Part 1 – The Reparation Agenda: Obama’s Religion of Reparations – The Pro-Reconciliation Church

By Danette Clark
Originally posted February, 2012 – Part 1 of 6

“… they should receive reparations in the form of free education, free medical, free legal and free financial aid for 50 years with no taxes levied.” — Howshua Amariel, Chicago Activist

During his Presidential campaign, it was revealed that Barack Obama, in response to a 2004 NAACP questionnaire, wrote that he feared “reparations would be an excuse for some to say, ‘We’ve paid our debt’ and then avoid the much harder work.”

Although he was essentially rejecting only one specific form of reparations — issuing checks to the descendants of slaves — many mistakenly concluded that Obama was opposed to reparations as a whole.

Three years into his presidency, with a possible second term looming, Obama needs to answer the question again. Where does he stand on reparations?

The truth is the Obama administration has worked nonstop in the last three years to implement reparations, in one form or another. Whether through free health care, education and housing, or ‘spreading the wealth’ through entitlement programs, reparations appear to be President Obama’s first order of business.

From Charles Ogletree and Rashid Khalidi to Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Phleger, Obama has always surrounded himself with people who believe white America needs to pay up. Today, the number of like-minded individuals that surround him, through White House appointments and fellowships, is staggering.

This is the first in a series of posts that will expose those working with Obama toward implementing reparations and the various avenues by which the President is preparing us for “the much harder work” that lies ahead (for whites).

After looking closer at Obama’s appointments and the foundation being laid, you can decide for yourself if his reparation agenda is about equality, repair, and making amends, or if it’s about punishing white America by destroying the capitalist system that, he believes, was built on the backs of slaves.

A Moral Obligation

The Obama administration has often used class warfare to gain political favor among minorities. Pitting race against race has likely been useful in gaining support for reparations as well, but it isn’t the only strategy being used. Where class warfare falls short, appealing to one’s sense of morality has proven to be very effective.

We’ve seen it with health care reform. Shortly after signing the bill into law, Obama called on religious leaders across the nation to promote the plan within their states, calling it a “core ethical and moral obligation.”

Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships council is riddled with religious leaders from churches and organizations that actively participate in the work of “reconciliation”. However, this form of reconciliation has nothing to do with reconciling one’s self with God. It means that whites must reconcile themselves with blacks.

Many of these churches and organizations call themselves “anti-racist/pro-reconciliation” ministries. They often use the terms “restorative justice” and “racial reconciliation”, obviously a spin on the all-too-familiar phrase “social justice”.

Of course, Christians should never forget the atrocities of slavery and should always strive to promote equal opportunity. Every church should be anti-racist and Christian and Jewish houses of worship that aren’t opposed to racism obviously aren’t operating in accordance with the Word of God. However, it’s the reconciliation part that gets sticky.

The business of an anti-racist/pro-reconciliation ministry is to use God to guilt white America into believing it’s their moral obligation, as Christians, to redress past wrongs, specifically slavery, and make amends for them. It is also believed that the Christian church, as a whole, owes reparations for slavery because the church was complicit in slaveholding.

Sharon Watkins, Disciples of Christ

Sharon Watkins, an appointee to Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships council member, is General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

According to the church’s website, Watkins is general pastor of the 700,000 member denomination and is “responsible for representing the wholeness of the church, for reconciling differences, and for helping the church retain its clarity of mission and identity.”

Disciples of Christ churches collect a special offering during church services and through its website for its Reconciliation Ministry. In addition to providing grants to organizations and colleges for the creation of anti-racist/pro-reconciliation programs, the ministry also provides resources, it claims, to tell “the truth about the practice of slavery…giving faith-based reasons for support of a formal apology for slavery, and that….might prompt the creation of a Congressional Commission for the study of reparations issues.”

Disciples of Christ claims becoming an anti-racist/pro-reconciliation ministry is a priority for the entire denomination. Yet, ironically, the church promotes racism against whites through its resources and affiliations.

For example, its website recommends a book written by Tim Wise called Color Blind. Wise is known for distorting American history and demonizing our founding fathers as racist oppressors. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he warned that an age of fascism would arise if John McCain became president.

The Franklin Circle Disciples of Christ church in Cleveland, Ohio, hosted an event in 2008 in which they invited Eddie Moore, Jr. to speak on diversity. Moore is founder of the White Privilege Conference, which hosts speakers like Tim Wise and Cornel West.

I wrote an article on the White Privilege Conference last year that will give you a glimpse into the hatred being spread against whites. Read it here.

Sharon Watkins is just one of many of the President’s appointees who are manipulating from within the church to fulfill the reparation agenda. I will talk about a few more in upcoming posts, as well as touch on Obama’s Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, the push for institutional reparations for slavery, and the attack on Israel by several of Obama’s faith-based council members.

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