Obama Is Not Alone

Most of us who aren't running for president lack the ability to publicly condemn the extremist agendas espoused by clergymen like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. So it was with satisfaction that many members of America's mainline Protestant churches watched Senator Obama denounce his pastor's recent sermons and speeches this week.

Rev. Wright, a Congregationalist pastor, holds the kind of views that should, one would hope, place him on the fringes of society. But make no mistake about it: Rev. Wright's agenda makes him a bona fide part of the establishment as far as his and other mainline Protestant denominations are concerned.

Mr. Obama's falling out with Rev. Wright is proof that even the Senate's most liberal member is out of step with the extremist views endorsed by the hierarchies of his denomination, as well as the top brass in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal Churches.

This is a dirty secret of our time. Every Sunday morning across this country, members of mainline Protestant churches sit in pews and attempt to endure divisive political messages from the pulpit that are largely derived from the destructive tenets of liberation theology.

Just yesterday was Ascension Day, one of the major feasts in the Christian calendar. My Episcopal parish, Trinity Church on Wall Street, hosted, as guest preacher, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who claimed that "in the shadows of Wall Street" the indifference of "hedge fund billionaires" is to blame for the economic woes of the world. "They live above the pain of life's daily challenges," he said.

For Rev. Jackson, hard working, productive, and philanthropic businessmen aren't alone in bringing evil to the world. American foreign policy is responsible for bringing terror upon itself. "Homeland security is linked to how other nations see us," he said.

Rev. Jackson is but one example, and he seems downright temperate compared to the Reverend James Cone, a guest preacher at Trinity Church on more than one occasion during the last four months, including a headlining appearance at the parish's annual theological conference, the Trinity Institute.

Rev. Cone, the spiritual mentor of Rev. Wright, wrote in his manifesto, "A Black Theology of Liberation": "The kingdom of God is a black happening. It is black persons saying no to whitey, forming caucuses, and advancing into white confrontation."

What happened to love thy neighbor as thyself? That message is nowhere in the treatises of Rev. Cone, whose theology, which has become de rigueur in many mainline churches, boasts that "God is not color-blind in the black-white struggle, but has made an unqualified identification with blacks. This means that the movement for black liberation is the very work of God, effecting God's will among men."

Rev. Cone is also behind Rev. Wright's appreciation for the nation of Islam: "Eight years of Ronald Reagan's savage attack upon the black poor shocked the African-American community into taking another look at Malcolm X."

The Methodists appear to be more press savvy when it comes to handling their church's institutional politics of hate. This week in Fort Worth, Texas, the top legislative body of the United Methodist Church, which meets every for years, hastily tabled a petition that proposed divesting the national church's investments in the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, Inc.

What's the Methodist beef with Caterpillar? According to the petition, the company "profits from illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and contributes to the occupation by supplying Israeli Defense Forces with heavy equipment."

The Presbyterian Church USA is a prominent member of this anti-Israel gang. In fact, the Israeli divestment initiatives of its governing body are eerily similar to those of the Methodist Church's leadership, and pre-date many of the Methodist policies by at least four years.

The national office of the Presbyterian Church actively funds and staffs an organization called the Israel/Palestine Network, whose name sounds tame enough. This organization's efforts include a study last year that urged Jews around the world who defend Israeli policies instead to "get a life."

By no means all Protestant churches across America are infected with this kind of thinking, but many of them are. So it strikes me that Mr. Obama, in distancing himself from Rev. Wright, has opened up a profound topic for those who share his faith.

If mainline Protestant churches across America are to replenish their dwindling ranks, many of them will have to go through a soul-searching as difficult as the one through which Mr. Obama went, one that was precipitated by his own angry pastor.

Mr. Akasie contributes to The New York Sun.