Dr. Dwight N. Hopkins: Race, Religion and the Presidential Election

Last night I attended a lecture by Dr. Dwight Hopkins at Franklin and Marshall College entitled "Race, Religion, and the Presidential Election." Dr. Hopkins is a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School (http://divinity.uchicago.edu/faculty/hopkins.shtml) and an ordained Baptist minister. His books include Introducing Black Theology of Liberation, Being Human: Race, Culture and Religion, Heart and Head: Black Theology-Past, Present, and Future, Down, Up, and Over: Slave Religion and Black Theology, just to name a few.

Dr. Hopkins presentation was an excellent overview and contextualization of the controversy over Barack Obama's relationship to Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for 20 years. I spoke to Dr. Hopkins after the lecture and said that I hoped he had opportunity to present this lecture to many audiences to provide a deeper context for the skewed and distorted media portrayal of Rev. Wright, Trinity UCC, and Black theology (See my article on Obama, Wright, and Racism in America: http://peace.mennolink.org/cgi-bin/m.pl?a=475).

In his lecture Dr. Hopkins began with the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright that erupted during Obama's presidential campaign. When the controversy broke through the news Dr. Hopkins, who is a member at Trinity UCC, was barraged by the media wanting to know about the black church, black theology, Trinity UCC, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He spent a considerable amount of time explaining and defending each against the distortions created by the media sound bites.

Methodically Dr. Hopkins explained to the audience of young F & M students, and a sprinkling of us older persons, the historical emergence of black theology during the 60's as a Christian response to the Black Power movement. Dr. Jame Cone was at the forefront of this movement with the 1969 publication of his book Black Theology and Black Power. I first came across Black theology in the early 80's in my exploration of a variety of liberation theologies. Dr. Hopkins proposes that Black liberation theology is not a radical, militant alternative for understanding and responding to the black experience in America, but can be found in the black slave narratives and the contemporary black church. Black theology grows out of the the Bible and particularly the socio-political ministry of Jesus Christ.

It was helpful to hear Dr. Hopkins present the differences between Obama and Wright. Wright was the descendant of slaves, generations of black preachers, was involved in the Civil Rights struggle, and personally experienced segregation. There is more "prophetic anger" in his addresing white racism. Dr. Hopkins spoke of Obama as being white, black, and multicultural. Obama grew up post-Civil Rights era in multicultural Hawaii, was raised by a white mother and grandparents, and had a father whose heart was in Kenya. I identify more with Wright's "prophetic" style and his approach to white racism than I do with Obama's. I've wondered whether or not it was a "stylistic" or generational thing. So, after the lecture I asked Dr. Hopkins about whether the different approaches of Obama and Wright toward white racism was an issue of their social or generational contexts or both. He sees Obama and Wright's differing approaches as being shaped by their historical, social, racial, familial, and generational backgrounds.

Dr. Hopkins also gave a more indepth look at Trinity UCC in Chicago. It was a small dying congregation that intentionally decided stay in heart of the city and to be shaped by an "Afrocentric" agenda, even before they called Rev. Jeremiah Wright to be their pastor in 1972. This is the church that Barack and Michelle attended for 20 years. One wonders whether they could have remained members of Trinity if there had not been the distorted media presentation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity UCC.

This lecture provided the context that most white Americans did not know or understand about the black church, black liberation theology, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his personal, generational, and vocational differences from Obama, and their connection at Trinity UCC. Or possibly did not want to know. An open understanding of these contextual issues might still serve as healing balm for the wounds inflicted upon Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Trinity UCC, the black church, and even the Obamas.

Rick Warren, Obama, church and state

Yesterday morning I heard on NPR that Obama has chosen Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration on January 20, 2009. Warren is not a moderate, although he might like to appear to be such. He is definitely a religious and political conservative and theologically a fundamentalist. Warren and I came out of the same fundamentalist Southern Baptist roots. We attended California Baptist College in Riverside together in the early 70's. I had close friends who attended Saddleback Church when it was first forming and they had to set up chairs in a school every Sunday for services. I looked on in interest as Warren built a megachurch from the ground up.

Warren has accomplished much since then and should be commended as a popular communicator, evidenced by the amazing popularly of The Purpose Driven Life. He also has become more open to social issues in the manner of many "new Evangelicals." Warren has been involved in the issues of AIDS and poverty. And yet, he has called Christians who promote a "social gospel" Marxists. His basic theological bent does not seem to have changed significantly since his Cal Baptist days. He has even been described as a "friendlier version of James Dobson."

The GLBT community is particularly concerned about Obama's choice of Warren. He was a strong promoter of proposition 8 in California. In spite of how he has been portrayed, his position on gays and lesbians is similar to Obama and many people in the U.S., although Obama opposed a consitutional amendment banning gay mariage. Warren says he is okay with equal rights for gays and lesbians, but opposes same-sex marriage (Isn't marriage a right?). At the same time, he has claimed that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors and has compared gay marriage to incest, child abuse, and polygamy. No wonder the GLBT is enfuriated about Obama's choice to showcase Warren, even if it is an appeasement of conservative evangelicals.

Then, one must remember that Obama also chose James Lowery, civil rights leader and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to be a part of his inauguration ceremony. Although this may not "balance things out" for many people, it does seem to indicate that with both Warren and Lowery at his inauguraion Obama is actually trying to build the wider coalition that was part of his campaign, even including those with whom he doesn't agree.

Although I may have concerns about giving another public platform for fundamentalism, I guess I have another concern that has not been brought to light. As an Anabaptist I am now part of a historic church tradition that has long been critical of the church and state shmoozing with one another. During the 16th century Radical Reformation such alliances fostered the persecution and execution of "pacifist" Anabaptists. So, Anabaptists have kept a critical distance between themselves and the state, even though in more recent years Anabaptist groups have engaged in public and political action and others have bought into the conservative, Evangelical agenda.

My concern for Warren's platform at the Obama inauguration has more to do with the dangers inherent in getting too warm and cozy with politicians and the state, such as was the case with another preacher from Warren's ecclesial tradition, Billy Graham, pastor to the presidents. Graham had a close relationship with Richard Nixon. He supported Nixon's policies on the Vietnam War. In April 1989 a memo from twenty years earlier emerged that was drafted from Graham to Nixon after a visit to missionaries in Vietnam. He advocated to Nixon a policy of stepping up the war. This was a dangerous "church and state" relationship.

So, my cautions about Warren and the Obama inauguration have to do with the potential of another uncritical relationship developing between the church and state and the legitimization of conservative political policies. We have seen the damage that has been done with coalitions of conservative and fundamentalist Christians and politicians and what they have done to the name of Christianity. In my opinion, there is probably much more of a need for Obama to distance himself from Warren than from his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Hope

I am more hopeful today for our nation than I have been in the past 8 years. Barack Obama was elected president of the United States last night! I have more hope because the reign of the Bush administration is coming to an end. These past 8 years have been a nightmare for progressive thinkers and peace activists, for our nation and the world. I have more hope because Obama represents something different from pre-emptive warmaking based on falsehoods, if-you're-not-with-us-your-against-us-axis-of-evil confrontational foreign policy, saber rattling toward Iran, alienation of our allies and the world from the U.S., Patriot Acts and domestic surveillance, curtailing of civil rights, trickle-down economics favoring the wealthy, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib violation of human rights, justification of torture, and an economic crisis! With any change in direction from all that, I am more hopeful.

I am more hopeful because we elected our first African-American president, which is without precedent. I am not so naive to believe that racism is now dead in our society or that Obama will not have to encounter the ugly face of racism while in office. But, I couldn't help but be more hopeful when I watched on TV the many tearful, proud, and beaming faces of African-Americans, Euro-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians in the U.S. and around the world, as it was announced that Obama would ascend to the highest office in the land, inspite of the obvious racism that was injected into the election. My hope is not so much in what I kept hearing about how African-Americans can aspire to be something greater than they could ever have imagined, though that can be amazingly inspirational. My hope is that race can become more a part of our national dialogue and that inequities caused by trickle-down economics and structural injustices, which inequiably impact people of color, might be addressed more directly.

I am hopeful because Obama, whose parents were of an interracial marriage, raised without wealth by his grandparents after his mother's death, a Chicago community organizer and first time young senator, a self-identified "black man" became president of the United States.

That's why I like Shepherd Fairey's widely recognized poster of Obama with the word "Hope" underneath. It represents the hope of rising from obscurity to a place of pride and recognition for your gifts. Fairey, himself, rose up from being a skateboarder and guerilla street artist to instigating his worldwide "Andre the Giant has a Posse" sticker campaign to owning a printing company with clients like Pepsi, Hasbro, and Netscape and now for creating the most recognized visual image of the Barack Obama campaign (see Shepherd Fairey's work at: http://obeygiant.com/).

As we anticipate the next 4 years of an Obama presidency I am more hopeful, with a strong dose of realism, that we can visualize a future with the word "Hope" underneath.