The kinds of angry, alienated, conspiratorial, paranoid and racist statements that Rev. Jeremiah Wright, recently retired pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, made in the Youtube.com compilation about life in America are commonplace among the long-term unemployed, minority men who feel little stake in this society.
To the middle-class American mind, such statements are completely unacceptable. Wright is on the record as stating that America is too racist to elect Barack Obama, though he has expressed the hope that he might be wrong. Indeed, Obama's whole campaign is designed to prove Wright's jaded older generation wrong -- it is based on the premise that white America will judge him on his merits.
Andrew Sullivan posts full video and text of Wright's sermon after 9/11, its full context, and offers his own analysis, disagreeing with Wright but characterizing the sermon as "Biblical pacifist (who is) self-critical." To anyone who wishes to understand the context, it's well worth a read.
One of America's leading theologians, Martin Marty, says that Dr. Wright is misunderstood. He tells Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times that despite Wright's sometimes reckless speaking style and outrageous statements, he is not hostile toward white people.
"The big thing for Wright is hope,” said Marty, one of America’s foremost theologians, who has known the Rev. Wright for 35 years and attended many of his services. “You hear ‘hope, hope, hope.’ Lots of ordinary people are there, and they’re there not to blast the whites. They’re there to get hope.”
Professor Marty said that as a white person, he sticks out in the largely black congregation but is always greeted with warmth and hospitality. “It’s not anti-white,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who’s white who walks out of there not feeling affirmed.”
For his part, Obama has disassociated himself strongly from Wright's inflammatory remarks. He says that cherry-picking a few inflammatory remarks over the course of a 40-year career does not provide much insight into the life or philosophy of Dr. Wright. Wright “has preached for 30 years,” Barack Obama says. “I don’t think this (the inflammatory video clips) is a well-rounded portrait of him.” Even so, Obama was concerned enough about Wright's "rough" rhetoric that he disinvited him from giving the invocation at his presidential announcement speech in February, 2007.
See these profiles of Wright in the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, and The New York Times:
In “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama described his teary-eyed reaction to the minister’s words. “Inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones,” Mr. Obama wrote. “Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story.”
Here's the full text of Wright's sermon, "The Audacity to Hope," which so inspired Obama.
Obama's Minister Committed "Treason" but When my Father Said the Same Thing He Was a Republican Hero by Frank Schaeffer
Why Do White People Think Wright Is Scarier Than Hagee?
Wright's character and Trinity UCC unfairly attacked, his church says in statement. Excerpt:
Trinity United Church of Christ’s ministry is inclusive and global. The following ministries have been developed under Dr. Wright’s ministerial tutelage for social justice: assisted living facilities for senior citizens, day care for children, pastoral care and counseling, health care, ministries for persons living with HIV/AIDS, hospice training, prison ministry, scholarships for thousands of students to attend historically black colleges, youth ministries, tutorial and computer programs, a church library, domestic violence programs and scholarships and fellowships for women and men attending seminary.
Associated Press: Wright's defenders said the statements that have been playing this week are taken out of context, and he is not anti-white.
The United Church of Christ, the denomination of the Chicago church, is overwhelmingly white. And Wright is an equal-opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their educations and work ethic.
"I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: Everyone who's your color ain't your kind," Richard Sewell, a church member, said last year.
Regarding the phrase "God damn America" in one of Wright's sermons, from a comment on the blog Suburban Guerrilla: "Anyone who has even a passing knowledge of the Old Testament prophets should find the phrase “God damn, America” in a critique from the pulpit of American racism, no more unsettling than the phrase “woe unto you O Israel” in a passage of Jeremiah."
Obama explained his philosophical differences with Dr. Wright this way:
“Reverend Wright is a child of the 60s, and he often expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism and the struggles the African-American community has gone through,” Mr. Obama said. “He analyzes public events in the context of race. I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality.”
To truly examine Wright's philosophy, peruse one of the books he authored:
- What Makes You So Strong? Sermons of Joy and Strength (1993),
- Africans Who Shaped Our Faith (1995),
- Good News!: Sermons of Hope for Today's Families (1995), and
- What Can Happen When We Pray: A Dilly Devotional (2002).
Jane Fisler Hoffman explains her relationship with Obama's church:
Rev. Otis Moss, currently the senior pastor (succeeding Rev. Wright, who has retired):
Check out Faith.BarackObama.com for more on Senator Obama's faith and the different faith communities supporting him.
Andrew Sullivan: "Everything we know about Obama's racial politics and rhetorical style - and we know a lot about both - reveals the enormous gulf between him and Wright. This notion that somehow Obama harbors some ambivalence about his own country is not borne out by any facts or any record. The total record of Obama shows a very shrewd but compassionate and engaged rejection of identity politics, not a celebration of its most paranoid and bigoted emanations."
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Smear Campaign Against Obama and His Church
Related:
- Have you ever had a bigoted friend, relative or mentor? What Obama should say about his pastor (Rabbi Marc Gellman in Newsweek.)
- Trying Times for Trinity: What's It Really Like on the Inside? Lisa Miller in Newsweek
- Bill Kristol, Newsmax bungle key facts about Obama's attendance at Wright's sermon
- Criticism of Obama's Pastor Seen As Attempt to Silence Voice of Black Church (Washington Post)
- Photo of Rev. Wright with President Clinton at the White House, 1998.
