Good for NPR to publish the right story to help white people understand more than just the context of the days following 9/11 and The Rev. Wright's congregation. As I posted before, he was in line with a tradition to which a lot, if not most, white Christian America has not been exposed:
Black liberation preaching can be a loud, passionate, physical affair. Linda Thomas, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, says the whole point of it is to challenge the powerful and to raise questions for society to think about. Thomas says if white people are surprised by the rhetoric, it's because most have never visited a black church.
"I think that many black people would know what white worship is like," Thomas says. "Why is it that white people don't know what black worship is about? And I think that is because there is this centrality with white culture that says we don't have to know about that."
I also commend the book The Heart of Black Preaching by Cleo LaRue, and of course you cannot delve into this kind of liberation theology without having read God of the Oppressed by James Cone.
Finally there are roots in the narrative form of the jeremiad here and in black preaching. In this case it is in the reverse where those who prosper are the ones who will receive retribution. For classic examples that reveal Rev. Wright's participation in this tradition, read David Walker's Appeal and Frederick Douglass' The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro (HT to Professor Kim for the links).
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