Change is not Reform; Reform is not Obama; Obama is not Change!
what you want may not be what you get
The quote “Change is not reform” has repeatedly come to mind over the past year every time I see Senator B. Obama (D. Ill.) proclaiming his campaigns slogan of “Change we can believe in.” Russel Kirk wrote a biography of the son of Edmund Randolph who served in the U.S. Congress where he argued that change is not reform. (The election of 2008 show that phrase is true where the nation ask for change in particular the ridding of ear-marks and the next, differently controlled Congress failed to do so.) Whether or not Obama’s change is change we can believe we must be understood from what he believes in first. Paul Mirengoff a Powerline said: “Obama left Trinity Church for the same reason he joined it — political opportunism.” Mark Steyn describe Obama’s mixing of church and state in Pews you can lose at NR Corner:
“As one of the early trailblazers for the Rev Wright put it, greater love hath no man than to lay down his friends for his life. In among all the usual presidential ditching of inconvenient associations, I can’t think of anything to compare with Obama’s dumping of Trinity. It’s like Jimmy Carter renouncing his Baptist Church in Plains, Ga - although Carter never went so far as to title his campaign-launch promotional book after one of his preacher’s sermons. Perhaps it’s closer to Howard Dean quitting the Episcopal Church in Burlington, Vt over its objection to a proposed bike path - although even that arcane theological dispute seems more principled than Obama’s wholesale abandonment of Trinity, its congregation, and the man who married him and was entrusted with the spiritual education of his children.”
In Dr. Wright’s Talking Points at the Trinity United Church of Christ (Trinity UCC) website for 20070301 he tells us a brief history of systematized black liberation theology. He expresses that Trinity’s vision statement is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone’s book, Black Power and Black Theology. He mentions association with other liberation theology movements (such as Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.)
There are questions still to be answered by Obama. He said yesterday in the news conference after the Democratic National Committee met that his wife and and himself are looking for a similar church to replace Trinity UCC. Besides poliical expediency is it just the messengers or the message that caused the Obama to abandon their twenty year relationship with Trinity UCC? We need to know this of one of the choices for President before the election this Fall.
“systematized liberation theology that started in 1969” is the same one of which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger discussed in Preliminary Notes on Liberation Theology:
“liberation theology intends to supply a new total interpretation of the Christian reality; it explains Christianity as a praxis of liberation and sees itself as the guide to this praxis. However, since in its view all reality is political, liberation is also a political concept and the guide to liberation must he a guide to political action:
“Nothing lies outside … political commitment. Everything has a political color.” A theology that is not “practical”; i.e., not essentially political, is regarded as “idealistic” and thus as lacking in reality, or else it is condemned as a vehicle for the oppressors’ maintenance of power.” Emphasis Mine
Are we to take refuge for safety in the Obama’s justice? Do we want to spend every day politically aware? Liberation theology is modeled upon the failed social experimentation of the not-quite-forgotten Soviet Union: where everything was political.
When we know what change we need, fight to achieve it. Hear Moses’ words to raise up and to open up your hearts to lead and to guide us with courage to know the change we desire –otherwise it isn’t any reform at all.
Moses told the people,
“Take these words of mine into your heart and soul.
Bind them at your wrist as a sign,
and let them be a pendant on your forehead.
