
Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama's former pastor, tells us that he is a leader in the Black Liberation Theology movement.
What exactly is Black Liberation Theology ?

The movement began in 1969, when James Cone wrote Black Theology and Black Power. He followed that work up in 1970 with another book, A Black Theology of Liberation. Here's an excerpt from the second book.
More recent academic work in the area has come from Professor Dwight Hopkins at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. His 1999 book titled, Down, Up, and Over--Slave Religion and Black Theology looks at the role of Christianity in the origins, practice, and end of American slavery, an issue that I also addressed in Letter to an Atheist.

Both of these academics are important to study for a couple of reasons:
1. They address the central relationship of Christian faith in the American black community.
2. They are thought leaders who influence Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama, and many other leaders of the black community.
I will reserve more detailed comments on my review of their works until I have read each of the three books mentioned. However, my initial reaction is that black liberation theology appears to be much more a political theory of black separatism than it is a theology of Christian faith.
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