I’ve wrestled for a couple of weeks with the idea of posting my thoughts to the already murky and confusing waters of the Obama/Wright controversy. While I feel like I may lend something meaningful to the topic as a minister and as an open advocate of Obama’s campaign, I have hesitated up to this point because the room is already quite crowded, and it feels like very little of the noise therein has much substance. I tend to err on the side of believing this brand of “gotcha” politics, while a handy helper to the 24-hour news cycle, has very little to offer an electorate that wants to know how a candidate will govern for the next 4-8 years in office. So why add more fuel to the fire, right?
What made the conversation exponentially more interesting to me, and what led me to realize that there is something worth talking about here, was the media blitz conducted by Rev. Wright and the ensuing public renouncement by Obama of his longtime pastor. I was one of those people who applauded Senator Obama for taking the high road in Philadelphia when, during a speech that reflected on the first vitriolic sound bytes that emerged from Wright’s sermons on the internet, he expressed a dual commitment to his pastor and to the American people. When Obama finally said “enough,” last week, formally severing ties to his now former pastor, it revealed a principled position that I believe also tipped us off to Obama’s true religious convictions. I’ll get to that momentarily, but first I’d like to take a moment to suggest that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water when dealing with Jeremiah Wright, either.
Wright, who cut his teeth on the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, comes from a world that most people of privilege (those of us who have time to blog or sit on tv panels) can never understand, either because we were on the front of the proverbial bus or we have reaped the benefits of social change in the past 40+ years. As such, he understands in fact what many have only entertained in theory: that the cards really have been stacked against people of color, that tremendous injustice has been visited upon African Americans throughout our history, and that powerful people have resisted movements toward equality and peace. In addition to his historical context, Wright is also a black preacher. Whether it’s politically correct to say so or not, there are vast cultural differences between United Church of Christ in Chicago and Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington. Wright uses rhetoric like a blunt instrument to hammer home ideas of societal justice and peacemaking that resonates with people who have experienced the lack thereof. And even though he probably stepped over the line by espousing conspiracy theories (like the US Government’s role in the spread of AIDS), we can’t conveniently label him a wild-eyed hate monger and send him out of the room. We have to resist the temptation to do so, because the troubling voice he brings to the public sphere is a prophetic reminder that we have not yet arrived at the promised land that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached about so many years ago. After all, most if not all of us have bought into and even advanced equally destructive and debased theories about others at one time or another (those who once forwarded e-mails depicting Obama as a terrorist need not raise your hands). I was listening to a forum discussion about the controversy recently on NPR, and a young female stood up to express her concern over the double-standard: Caucasian people get away with destructive rhetoric about people who are “other” all the time (see David Duke as exhibit “a”), and people kind of shake their heads and say, “how sad, he’s so behind the times.” But nothing seems to strike fear into the American psyche more deftly than when the speaker is black and appears to have some momentum. What if Obama really did know that his pastor thought that America was guilty of terrible sins and thus worthy of damnation? Is that so different than what is expressed in millions of pulpits across the nation every Sunday morning? The idea that our government is corrupt should come as no surprise to anybody, regardless of what church you do (or don’t) attend.
This brings me to my first formal complaint, which can emerge as an asset if Obama proves to be as level-headed and clear-minded as I believe him to be. I had earnestly hoped that Obama would remain steadfast in his decision to reject Wright’s ideologies and yet continue to embrace him as his friend and pastor. Instead, when Obama rejected his pastor, he lost the opportunity to accept whatever terrible truths about our national sins lay within Wright’s jagged little pill. In his press conference denouncing Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama bent a knee to American Civil Religion: “My country, right or wrong.” Such a religion can’t tolerate the ugly voice of dissent, the one that reminds us of our moral duplicity and demands us to courageously remember our responsibility to the disenfranchised. Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled with this Civil Religion when he spoke up against the Vietnam War, and congressional leaders politely asked him to get back to race issues where he belongs. Obama, in seeking the most powerful position in America, essentially told his pastor in no uncertain terms that he believes in the America of ideals more than he believes in Wright’s polemic. The problem, of course, is that both exist at the same time. America is a 200+ year-old idea that is yet to be realized, much less perfected. This is Obama’s America. This nation has also secured and protected its wealth on the back of unfair labor practices, beginning with the Atlantic slave trade and continuing on through the exploitation of developing nations and the threat of aggression by the world’s most well-funded military in history. This is Wright’s America. And with every day’s new beginning, everyday people try to navigate the tension between those two extremes. My political hope remains in Obama’s candidacy, because I think he’s enough of a realist to know what the challenge is, and he’s also enough of an optimist to instill within the most hardened cynic a belief that we really can move forward as a nation into a more just and equitable future.
Tags: Obama, Jeremiah Wright, race, politics, America, hope, fear
