it hit the right note under the circumstances.

Then Miah's argument goes south as he defends Wright, insisting that Wright is no hate-monger and that Wright preaches "in the best tradition of Black liberation theology." Miah did not intend this to be a backhanded compliment, of course. It gets worse when Miah makes the disgusting move of equating Wright with King, concluding: "Wright and King delivered the same message of truth." Here Miah shows himself to be a liar. King resolutely opposed black anti-Semitism and never would have had anything to do with the likes of Farrakhan or any black separatist. King would not have exploited black paranoia and illiteracy by spinning conspiracy tales about AIDS unsupported by evidence, or by peddling crackpot notions about black developmental psychology and brain hemispheres.

Miah asserts a linkage of the black liberation theology that arose in the '60s with a tradition going back to slavery. "It is rooted in Black nationalism and the traditions of Black radicalism. It goes back to the resistance to slavery. The modern version arose during the civil rights movement. It basically combines the philosophy of the Black Christian church and Black nationalism." The "modern version", however, has little in common with the pre-black-power phases of American history. Miah quotes Cone; I'll take Miah at his word for now; Cone:

The Black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles Black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism... The Blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition.

It can be seen at a glance that King would never identify himself with this drivel. King might have identified God with the oppressed, but he never would have advocated God as a black God and not the God of all peoples. This obscurantist metaphysical fol-de-rol is of no value to black liberation; the only black power it promotes is that of the manipulation of the masses by self-aggrandizing leaders. Interestingly, Miah argues that Wright's perspective is mainstream, neither anti-American nor anti-capitalist.

In Wright's speech before the National Press Club, he identifed himself with Black liberation theology and pointed out that the attack on Obama and him by the corporate media and others is in reality an attack on the Black community.

This is doubly reprehensible. Aside from identification with the hocus-pocus of black liberation theology, Wright commits the sin of all black nationalist demagogues, including his pal Farrakhan: instead of establishing a rational, verifiable connection between his own interests and the interests of others, he arrogates to himself the right to equate his own agenda with that of the "black community", wrapping himself in the black nationalist flag to ward off criticism of his individual responsibility for crackpot ideas and a manipulative racial-mystical world view.

Finally, Miah warns his fellow socialists not to be sectarian and turn their backs on mainstream electoral politics. But the fact that he has to issue this admonition already proves the bankruptcy of his peers. Interestingly, Miah demonstrates awareness of the limitations of black capitalism by identifying Wright, Jesse Jackson, and Obama with it, and by highlighting the trend towards integrating minorities into the management of corporate America. Miah thinks that Obama's candidacy is an indicator of a post-racial society in germination, because of the willingness of a number of whites to accept Obama and not succumb to race-baiting. Well, it does indicate something, but precisely what and how far it goes is a matter for discussion. Miah suggests that the Obama candidacy opens up an opportunity for consciousness-raising on race. Well, I wonder. What we see, in Obama's "landmark" speech as well as all the hand-wringing over the "Wright" scandal, is not so much a penetration of the race situation on the ground as the usual insipid contrast of two opposing perceptions: "whites see the world this way, and blacks see the world that way, and whites don't know how the world looks from the other side of the racial divide." Well, the last part is true, but the media propaganda environment does not admit any deliberation beyond the pluralist ideology of showing us a diversity of viewpoints. The occasional showcasing of the "black perspective" is predicated on the curious form of integrated segregation to which the American racial order has evolved. Without the maintenance of de facto racial social segregation, the "black perspective" would not have to be peddled as some exotic foreign country that requires ambassadors to speak in its name. "Diplomacy", in fact, is an apt metaphor for this shell game, for diplomacy is all about understanding the perspective of the leaders of another country enough to negotiate with them . . . diplomatically. Diplomacy, however, is not designed to pursue truth beyond appearances.

Curiously, once Miah links black liberation theology to black nationalism, which he links to black capitalism, he fails to draw a number of conclusions therefrom. He seems quite unconcerned with the irrationalism and obscurantism of the black liberation theology of Cone and his successors, nor does he broach the subject of the stunting of the intellectual growth of black people under segregation, reflected in the power of the black church to inculcate hocus-pocus and the authority of preachers over a rationally accountable investigation of social reality. Here Miah succeeds in demonstrating the mental confusion and mediocrity of the American left.

Jeremiah Wright, MLK, black theology & Obama (3)

Wow! I have five days of media extravaganzas to catch up on. OK, I need to retrace my steps to Saturday 25 April, when Jeremiah Wright appeared on Bill Moyers Journal.

First, for more background on black liberation theology, see:

Bill Moyers' Interview with James Cone, November 23, 2007.

Now, for the good stuff:

Bill Moyers' Interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, April 25, 2008.

Let us disassemble the ideological basis of this presentation step by step. First, we have a review, replete with video clips, of the course of Wright's career with his church, emphasizing the social services provided to the working class black community and political agitation against injustice. Then, we are introduced to Barack Obama, who began his association with Wright as a religious skeptic, with a purely pragmatic political motive to join up with Wright, but later allegedly becoming a religious believer. And then we are introduced to yet another ingredient: a clip of black children dressed in dashikis, with a voice-over indicating Wright's inculcation of allegiance to the "black value system" and and to black Americans' alleged African roots. And here is where the wool begins to be pulled over our eyes.

What is wrong with doing this in the current period, say 1989 or 1999 or next year in 2009 as opposed to 1969 or 1959? What is different about de facto segregation in post-apartheid America compared to the rigid segregation imposed by the state and civil society in the period during what we call the modern civil rights movement revved up in the '50s, reached a turning point with the landmark legislation of 1965, and mutated to a new level of militancy as the civil rights legislation failed to alter the intransigent economic and social institutions that kept black America down? Before the protean black power ideology came to the fore in the late '60s, any "black value system" that existed was not a metaphysical entity but a system of social arrangements imposed by white violence and black strategies of both adaptation and resistance given the conditions imposed. As such, the situation fostered the affirmation of both cultural particulars and universal values. This was the mental universe in which Martin Luther King, Jr. moved, with all the expansiveness and limitations that his historical moment embodied, to become a leader of a real movement and the symbolic representative of the greatest political expression of human dignity the world has ever seen.

The nebulous ideology of "Black power" also reflected a historical moment, and MLK grappled both with this mutation in the movement and the objective conditions that engendered it. On the 40th anniversary of his assassination, the media opened up to the point where the average person today could delve further into the depths of King's courage and greatness than the mainstream media would ordinarily foster on such occasions. Had King not been cut down in Memphis the day he readied himself to lay down his life for black garbagemen, he surely would have never been allowed to survive the Poor People's Campaign then in the planning stages. The Poor People's Campaign was not about the maintenance of a separate "black value system" but multiracial class warfare on the march to smash through the ghetto walls of economic, social, political, educational and cultural segregation, grinding them to dust beneath a blitzkrieg on institutional privilege and intransigence. In comparison to this, the prospective of black liberation theology is a petty-bourgeois piss-ant.

All the documentation of all the politicized black churches that provide social services cannot evade the essential duality of the role of petty bourgeois preachers who minister to the underprivileged. Their role is to firm up their power base and their position atop their power base, ideologically bolstered not merely by a rational rationale and function, but via an irrational and essentially authoritarian legitimation via religion turned provincial and nationalistic, which gives us black liberation theology.

Thus the "black community" and the "black value system" become metaphysical entities, and the black political preachers who survived King, whatever good works they do, have never risen and never will rise to his level but rather ideologically decay and ultimately stink once the historical moment that vivified them has passed and their mode of adaptation is drained of growth and life.

Stay tuned for more to come!

Jeremiah Wright, MLK, black theology & Obama (2)

Given Obama’s situation, he handled the Wright “scandal” well. Obama's speech on race tipped me in his favor, but only out of alarm at how easily he could be jimcrowed out of the presidency. Obama’s speech was not one for the ages, but he delved deeper than the average politician, declining to relinquish an aspect of his previous social identity, while pandering to white people more than they deserve.

This was not enough for Caucasian talking heads concerned with whether Obama had sufficiently distanced himself from Jeremiah Wright. A few were put off by his reference to his grandmother exhibiting the questionable attitudes of a "typical white person". Imagine that! And then there was the question of Wright himself. White journalists grappled with the allegedly shocking and horrifying remarks of Wright, apparently never having before witnessed a black man in a dashiki spouting off.

Some black commentators, for their part, attempted to contextualize Wright’s “inflammatory” soundbites, in many cases defending him tout court and placing him solidly within a black tradition of political “prophetic speech”. In several instances, Wright was legitimated by a linkage to the civil rights movement and even to Martin Luther King, Jr. One typically obnoxious example is:

Ralph E. Luker, Jeremiah, History News Network, March 17, 2008.

Before we examine any specific linkages, let us note the objectionable assumption that no one in the news media (mainstream or “progressive”!) has questioned: why should the theological interpretation of secular social issues be considered legitimate under any circumstances? It is one thing to use cultural or symbolic metaphors as ingredients in one’s rhetorical appeals; it is something more to convert a political argument into theologically legitimated metaphysics. Luker, for example, is blind to how thoroughly ridiculous it is to argue politics on a theological basis.

True, Luker’s defense is not quite as ludicrous as the overblown white response to Wright, who exemplifies a fairly commonplace social type and hardly a shocking novelty. To be shocked and scandalized reveals how poorly white Americans still apprehend the social reality of their own society. The black response is disappointing in a different way. It too is "mainstream"—or maybe I should say conventional—in another sense. This is a highly anti-intellectual country and one with a very restricted ideological discourse, a discourse which excludes not only the left but freethought and secular humanism (i.e. Obama's mother!). As such, the real problems with Wright's rants and with the defense of them cannot be publicly discussed, because in so doing one would have to challenge the current theocratic temper of American politics and the entire tradition of Protestant preaching, black and white.

The problem is not with this or any preacher's specific comments, but of the very genre of prophetic discourse, especially in the mouth of a religious leader with a claim to a special authority. Like it or not, a “civilian” may damn America as he pleases, but by what right does a clergyman claim divine authority to utter such a pronouncement? That is the authority to be challenged, denied, and ultimately obliterated.

Theology and liberation have been intertwined since slavery days, but does this imply that every black preacher that has combined the two has participated from the same perspective in the same category—a construct known as black liberation theology? The blowhard pop intellectual Michael Eric Dyson on Meet the Press lumped Wright and King together in the same tradition, evidenced by the fact that at the time of his assassination King was scheduled to deliver a sermon about America being damned to hell. I would like to read the text of this sermon, if it has been preserved, to determine just what he planned to say and how he planned to say it. Even the similarity cited fails to convince me that King’s message was at all the same.

What kind of authority did MLK claim for himself? Was his invocation of religious language identical to that of his contemporaries or of ours? How did he see the role of religious discourse in a society presumed to be more secular in the '60s (at least outside of the South) than ours is today? Did King resort to demagogy and mystification in making his political points?

These are the questions that no one has posed, as they lie outside the boundaries of the visceral thoughtlessness and ideological superficiality that saturate every corner of the popular media.

Furthermore, is it valid to classify MLK under the rubric of a socially recognized ideological movement known as "black liberation theology", formulated by McCone and others in the '60s and after? King’s engagement with theology should by all means be studied so that his precise commitments can be ascertained, but the liberation theology of the black power movement strikes me as fulfilling a purpose not envisioned by King. Black liberation theology does not merely exploit religious metaphors, it squanders much mental energy in the construction of a racial metaphysics, which I can’t see as being useful to King. Black people are like the children of Israel, but then who isn’t? King was aggressively militant and became ever more so after the initial aims of the Southern civil rights movement were attained, but while solidly rooted in his Southern black heritage, he remained a universalist to the end. That is a principal reason he is not with us today. He was not the first militant black preacher and he won’t be the last, but few are of King's caliber.

Now, here are a few essays on MLK’s relation to black theology:

“Martin Luther King, Jr., Black Theology—Black Church” by James H. Cone, Theology Today, Vol. 40, No. 4, January 1984

“The Word That Moves: The Preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Richard Lischer, Theology Today, Vol. 46, No.2, July 1989

“Preamble to A Critique of James Cone” by Stephen C. Rose, OpEdNews.com, April 2, 2008

“Is Reverend Wright a Black Liberationist?” by Clare L. Spark, History News Network, April 7, 2008

Cone, an architect of black power theology, argues that King belongs to the tradition as he construes it, Cone does raise an interesting point about a putative difference between King's pitch to black and to white audiences, but otherwise I find his argument unconvincing.

Lischer downplays the influence of the thinkers King studied in seminary and argues for the primacy of the oral tradition rooted in black culture. Lischer nonetheless admits that King balked at fundamentalism and expanded on the traditional repertoire of black preaching. King’s amalgam of different influences was pitched to all of his audiences, not neatly segregated into black and white, but a different mood can be detected in his relationship to black and white audiences. In the wake of the landmark civil rights victories, as a rift grew between political strategies and the possibility of a transracial political consensus, King’s synthesis of diverse elements was strained to the breaking point. King’s preaching becomes more visibly “blacker” in the last phase of his life. Lischer, however, does not extrapolate the implications of this logic beyond a celebration of King as black America’s prophet. However “black” King’s discourse, it seems to me from this description that King did not aim at constructing a metaphysical doctrine for black people, but that he combined improvisation tailored to circumstance (a practice, incidentally, much explored in the work of Zora Neale Hurston) with ideas borrowed from the world beyond the segregated culture in which King was reared.

Suppose King’s ideology died so that Cone’s could live. Is that a good thing? If we are all the products of historically delimited circumstances, what are we to say for ourselves when we run up against our historical limitations? Cone outlived King physically, but suppose he failed to elevate himself ideologically? Whose path is then a dead end?

Rose claims contact with both MLK and Malcolm X, claims that both moved beyond race, and argues that Cone’s theology, which purports to synthesize both, is entirely misguided. As a theologian himself, he should know that much.

Spark’s underlying agenda as well as several particulars of her exposition are questionable, but let’s focus on the relevant points: Spark distinguishes the universalist claims of MLK from the particularist world view of cultural nationalists and the irrationalist basis of Cone’s ideology in particular (i.e. the rejection of logical reasoning and accountability).

Can any theology withstand the test of critical thought? There is another permutation in the domain of black liberation theology—that of religious humanism, most notably exemplified in the work of William R. Jones (featured in two blog entries here). Religious humanists work within a theological framework though they dissent from established theism and theological traditions. It’s an odd enterprise but useful as far as exploring the logical possibilities and implications of various doctrines goes. A black religious humanist more recently on the scene is Anthony Pinn, author of Why Lord? and other books.

Now that Jeremiah Wright in the flesh has the media spotlight, I shall continue to explore these issues in a follow-up entry.

Jeremiah Wright, MLK, black theology & Obama (1)

I could not be more indifferent, nay, even contemptuous, of the Obama-Wright “scandal” as a political football. Since John Edwards dropped out of the race, this campaign cycle has been devoid of content, reduced to the manipulation of the voting public on the basis of personalities and superficial symbolic issues. We are guinea pigs in a high-stakes experiment in electoral market research. The union of electoral politics and the advertising industry is hardly a novel subject for research, but the accelerated irrationality of American politics on the threshold of the final breakdown of American democracy is cause for even more alarm.

For those of you inclined towards social theory, here’s one reference that crosses this issue with the work of the Frankfurt School on the culture industry:

Adorno, Theodor W. "Opinion Research and Publicness (Meinungsforschung und Offentlichkeit)", translated with an introduction by Andrew J. Perrin & Lars Jarkko, Sociological Theory, vol. 23, no. 1, March 2005, pp. 116-123.

For a recent diagnosis of the American disorder, see:

Sargis, John. “The American Celebration of Democracy,” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, vol. 4, no. 2, April 2008.

Let us remember that prior to Super-Tuesday, focus groups, assembled by “experts” (most notably campaign consultant Frank Luntz, a Republican) in analyzing the minutiae of audience response to the slightest political gestures, showed a highly favorable attitude toward Hillary Clinton, including the response of black voters charmed by her rhetoric on race. Obama’s television commercials for Super-Tuesday constituted the most brilliant manipulation of political visual imagery I've seen since Leni Riefenstal. But look how the symbolic fortunes of both candidates have seesawed in only two months. The black electorate dropped Clinton like a hot potato and she and her supporters were forced to pander shamelessly to white racist sensibilities in order to stay in the race, irreparably damaging the Clintons’ reputation in Black America, a disenchantment long overdue.

This is not to downplay the fundamental fraudulence of Obama’s campaign, his obviously superior basic decency and progressive past notwithstanding. I am a firm practitioner of the depressing principle of the lesser-of-two-evils, so nothing I say here I think matters in the slightest in choosing a candidate. However, what seems to matter to a nation of brainless couch potatoes is another story, yet the underlying ideological structure of even that is a tabooed subject for public discourse. Both the detractors and defenders of Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright have missed the boat.

There is, of course, a fair amount of cynicism about Wright and Obama not predicated on white America’s exaggerated outrage.

“Obama Is No King” by Christopher Hitchens, SLATE, Monday, April 7, 2008
(Today, the national civil rights pulpit is largely occupied by second-rate shakedown artists.)

On April 7 Lenni Brenner (BrennerL21@aol.com) circulated a hilarious put-down entitled “Obama's Constitution, His Pastor, & His Unbelieving Mom In Heaven”. It is not yet posted among his online essays, but hopefully it will be added before too long.

Brenner’s point of departure is this article:

“Obama Suggests Jesus Christ Not the Only Way to Heaven” by Jennifer Riley, Christian Post Reporter, March 27, 2008.

The dominance of faith-based electoral politics is a bottomless swamp. The real questions cannot be posed, because both Obama's supporters and detractors have a vested interest in avoiding them—more fundamentally they do not even understand them. Obama is a middle class progressive community activist turned mainstream politician on the make in a neoliberal, i.e. anti-working-class, Democratic Party. The nature of this transformation is the fundamental question. While people fuss over his choice of a pastor, they can't and won't ask the more interesting question as to why the biracial offspring of a white atheist mother found Jesus and joined an Afrocentric church—let alone any Christian church, its political orientation notwithstanding. The sincerity of middle class progressive activism and this particular transformation may be impossible to determine sans telepathic access to personal motivation, yet there is enough to be disgusted by without impugning Obama’s personal or political motives. Perhaps, though, Obama as progressive community activist in the bosom of an Afrocentric Jesus is not so different from Obama as Democratic presidential candidate bending over backwards to placate white people in his effort to gain the top position in the management of the neoliberal political order.

Chris Hedges & left theocrats today

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Chris Hedges, New York: The Free Press, 2006.
Reviewed by Gregory Zucker
Logos 7.1 - winter 2008
http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_7.1/zucker.htm

Note some telling statements from this review:

"While providing a few insights and interesting anecdotes, he never moves beyond description into the realm of solid analysis."

"Each chapter begins with a tone-setting quote from a political thinker on the appeal of fascism or else from a theologian espousing the Christian beliefs that Hedges argues represent the true essence of Christianity in contrast to its widespread right-wing perversion."

"Hedges’ treatment would have benefited greatly by bringing in Marx, Durkheim, Weber, or Freud, to name only a few preceding analysts of this sort of angst or anomie. These thinker understood that modernity decimates religion’s capacity to explain or ‘enchant’ the world. At the same time, modernity increases religion’s appeal as a shield should society fail to shield people from harmful repercussions. Unrestrained capitalism, social fragmentation, and bureaucratization are only a few of modernity’s products that, in the absence of social forces buffering their effects, might drive people back into the eager arms of the priest, rabbi, or mullah."

"Rather than undertake a critique of religion, Hedges compares the religious right to non-religious movements."

"Ironically, Hedges does argue for upholding the Enlightenment values that engendered modernity, but is unclear exactly what aspects of the Enlightenment need to be upheld. The religious right’s success is due in no small way to the fact that it embraced two legacies of the Enlightenment: capitalism and liberalism. It aligned itself with capital and used liberal language to defend the right of its flock to doctrinaire belief. What it vehemently opposes is the Enlightenment’s ethical vision and devotion, if that’s the word, to reason. These legacies are problematic for Hedges too since part of his program for confronting the religious right is a renewal of progressive Christianity. The rub is that the Enlightenment, and the modernity it helped usher in, poses a challenge to faith in general, not just to one specific politicized manifestation of it."

"Hedges is not only a journalist, but a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. So perhaps the book might offer an immanent critique of the movement. There is an argument to be made that modernity and faith can be reconciled, that is, if Hedges had given progressive theologians like Niebuhr more attention. But Hedges doesn’t bother to expose internal contradictions in evangelical arguments. Instead, he tells readers to accept that “God is inscrutable, mysterious and unknowable.” (p. 8) Recommended is the Christianity that Hedges’ says informed his father, a progressive pastor, in support of the Civil Rights Movement, homosexuals, and opposition to the Vietnam War. "

"Hedges is correct to fear the threat that the movement poses to democracy. But, sharing anecdotes and describing a few features of the movement does little to help. The real task is to provide viable solutions for confronting the movement, which Hedges fails to do. This cannot be done without more studies that explain why this socio-historical moment has produced a successful Christian fundamentalism and requires a multi-leveled analysis that engages the history, sociology, politics, and ideology of the movement. Of course, the most difficult part is providing reasons for why these faithful should embrace a progressive political alternative instead."

This is a rather polite critique of Hedges' faulty perspective. I attended here in DC Hedges' book talk on American Fascists. He conspicuously omitted any mention of secular humanists and atheists as part of an anti-fascist coalition. He's making the rounds again with his new book I Don't Believe in Atheists, basically a defamatory assault on the "new atheists" such as Dawkins, Hitchens, etc., labelling them "fundamentalists" as others are now doing.

Here's a slightly edited piece I wrote on his crowd in the wee hours this morning:

In re:
"God's Politics?" by Katha Pollitt
http://www.somareview.com/godspolitics.cfm

The religious leftists of today are quite different from their forbears: today's crop consists of frightened, opportunistic theocrats exploiting the collapse of liberalism and radicalism and attempting to capitalize on the hegemony of theocratic discourse instead of contenting themselves with adding a religious voice to a secular conversation as happened in yesteryear. I will have more to say about other such ideological charlatans as Chris Hedges. It is important to understand the distinction I've made as we approach the 40th anniversary of the heartbreaking assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, a man of quite a different caliber than the characters prancing around today.

Pollitt points out the lapses in Wallis' argument. It is also important to note the authoritarianism of Wallis' politics. There is, for example, a difference between MLK who injected religious metaphors and imagery into secular arguments in the public sphere and today's religious left who arrogate to themselves the right to order us around based on their version of scriptural authority, telling us what God commands, and predicating public policy and governmental action on a theological basis.

I should add that as obnoxious as devotees of other religions are, such as the Jewish liberal blowhard Michael Lerner, minorities are not majorities. Many Jews retain the psychology of a persecuted minority, while these Christian "progressive" ideologues embody all the arrogance of a majority assuming the right to cow everyone else. But all these m-f's deserve to be put in their place.