Not terribly happy with this:
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In one sense, there is no getting past the language so doing it was his primary way of getting past it.
In a larger sense, it’s a great defeat for actually discussing race. Of all people, David Gergen gave a fairly good rundown on this last night on CNN.
That said, if the standard is to hold people accountable for ministers, this situation is exactly reverse of where it should have started. Wright is an important clergy member in Chicago and amongst black clergy nationally. Not small potatoes, but he doesn’t run multi-million dollar enterprises and lobbying organizations. John McCain’s recent endorsers in Parsley and Hagee do exactly that and are significant players in DC.
In the one case we have a pastor of a church the member attends, in the other we have two political allies who are actively campaigning for the candidate. One has to wonder if all of the Catholics in St Louis will now have to address everything the HarshBishop says–because no one on either side of the political aisle would care to do that.
In the case of Wright we have a man who says some things that are provocative, a few that I’d say are wrong in terms of interpretation and policy, but largely statements that accurately reflect the history of the United States and racism and history of supporting thugs overseas.
In the other case, two ministers who want to kill Muslims as efficiently and as soon as possible. Hagee wants a war with Iran because he thinks it will bring about the End Times. Parsley wants something similar arguing that the United States was created to destroy Islam.
In one case, Pastor Wright helped lead ministries to feed the hungry in Chicago. Hagee and Parsley do some of the same, but more importantly, Hagee worked to breed a red cow to bring about the End Times faster. I shit you not. Parsley competes with Doug Feith as the Stupidest Fucking Man on the Planet when he devised a plan to buy slaves in Sudan where Christians have been taken into slavery frequently. This makes sense for the first 10 seconds until think that through and realize Parsley was creating a market for selling Christian slaves.
Pastor Wright has several ministries to serve the poor. Hagee and Parsley preach the Prosperity Gospel that says no matter how poor you are, you should send them money to become rich and be favored by God.
Wright, sometimes naively, works for peace. He has gone on peace missions to Libya and works for international human rights. Parsley and Hagee work and pray for war.
Wright’s language on damning America can only be seen in the context of the metaphorical original sin of white racism and slavery in America. We are all born as depraved sinners and are only saved by God’s grace in Protestantism. This nation was born of the original sin of white racism. This nation is depraved and thus damned, but for God’s grace in the metaphor from which Wright speaks.
That sermon is about damnation, but also about redemption.
This was brought up nearly a year ago in talking about Wright’s message:
Black intellectuals have often insisted that white identity itself has been built on black oppression. Moss quoted James Baldwin to me, “If I’m not who you think I am then you’re not who you think you are.” When James Cone says “Jesus is a black man” or “racism is America’s original sin,” the very vehemence of white Christians’ negative reaction shows how alive these issues still are.
But the naming of sin is never the last word in black preaching. James Baldwin also wrote in a famous letter to his nephew that “you must accept [white people] and accept them with love. . . . They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand. . . . We cannot be free until they are free.”
Moss summarized the history of the black church this way: “We have always worshiped with one foot in the soil of our present pain and another foot in our future hope” (The Gospel Remix). After our interview, he offhandedly mentioned Sojourner Truth. “She was a slave, she was raped multiple times, she could’ve said ‘God can’t use me.’ But she didn’t.” The black church doesn’t just talk about the Exodus, or even describe the black church’s own Exodus. It relives the Exodus, right there on Sunday morning.
The American black church has always been an institution of liberation whether that be earthly or heavenly release. To attack a black preacher for damning America for its sins is to attack the black church in its entirety. The beauty of the black church in America is that it also believes in redemption.
Yes. Jesus said as he was hanging on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But I’d like to make another point about Wright, and I must reveal a bit more about myself to do it.
A prophet must simply speak, because it’s not the prophet whose words are spoken, but the words of God himself. I would be willing to bet that Wright himself was troubled about uttering the phrase, “God damn America,” but he may have been moved to do so by a more compelling Spirit than his own.
If anyone would be justified in the hateful sentiment of wanting America to be damned, I might be on that list. I wa s without income, as an accomplished and experienced technical Ph.D. in this country, for more than 5 of the past 6 years. But you know my sentiment, from my comment to your prior post. To seek the destruction of America would be to seek my own destruction, and I have had a taste of that personal destruction.
Shortly before the “burst” of the “tech bubble” in early 2000, I was one of ~2500 Ph.D. employed by, at the time, the largest “startup” in US history, formerly part of what was for a large part of the 20th century the largest US corporation.
I was moved to deliver a prophecy to that company. No kidding. I can’t begin to tell you how hard that was, but I did it. And yes, I lost my job, but everything I spoke came to pass, in detail. This company’s stock dropped from ~$80 to, at one point, $.40, and it is now owned by a foreign company.
Anyone who pays attention to economic news knows that we’re facing the same kind of crisis as the tech bubble burst in 2000, but likely far worse. The Spirit in me tells me that both are part of the inevitable collapse of a country that relies too much on an effective government based on greed, instead of a truly democratic government based on mutual concern, which, by the way, was the true “gospel” of which Jesus spoke.
2 Thessalonians 2 talks about a church divorced from the truth, that instead follows error and rejects truth. And it speaks, in the midst of this, of a “man of lawlessness.”
Hmmm….
Maybe it wasn’t just Jeremiah Wright speaking those words.
Salvation, in the Christian tradition, requires repentance,
and repentance requires humility, by way of confession of one’s own sin, if not otherwise as well.
In the Old Testament, God offered, “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Yeah. The black church wants liberation, except for gay folk. Obama supports equality, while talking about ‘old politics’ and ‘a new generation of leaders’, which a civilized person might consider to be more bigotry. He promises to unite the country, while his supporters spit venom at anything that moves. Now he wants to lecture me about race. At least he replaced the arrogant tone with self righteousness, which is something of an improvement. Yes I know black folk have suffered, as have my people. Try having your love life stolen from you. But I’m looking for a policy expert to reverse the damages of the Bush administration, not a moral scold.
===Yeah. The black church wants liberation, except for gay folk.
Trinity has been a leader in the black church at accepting the GLBT community and Obama himself has addressed the issue many times.