April 29, 2008

Reverend Jeremiah Wright is the gift that keeps on giving. After his incendiary remarks about America were splashed on YouTube and cable TV, Wright went away for a while, but now he’s back, defending himself on the ultra liberal Bill Moyer’s PBS program and speaking at black church conferences in Detroit and Washington as well as the national press club yesterday. In Detroit he embraced the disgraced mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who refuses to resign after being implicated in a sex scandal with an aide and then lying about it, among other shall we say, shortcomings.

Wright preaches a black liberation theology. He invokes Jesus as a convenient tool to support that theology, but he has things reversed. Instead of conforming Jesus to black liberation theology, he should be instructing people to conform themselves to Jesus. It’s a big difference.

Wright is not alone in twisting the gospel for his own earthly ends. Political conservatives do this, too. But jesus will be the property of no one and no agenda. He belongs to the father and to those who receive him on his own terms, not theirs.

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Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.