LGBTQ+ advocates will meet on Friday at Union Theological Seminary in New York City to “engage” in an “historic conversation to advocate for change within the Black Church for the Black Queer Community.” In an article I penned yesterday for The New American, I explained how the progressive Left wants to infiltrate the Evangelical Christian community in the United States to advance their left-wing world view. This event at Union Theological Seminary is yet another attempt, this time to manipulate black Christians into what is essentially a Marxist cause.
The one-day symposium, entitled “The State of the Black Church: Reconciling Communities and Reimagining Inclusion,” is supposedly an “historic conversation to advocate for change,” but the “conversation” is limited to those who are in favor of getting black Christians to “affirm” the deviancy of the LGBTQ+ community. When progressives call for a “conversation,” what they really mean is “shut up and listen to what we have to say.”
In partnership with Union Theological Seminary’s Center for Community Engagement & Social Justice (CCESJ), a group calling itself “Pride in the Pews” will gather black “faith-leaders, churchgoers, activists, and academics to enumerate effective tools, strategies, and frameworks to bridge the gapping gap [sic] between the Black Church and LGBTQ+ Community.”
In literature promoting the event, it is lamented that “out of the eight historically Black Christian denominations, none (ZERO) of them are LGBTQ+ affirming.” The event will include topics such as legislation, movement-building, congressional relations, and advocacy.
Speakers will include Karmen Michael Smith, an author who is today releasing his new book, entitled Holy Queer: The Coming Out of Christ. Smith is a self-identified “Black queer Theologian [and] cultural critic” who is known as a progressive leader in the black queer faith-based community. The Marxist content of this book is trumpeted by Gary Dorrien, author of The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel, who wrote of Smith’s book, “Holy Queer is beautiful, haunting, disruptive, prophetic, and healing — a luminous memoir of Black Queer Christian faith steeped in the liberation theology of James Cone….” The late James Cone argued that black Christians in North America should not follow the “white Church,” on the grounds that it was a willing part of the system that had oppressed black people. In response to critiques by black women, Cone gave more attention to feminist perspectives, and developed a “womanist theology” with a Marxist analysis. One might recall that Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of President Barack Obama, was a devotee of Cone as well as of black liberation theology, which Wright explained was simply a branch of “liberation theology,” a Marxist concept. The title of Obama’s 2006 memoir, The Audacity of Hope, was inspired by one of Wright’s sermons.
In an interview with Interfaith America, Don Abram, the founder of “Pride in the Pews,” explained his interest in LGBTQ+:
I saw intersections between our struggle (as a black person) and believed that the same forces that sought to oppress and silence them, were also doing the same to Black folks. And so, I began to become really interested in preaching a gospel focused on those who are on the underside of power. Because ultimately, that’s how I saw the ministry of Jesus.
Other speakers at tomorrow’s event are of much the same mindset, espousing Marxist views and left-wing causes. For example, Naomi Washington-Leapheart is on the board of SIECUS (the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), arguing for sex education to achieve social change.
Kelly Brown Douglas is a self-described “womanist” theologian and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. In her book Sexuality in the Black Church, she addresses what she calls “homophobia” in black churches. While on the staff of the Washington National Cathedral in 2015, she was part of a “task force” that was responsible for removing two stained-glass windows, one of which honored Confederate General Robert E. Lee and another that honored (in their words) “Andrew ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.” Of course, Andrew Jackson and Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were two unrelated individuals, and the task force was most likely confused.
Another speaker, Jacqui Lewis, is a self-described activist for gun control and “economic justice.” Economic justice, of course, is an oft-used Marxist euphemism for socialism.
Really, that is what this is all about — Marxism. “Liberation theology” is an effort by Marxists to co-opt churches — black, white, whatever — into supporting socialism and communism. The “social gospel” of the early 20th century was an effort to use Christian churches to promote socialist causes, and it largely succeeded in sapping mainstream churches of any effectiveness in spreading the biblical gospel, defined by the Apostle Paul as the power of God for salvation. In a social-gospel church, preaching on individual salvation is rarely mentioned, and often not at all, giving way to political advocacy of the leftist variety instead.
Many think of Marxism as simply about economics, but Karl Marx and his fellow communists were really interested in the total remaking of society itself, asserting in Marxist critical theory that society is divided into the oppressed and their oppressors. Branches of critical theory include critical legal theory and, of course, critical race theory (CRT). Marxists either use and exacerbate existing divisions in society, or, if necessary, create them — not so much to solve the problems, but to advance their Marxist goals.
LGBTQ+ and similar movements are an attack upon the institution of the family and the Christian worldview, both of which Marx denounced, even comparing religious beliefs to a drug. Standing in their way are evangelical Christians and those eight black Christian denominations that still take the Bible more seriously than they do The Communist Manifesto or the rantings of James Cone.
