Local clergy say pastor's devotion and deeds overlooked
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By Michael Paulson
Boston Globe Staff
March 19, 2008
Three years ago, when Massachusetts' largest Protestant denomination was looking for a highly regarded preacher to headline its annual meeting, the organizers chose one of the biggest names in their world: the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
Wright, the pastor of one of the few predominantly black congregations in the overwhelmingly white United Church of Christ, gave a rousing sermon on stewardship to about 1,200 local clergy and laypeople at Mt. Holyoke College's Abbey Chapel, and when he was finished, the crowd rose to its feet and cheered.
Now, as Wright's most prominent congregant, Barack Obama, is distancing himself from his pastor's most inflammatory remarks, leaders of the United Church of Christ, and African-American clergy of multiple denominations, say they are increasingly angry at what they view as a misinterpretation of Wright's views and an effort to use the preacher's words to damage the first African-American with a real shot at winning a presidential election.
Local clergy, many of whom say they know Wright or have seen him preach, praised him for his charismatic preaching and his devotion to Christianity, as well as for his outreach to the poor, to people infected with HIV, and to his fellow African-Americans. Like Obama, they criticized some of his language, but offered support for his work overall.
"His remarks are unsettling in isolation, but, let's be honest, some of the things he said are true," said the Rev. Martin D. McLee, the pastor of Union United Methodist Church in Boston's South End. "The US has been pretty ugly internationally under George Bush, and I don't translate and say we deserved 9/11, but he didn't say that either. Even his comments about Hillary Clinton not having felt the suffering of not getting a cab - that's not antiwhite, that's true, and anybody who is black and knows the pain of not being able to get a cab knows that's true."
Wright, who has come under scrutiny because he is Obama's longtime pastor and spiritual adviser, has become an issue in the presidential campaign because of vitriolic comments he has made describing the United States as racist, describing AIDS as a form of genocide, and suggesting that instead of singing "God Bless America" people might sing "God damn America." In a sermon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Wright said, "America's chickens are coming home to roost."
McLee, like other local black pastors interviewed yesterday, said he knows Wright, who is highly visible in the black Christian community, through preaching at conferences and on television. McLee, the most prominent local advocate for gay rights in the black church, cited Wright's support for gays and lesbians as evidence of his good work, and said, "maybe there's a comment or two he would like to have taken back, but doesn't that put him in good company?"
Obama's speech was watched by many local black clergy, who praised the candidate's decision to distance himself from some of Wright's comments, but not from the pastor himself.
"I think it was probably one of the most important speeches of a generation, and I think what he said expressed the broad feeling of America around the issue of race - it charted, in my estimation, a way forward that I haven't heard from a politician in a long time," said the Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown of Union Baptist Church in Cambridge. Brown, who knows Wright said, "He's always been known as a radical progressive, and I think people love him because he'll say things people think about but don't express publicly. The way he couched it was unfortunate, and I would never say that in my church, but what Barack did was he condemned those words but he embraced the man, Jeremiah Wright, who has always been this passionate advocate for the least, the lost, the left out in God's world."
The Rev. Gerald E. Bell, pastor of Strong Tower Church in Boston, agreed. "Jeremiah Wright is one of the giants in our community, but we all get it wrong sometimes," Bell said. "Have I preached like Jeremiah Wright? Absolutely. Take two minutes of my sermons, and you don't know what you'll get. But I was proud that Barack was able to distinguish himself from his pastor's incendiary remarks but not dismiss him totally."
The denomination to which Obama and Wright belong, the United Church of Christ, is the largest Protestant denomination in Massachusetts, with approximately 90,000 members in 411 congregations. The denomination's membership here is more than 90 percent white, with just four predominantly black congregations, including two in Boston and one each in Pittsfield and Springfield.
The president of the Massachusetts conference of the UCC, the Rev. Jim Antal, said it is a mistake to impute the opinions of a pastor to that of a parishioner in a non-hierarchical church like the UCC. The UCC, the successor to a number of Congregationalist traditions, counts the Pilgrims as among its forebears, and its congregations occupy many of the white-steepled churches that dominate New England's town greens.
The UCC is also one of the most liberal Protestant denominations: It was the first to ordain an African-American minister, in 1785, the first to ordain a woman, in 1853, and the first to ordain an openly gay minister, in 1972.
"I have heard from dozens of pastors over the past five or six days, and they just laugh out loud that people would think their parishioners agree with every word," Antal said. " It's just absurd. Obviously what's going on is guilt by association, and that's what politics is about, but that only works with an authoritarian understanding of religion, and we don't have that in mainline Protestantism."
One of the few African-American UCC ministers in Massachusetts, the Rev. Evan C. Hines, said Wright is an unusual figure in the denomination, but one who is also admired. "Jeremiah Wright is definitely an exception - there's a plaque in his church that says, 'We are unashamedly black,' and I don't think he reflects the African-American church as a whole," said Hines, pastor of the Eliot Church of Roxbury. "Some of the things he said can be unnerving and unsettling, and Jeremiah Wright is probably a lot bolder than a lot of pastors, but I doubt my parishioners agree with every single thing I preach, and I think it's unfair to hold Barack Obama accountable for Jeremiah Wright's opinions."
Another UCC minister in Massachusetts, the Rev. Wanda Harris Watkins, said Wright's preaching reflected a style in black churches. "The South Side of Chicago is no cakewalk - it's a tough place - so he speaks the language of the streets, but he also knows the academy, and has been able to mix the two together, so that the Gospel is given to the people in a way that it can uplift them," said Watkins, the former pastor of the Pakachoag Church in Auburn. "A lot of his words have been taken out of context. They have been extrapolated as sound bites." |
