Talk about a guy with an inflated opinion of himself!

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright says criticism surrounding his fiery sermons is an attack on the black church.

Barack Obama's longtime pastor says he hopes the controversy will have a positive outcome and spark an honest dialogue about race in America. Wright says black church traditions are still "invisible" to many Americans, as they have been throughout the country's history.

Excuse me, but I’d like to take issue with the contention that criticism of Wright constitutes an attack on the African-American religious tradition.

Unless, of course, the African-American religious tradition is built upon lies and hatred.

Like claims that the government invented AIDS to wipe out black people (he implicitly reaffirmed his support for that patently false theory today) and supplied drugs to the ghetto as a means of keeping the black man down.

Like such deep contempt for one’s country that shouts of “God Damn America” are mainstream and claims that America and the Klan are one and the same.

Wright claims to be quoted out of context, and from only one or two sermons. Yet Trinity UCC took down all links to his sermons, and quit selling all of them through their bookstore, as soon as these “out of context” excerpts became controversial. Why? What more is there to hide? Why not make them more widely available. To prove the “attacks” are scurrilous in nature?

And then there is the association with “black liberation theology” (a topic I was introduced to 15-20 years ago during my seminary days), a controversial school of thought that goes beyond merely interpreting the Christian faith from a black perspective and instead teaches something else. Today Wright embraced both the theology and its originator in their entirety.

But what does that theological construct teach? That whites are intrinsically racist and evil and that “whiteness” must be rejected and destroyed. It is, indeed, a separatist creed every bit as much as the racist ideology of Christian Identity – and as such needs to be equally rejected by Christians who accept Paul’s declaration in Galatians 3:28.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (NKJV)

Now Jeremiah Wright is perfectly welcome to claim to be a Christian while rejecting the clear voice of Scripture by embracing Black Liberation Theology – but those of us who cling to the Bible and our faith are also entitled to critique the theological construct that he preaches from his pulpit. After all, Wright does not have a corner on what it means to be a Christian, nor does he have the exclusive franchise on calling for repentance and returning to fidelity to Christ.

To the degree that our doing so means repeating over and over again that there are elements of Black Liberation Theology that are fundamentally at odds with Scripture, then we must say that and that its purveyors are false teachers who tickle the ears of their hearers with false doctrine – and if saying it constitutes, as Wright claims, an attack on the black church, then such an attack is our duty as Christians. But the reality is that Wright, Cone, and other Black Liberation theologians are not the black church -- and that today's claim by Wright is nothing more than the playing of the race card by one more hate-mongering race-baiter of the Jackson-Sharpton-Farrakhan school orf racial division..