From Rod Dreher in response to my suggestion that Obama doesn't need a big speech addressing Jeremiah Wright:
Whether it's fair to Obama or not, I think that's whistling past the graveyard. David Broder was correct this morning when he said on Meet the Press that many people may legitimately be left wondering why Obama chose to associate, and keep associating with, a pastor who preaches the sort of crazy stuff Jeremiah Wright does, when he could have chosen any number of churches and pastors in South Chicago when he was starting out.
The great problem in this whole mess over Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama is the lack of distinction between the political and the spiritual. Or, more precisely, the wanton political manipulation of the spiritual by all parties.
There are those (this isn't addressed to Rod) who are pushing this issue because they see in it potential for Obama's destruction - in Rev. Wright they see a Rev. Willie Horton who can scare whites to the polls by exposing very scary black preachers.
The prospect of this is exactly why Christians need to be standing up for the religious liberty of men like Jeremiah Wright... why it is isn't acceptable to be saying "Whether it's fair to Obama or not, I think...."
There is a spiritual dialogue this country desperately needs right now. One between the center city black church and the suburban evangelical church and a dialogue between the left and right wherever they find themselves.
For the reality is that Rev. Wright's words are far more than choice clips that have been circulating around the world these past days. His words over the past decades address the despair and hopelessness that too many people in the center city feel. They feel disenfranchised and left behind. They live lives as second class citizens. And sometimes that gets expressed in anger - stunner.
No matter how easy Rev. Wright has made it with his ridiculous words, we need to resist the temptation to throw out in depth debates issues of economic, racial, and social justice. In fact, in this holy week, we need them to begin again.
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I vaguely remembered that certain of the OT prophets had a few nasty things to say about some unpleasant national realities in then modern Israel. But then I remembered that we're in a different dispensation now so Pastor Wright should be judged by law and not grace.
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Smurph: I am a member of TUCC; unlike Barack, I WAS in church when Pastor Wright made the "G-d America" remark; and your description above was EXACTLY my response, and I suspect the response of most of the rest of the congregation. Perhaps the video clip that is making the rounds has filtered out the background noise, but there was shocked silence, punctuated by a few gasps and "oooooh" (as in the "I'm telling Mama what you did" kind of 'oooh'), following this declaration. I've been a devoted member for years now, but there's a reason they call it 'preaching to the choir'. Pastor was known for many things, most of them good, but temperance was not one of them. I remember at the time I sighed, said to myself, "ok. whatever", and joined the legal ministry months later, where I found myself in court helping a handicapped man fight off being evicted from his apartment. Very few African-Americans are rah-rah effusively patriotic; we love this country like many others would love a dysfunctional family, for obvious reasons. On the one hand, there is no country I would rather be a citizen of; but on the other hand, don't ask me to tear up at the National Anthem for a country that elected GWB. TWICE.
krs1, I'm glad you posted. From the couple of fuller excerpts I've seen - Andrew Sullivan posted the sermon that used the phrase Audacity to Hope - it was already pretty clear that pundits were making too much of soundbites. The YouTube focused on on young woman standing up, seeming in approval of the comments, but I couldn't tell what the reaction of the majority of the congregation was.
I'm an Irish Catholic from the suburbs, but I have -- by coincidence, when I was going through a miserable time at a particular job, the friends who helped me get through it, who I could trust as colleagues and as human beings -- were all African American: three colleagues at work, and the spouses of two of them. One, the single guy, kind of felt like it was his mission to explain the Black experience to his white friends - not that that was all he talked about, by any means. He said about what you said concerning African-American patriotism. We are US Marines. There was no doubt about my friend's dedication to duty and to his fellow Marines; but to him it was more for himself and his family, than for the USA.
Another - I went to her wedding, met her Mom and two of her sisters, and learned, to my shock (not surprise, exactly, because I wasn't ignorant - but never closed the circuit in a personal way) that at the same time I was reading in a second grade primer about Martin Luther King, Jr, and walking away with the impression that King was a Great American of the Past, and that Civil Rights was a done deal (I was born in 1969!); my friend and her sisters, all close to my own age, did not have a swimming pool to go to in their town in Mississippi, because the white population preferred closing the pool to integrating it. The third friend and his wife, also about the same age, said that their experiences of whites and integration, growing up in SC, were much more positive.
I don't really have a conclusion to make - just that these particular friends, and my sister-in-law have taught me a lot. I hope that Obama's candidacy will help the country, as a whole, come to better mutual understanding. If he is elected - I hope it will shatter a glass ceiling. I mean, I am grateful to live in the times I do, because 30 years earlier, I might not have had the opportunity to have those friends. Neither of my parents would have been likely to marry an African American; but my brother did. I think my niece and nephew will grow up in world with no doubt that they can be president if that's where talent and elbow grease take them. But they are 7 and 4. There's things to do in the meantime.
I agree with David that we're missing the bigger issues of justice, racism and poverty. I don't here much about "do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God," especially from conservatives, blogs or otherwise. We're really into this political season, and it's easier to talk the talk then to walk the walk. Ironically, the more time I spend reading blogs -- and sometimes responding -- the less time and energy I'll have to consider the aforementioned issues. But they are part of the core of Christian faith, I believe.
krs1:
The country only elected GWB once, of course, and some people still think there was funny business in Ohio in 2004 ...
Seriously, thank you for sharing. For myself, I thought the speech was brilliant.
Rod Dreher wanted "Checkers"? That so blew away "Checkers" it's not even funny ...
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