As Audacious as Hope

If you have read essays on this site in recent weeks, you knew about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his outrageous belief system well before it finally entered the mainstream consciousness. When Senator Obama announced a major speech in which he would address his relationship with his pastor, you may have wondered, "How will he explain it?"

The approach he took was as audacious as hope. He gently steered us away from concerns about a potential U.S. President coming from a fellowship which embraces black separatism (or something close to it), intense anti-Americanism, or a world view of extreme, even Marxist liberalism. Instead, he insisted, it was all about race. He told us, in effect, Pastor Wright may sound like an embittered bigot, but you can't blame him because he's old and he's black.

He described his pastor's remarks as most Americans would.

We've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike. . . . The remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

From there he asked the big questions.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?

It is a telling example of political spin and manipulation that the senator continually refers to Jeremiah Wright as "my former pastor." That's not true. Wright's last sermon was in February, but his resignation isn't official until May, meaning he's still the pastor of Obama's home church. Yes, that's picky, and I wouldn't mention it except that the Senator and his spokesmen say it constantly. They're clearly trying to confine the whole mess to an undefined past, making it seem less important than it is.

Also, they're spinning hard to make it seem like the problem is only with Wright (and, oh by the way, he's retired). But the problem is deeper than that. Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago is indelibly stamped with the ideas and values of Jeremiah Wright. My old boss, Harald Bredesen, said of pastors, "We preach what we know. We produce what we are." If you saw the Wright videos with audience shots, you saw a crowd on its feet, deliriously rejoicing in the ugly ideas being presented.

Most of the now-familiar quotes have been in the public domain for more than a year. But television likes, not only sound bites, but provocative video to go with them. When the networks learned they could buy videos of Wright's sermons from the church store, they snapped them up, then they sliced them and diced them for maximum TV impact. This put an emphasis on shocking quotes, but left out other important issues regarding Obama's church.

"Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness'"

Let's review an issue that doesn't fit well into a short video clip. Pastor Wright says the church's "theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center." From "black liberation theology" comes "the Black Value System." One provision is called, "Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness.'" This isn't obscure. According to Wright, it stands at the beginning and the center of their perspective. Here's how a church document explains it:

Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the ‘talented tenth' of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor's control. Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by: Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of ‘we' and ‘they' instead of ‘us'. So, while it is permissible to chase ‘middle-incomeness' with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method — the psychological entrapment of Black ‘middleclassness': If we avoid the snare, we will also diminish our ‘voluntary' contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright, the leadership, resourcefulness, and example of their own talented persons.

Has anyone asked Barrack Obama if he believes white Americans are conspiring to keep black Americans captive and degraded. I don't know if he believes it, but his church of twenty years does.

Dr. Cone and Malcolm X

Pastor Wright says, "The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the Sytematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone's book, Black Power and Black Theology."

Cone says, "In black theology which I developed, the blackness in that phrase comes from Malcolm X. The theology in it comes from Martin King. So I bring Martin and Malcolm together."

Malcolm X was a fascinating mixture of brilliance and rage. He came to prominence as a member of the Nation of Islam and later changed to a more mainstream version of Islam . . . which makes him a strange person to place at the center of a Christian theology. Martin Luther King championed nonviolence, an approach Malcolm publicly disavowed. Following the assassination of John Kennedy, Malcolm said it was a case of America's chickens coming home to roost. He added, "Chickens coming home to roost never made me sad. It only made me glad."

Pastor Wright used the same analogy to explain what had happened in New York and Washington. "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

In 2004, the Pastor wrote about 9-11 in a church affiliated magazine, this time blaming it on "white America . . . ignoring black concerns."

In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared' as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.

"Like Family to Me"

Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church?

Obama was brave enough to ask the questions. Did he answer them? No. He finessed them, but he didn't answer them.

He read a long passage from his first book about his first time attending Trinity United Church of Christ. Then he said:

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety — the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright.

No, it doesn't explain his relationship with Reverend Wright.

On the next point, I have only my limited experience to go by, and must admit that it's far more limited than Barack Obama's. I don't believe his vision of the black church in America. I don't believe it's usually a place of wild, silly conspiracy theories or that it's seething with irrational anger. I don't see it as a place of "ignorance" or "bawdy humor."

As imperfect as he may be, he [Pastor Wright] has been like family to me.

This may make more sense to those of us from communities of faith than to others. In interviews last week Obama said the Pastor "led me to Jesus." In evangelical circles we sometimes refer to such a person as a "spiritual father" or "spiritual mother." It's only natural that Obama would be loyal to the man, and forever grateful.

But being grateful and loyal doesn't mean you subject your daughters to hate-talk.

He [Wright] contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.

Several times, he implies that his pastor's rage is endemic among African- Americans. I think this is an unfair characterization.

We do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

He went through a history of American racial sins — spoke of segregated schools, inferior education, blacks prevented from owning property, not receiving loans, exclusion from unions, police and fire departments. He said this prevented blacks from amassing wealth to bequeath to future generations, and led to the present . . .

. . .  wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities. A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families — a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods — parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement — all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

Black Americans have every right to be angry. In fact, the Senator gave us an abbreviated list. It's worse than this. The unfulfilled (and sometimes unfulfillable) promises made to this community are outrageous. From both sides of the political aisle, from Wall Street, Main Street, and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and from all races, there have been those who have sustained their wealth by exploiting the poverty of African-Americans. It has always been in such people's interest to maintain a status quo that is evil, unfair, and against the law of God and all morality known to man.

But does that excuse saying that the government has attempted genocide against African-Americans or that the government imports drugs so that young black men will take them and sell them, and be sent to prison? Lies like these make the problem worse, not better. They don't help anyone.

Satan binds, God sets free. Jesus said the devil is the father of lies. Jesus said, "I am the truth" and "the truth will make you free."

You Can't Disown Grandma

Senator Obama said of Pastor Wright:

I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street. . . .

In Grandma's defense, remember what Jesse Jackson said in 1993, "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life, than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

Barack also said he sometimes heard his grandmother utter "racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Of the three races I've spent a good deal of time around — whites, Latinos, and blacks — I have heard such things from each race many times. And each has used such stereotypes, not only against other races, but also toward his own. In private, with those they trust, people are more apt to say whatever hits their minds. They think out loud. How can he possibly equate this with the horrible things his pastor said as he read from prepared texts, in public, speaking to large crowds and television cameras, and from a place of sanctity, the pulpit of a church? The two things are not equal . . . not even close.

But even if they were equal, you don't get to choose your grandmother. That's a permanent, unchangeable position. The pastor of your church is not.

Reaction to the Speech

Chris Matthews described his excitement during Obama's Iowa victory speech, telling his audience, "I felt this thrill going up my leg."

I didn't think he could top that, but he did. He thinks this speech is "worthy of Abraham Lincoln." He called it the "best speech ever given on race in this country." Has he not heard of a little speech once given on the Washington Mall where another well-known African-American said, "I have a dream"?

I found the Obama speech shallow, factually inaccurate, and tinged with its own kind of racism and regionalism. Barack Obama is a master orator, but he read every word of this speech and, for him, read it poorly. His people gave him a lovely blue background lined with American flags. (Not the cheap patriotism he eschews in lapel pins, mind you, but big flags.) But the blue background did something weird with the video and wound up negatively affecting the appearance of his face. They gave him weird little microphones that looked great, but sounded terrible, giving us huge booming sounds (plosives) along with many of his words.

I suspect the liberal press is calling it a great speech because of its scope, the importance of the topic, and because they absolutely love this guy and start all his speeches with an expectation of greatness. Also, it affirmed many of their dearly held beliefs. Most liberals believe the Reagan Revolution was inspired by racism and that when "law-and-order" whites talk about getting criminals off the streets, they're speaking code for imprisoning as many blacks as possible. To me, that's not only wrong, it's insulting.

Also, a great speech usually accomplishes what it was written to accomplish. So far, this one hasn't. As of this writing, Obama's poll numbers are still in a dramatic fall. As of this writing, the luster of his candidacy has not returned.

The Barack Obama I see on television seems likeable and projects goodwill, but who is he really? How does he come to decisions? What are his thought processes? His association with Trinity United Church of Christ raises many questions — too many to leave unanswered when selecting the next President of the United States.

Posted: 3-21-2008
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