All People, All Others

We’re about 150 years past the time when politicians or preachers could say that the U.S. is the New Israel and claim Godly sanction for either its progress or its sinfulness. Prophecy has gone global. If Wright is going to speak like his namesake, the only Israel he can speak to is the New Israel of the faithful. And in that context, speaking hard words of prophecy to a comfortable but sinful nation means not seeing black skin at all. The hard words would be to say that Barack Obama is neither black nor white—in fact, as a factual matter, he’s half black, half white—and that the Christian is neither black nor white, and that the oppression that Christ hated was not the oppression of the white against the black but the oppression of all men toward all others, the ineradicable hatred in our hearts for those who need our help. That’s what He comes to change. That’s the only kind of politics we should be getting behind.

[via The Wittenburg Door]