<<<If one can blame vivid repeated confabulations of sniper fire on being tired, it ought to be easy to fix Rev Wright with Alzheimer's ;-)>>>
It is not going to be that easy.
Part I
America waking up to scope of black liberation theology
MICHAEL VALPY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
May 1, 2008 at 4:43 AM EDT
White Americans are making a discovery: that in a country where the black church is an antidote to the six days of the week in which race matters, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not a radical kook but a mainstream voice of righteous anger and uplifting hope.
They're also discovering that Barack Obama's former pastor is not one of a kind, that there are a lot of Jeremiah Wrights across their land, preaching in the prophetic tradition of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
And they're discovering that Mr. Wright is not only a national black celebrity, but also that he is cemented in the black-preacher tradition of applying the Christian Gospel to black experience, otherwise known as black liberation theology.
Dwight Hopkins, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School who specializes in black religious studies, said that, with the current media furor around Mr. Wright's comments on everything from AIDS to 9/11 and the rule of the United States (he has called it "the U.S. of K.K.K.A.") by rich, white people, Americans are suddenly discovering a church that has been invisible since the arrival of the first blacks to America in the 1700s.
"It's been thought of in the public realm as a place for good music, a place you can draw on for a political demonstration or people to walk the picket line if the clergy people endorse the cause. But a systematic appreciation of the black church has never been done."
In reality, Dr. Hopkins said in an interview, "there are a lot of black churches across the country where you're going to find Rev. Wrights. Many, many black churches where the preaching will have similar content."
And the message will be, as black theologian James Cone of Union Theological Seminary in New York puts it, that "in a world in which values are defined by white domination and white supremacy, in that kind of a world, God sides with those who are the victims in it.
"What you have in Jeremiah Wright is someone ... speaking to the hurt in the African-American community. The suffering."
A number of academics who specialize in studies of the black church in America have pointed out the similarities in language of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mr. Wright.
Prof. Cone noted that "when King spoke out against the war in Vietnam, he said America is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
Dr. Hopkins said: "Strip away the formal presentation, black preaching is a ritual of performance, and once [Rev. Wright] lays out his facts, I don't think a lot of African Americans would be put off by what he says" regardless of class or educational levels. "He is a national black pastoral leader, one of the top 100 preachers in the country."
Mr. Wright was pastor of Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago for 36 years until his recent retirement. It is the church that Mr. Obama, candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, has attended for 20 years. Mr. Wright officiated at the Illinois senator's wedding and baptized his children.
Mr. Obama has now denounced the 66-year-old cleric for, among other things, invoking God's damnation of the United States for its militarism and legacy of racism, declaring the war on terror to be based on lies, claiming that 9/11 was the result of U.S. foreign policy and suggesting that the U.S. government might have unleashed the AIDS virus to attack the black community.
And while many media commentators have suggested Mr. Obama's campaign for the Democratic nomination could be hurt by his one-time close association with Mr. Wright, at least one scholar, Peter Paris, professor emeritus of Christian social ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary, has worried that the senator's condemnation of Mr. Wright could hurt him in some black churches.
"Jeremiah Wright is seen as a major prophetic voice in the black community, and there are many people who adore him."
Part II.
Tuesday, Apr. 29, 2008
How Jeremiah Wright Found Religion
By Steven Gray/Chicago
A few weeks ago, after his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, first drew headlines for his fiery sermons, Barack Obama responded with a graceful speech on race in America. But Rev. Wright has decided he isn't about to shut up and launched a series of provocative remarks over the weekend and on Monday. On Tuesday afternoon, Obama denounced Wright, saying "His comments were not only divisive... but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate." The candidate added, "Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this." Whether that is enough to quell the controversy is one thing. But it also continues to raise the question about the preacher at the center of the controversy: What exactly does he believe?
Wright, 66, vented on a lot of subjects at his National Press Club appearance in Washington on Monday. But the venting during his question-and-answer session overshadowed an important point: his attempt to articulate the so-called black liberation theology to which Trinity and scores of other mainstream black churches adhere — and to which he owed his fame and reputation.
Wright's journey to black liberation theology lay through civil rights turmoil and debates about racial identity. He grew up in Philadelphia, the son and grandson of preachers. He enrolled at Virginia Union University, a historically black college in Richmond, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In the South, for the first time he saw Christians "who professed faith in Jesus Christ and who believed in segregation, and saw nothing wrong with lynching, saw nothing wrong with Negroes staying in their place," he told Bill Moyers in a PBS interview last week. That experience moved him to leave college for a six-year military tour — first with the Marines, then the Navy. Eventually, he arrived at the University of Chicago's Divinity School.
There he was introduced to black liberation theology, which in the late 1960s was emerging as a more rigorous, if not radical, reevaluation of the role of African Americans in the country's history, with the church as confessional, refuge and bully pulpit. Much of it was a reaction to the Black Power Movement and the Nation of Islam, which questioned the compatibility of blackness with Christianity. "Blacks coming out of the '60s were no longer ashamed of being black people, nor did they have to apologize for being Christian. Because many persons in the African-American community were teasing us, Christians, of being a white man's religion," Wright told Moyers.
In 1972, Wright became head of Trinity, a church on a hardscrabble strip of Chicago's South Side with barely 90 members. The church adopted the slogan "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." A light-brown-skinned man with an Afro, Wright regularly wore dashikis, and laced his Sunday sermons with a level of political rhetoric that over the years has often proved too political for some African Americans. Nevertheless, Trinity's congregation grew to some 8,000 (Oprah Winfrey and the rapper Common have attended services there). Wright's prominence in Chicago soon gained him national attention and won him entry into the White House during the Clinton Administration. Trinity became the largest congregation in the United Church, an overwhelmingly white Protestant denomination. Still, says Dwight N. Hopkins, professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School, and an authority on black liberation theology, "Mainstream Americans have no idea of what the black church is." And, says Hopkins, who is also a Trinity member, "There are just certain people who are looking for an excuse to attack the black church, or black clergy who are prophetic."
Wright retired from his weekly preaching duties in March. Almost simultaneously, the controversy began. Since then his life has been threatened, as has his church. The media barrage was so intense that some reporters apparently called a hospice in an attempt to speak to a dying Trinity member. And so Wright made up his mind to talk. When he got to the NPC, he had a receptive congregation waiting for him. Many of the people "Amen-ing" were attendees at a two-day conference for black theologians and not journalists, who were largely stuck in the balcony. "I know it's hard being quiet when you're attacked," says Vernon G. Smith, chairman of Indiana's legislative black caucus, who says he's known Wright for nearly two decades. Smith, who is concerned about Wright's effect on the May 6 Indiana primary, says he'd hoped Wright would "bear it, and wait," before publicly venting his frustration. But, says Smith, "for anybody who's built a church or institution to try to help the ghettos of the inner cities of America and then have that legacy potentially lost, it's got to be painful."
Part III.
Friend who used to attend Jeremiah Wright's church stands up for pastor
12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Hearing criticism of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been hard for Denise Johnson Stovall of Dallas.
She grew up on the South Side of Chicago, where the controversial preacher was her pastor and family friend. Her family lived four blocks from Trinity United Church of Christ, where Dr. Wright became pastor in 1972. He is now retiring."I've been telling everyone that folk need to know the Jeremiah Wright we know," she said.
Mrs. Stovall attended the service at Friendship-West Baptist Church during which Dr. Wright spoke Sunday. His protégé the Rev. Frederick Haynes III is the church's pastor.
Critics have roundly criticized Dr. Wright for what they say were un-American remarks made in earlier sermons. Supporters say he was simply preaching black liberation theology – a style that strives to help black people by pointing out injustices and holding government accountable.
Dr. Wright's remarks became publicly significant because Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been a member of Trinity for 20 years. Critics say Mr. Obama should have left the church long ago because Dr. Wright's views are inappropriate.
"It's sad that so many people are feeling the brunt of this issue because of things he [Dr. Wright] feels called to do," Mrs. Stovall said.
She gave many examples of how Dr. Wright helped her family and how the church served the community.
She and her husband, the Rev. L. Charles Stovall, were in Chicago in January 2007 for the funeral of her grandmother, Helen Haygood, a longtime Trinity member. The Stovalls attended church that Sunday, unaware that Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, would be there.
"Cars were everywhere," she said. "Then we learned what all the excitement was about. He had just announced his candidacy."
When clips of some of Dr. Wright's earlier controversial sermons surfaced, Mrs. Stovall was saddened that the public misunderstood her former pastor, she said.
"Reverend Wright said some things that were upsetting, yes," she said. "Not all ministers say things that you like."
She said some preachers provoke anger to motivate people to make positive changes. She and her relatives are watching the presidential campaign with particular interest. Regardless of who wins, she said, it will remain unique in history, and an unexpected anecdote in their family annals. |
