« Texas opposition to the border wall | Home | It’s time for Bush and Congress to quit running up the government “credit card” »
Obama just lost my vote… I want to write in Reverend Jeremiah Wright
By jmb | April 29, 2008
CNN: Obama ‘outraged’ by Wright’s remarks
(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama said he is “outraged” by comments his former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, made Monday at the National Press Club and is “saddened by the spectacle.”
“I have been a member of Trinity Church since 1992. I have known Rev. Wright for almost 20 years,” he said at a news conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “The person I saw yesterday is not the person I met 20 years ago.”
Obama said he is outraged by Wright’s remarks that seemed to suggest the U.S. government might be responsible for the spread of AIDS in the black community and his equation of some American wartime efforts with terrorism. . .
I just finished reading Reverend Wright’s message (at NYTimes: Reverend Wright at the National Press Club - transcript) and I must say that, Rev. Wright is right on in my book.
The only thing I could possibly question was his belief that AIDS was intentionally created to destroy the black community. I think it is more accurate to say that the powers that be don’t give a damn about poor people, gay people, and black people, and that’s why AIDS was ignored for so long in America and is still being pretty much ignored in Africa. But I don’t think there’s proof that AIDS was intentionally created.
But with that aside, the rest of Wright’s remarks were DEAD ON THE MONEY.
Read it for yourself. I double-dog dare you too. As far as I’m concerned, if Obama is ashamed of this message, then I don’t think Obama is someone that I can vote for. In fact if I had to vote today, I would write in Jeremiah Wright.
Here’s one excerpt from the speech that I want to leave you with, which I think is particularly profound…
. . . That is my hope, as I open up this two-day symposium. And I open it as a pastor and a professor who comes from a long tradition of what I call the prophetic theology of the black church.
Now, in the 1960s, the term “liberation theology” began to gain currency with the writings and the teachings of preachers, pastors, priests, and professors from Latin America. Their theology was done from the underside.
Their viewpoint was not from the top down or from a set of teachings which undergirded imperialism. Their viewpoints, rather, were from the bottom up, the thoughts and understandings of God, the faith, religion and the Bible from those whose lives were ground, under, mangled and destroyed by the ruling classes or the oppressors.
Liberation theology started in and started from a different place. It started from the vantage point of the oppressed.
In the late 1960s, when Dr. James Cone’s powerful books burst onto the scene, the term “black liberation theology” began to be used. I do not in any way disagree with Dr. Cone, nor do I in any way diminish the inimitable and incomparable contributions that he has made and that he continues to make to the field of theology. Jim, incidentally, is a personal friend of mine.
I call our faith tradition, however, the prophetic tradition of the black church, because I take its origins back past Jim Cone, past the sermons and songs of Africans in bondage in the transatlantic slave trade. I take it back past the problem of Western ideology and notions of white supremacy.
I take and trace the theology of the black church back to the prophets in the Hebrew Bible and to its last prophet, in my tradition, the one we call Jesus of Nazareth.
The prophetic tradition of the black church has its roots in Isaiah, the 61st chapter, where God says the prophet is to preach the gospel to the poor and to set at liberty those who are held captive. Liberating the captives also liberates who are holding them captive.
It frees the captives and it frees the captors. It frees the oppressed and it frees the oppressors.
Read that last sentence again. I wish Obama had the moral courage to say Amen to Rev. Wright instead of to condemn him.
Here are two more excerpts that I thought were pretty profound…
Dr. Jones, in his book, God in the ghetto, argues quite accurately that one’s theology, how I see God, determines one’s anthropology, how I see humans, and one’s anthropology then determines one’s sociology, how I order my society.
Now, the implications from the outside are obvious. If I see God as male, if I see God as white male, if I see God as superior, as God over us and not Immanuel, which means “God with us,” if I see God as mean, vengeful, authoritarian, sexist, or misogynist, then I see humans through that lens.
. . . to quote the Bible, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap.” Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.
Topics: Democrat Party, Social Justice, Theology |
Ads by Google...
April 29th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
In many ways I agree with your respect for Wright, and with feeling disappointed in Obama. But I just watched the video of Wright’s Press Club appearance, and have to say that if you only read the transcript, you missed a lot. YouTube has numerous versions, but this one is good: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2lV8x_-Uk2c&feature=related
The Q & A was where the major “drama” arose, and that starts in part 4, here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=t0fGH86DPag&feature=related
To be generous, I think Wright is feeling hurt, and therefore defensive (as were many in the audience). The corporate punditry read ego and jealousy in his media campaign — which is ironic, even if true. I can’t see his heart, and don’t know his usual style, so don’t feel it’s right to say. But apparently this last few days schedule is being managed for Wright by a Clinton supporter. And THAT I do have a pretty strong reaction to, and it isn’t kind.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Here’s a really good take on the Obama/Wright issue:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/they-hate-him-by-tristero-wow-do-they.html
May 6th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Here’s some more discussion on the truth of Rev. Wright’s remarks…
http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12553
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.wright05may05,0,194585.story
Here’s one quote from the Sun op-ed that was particularly good IMHO…
“. . . And here is the crux of my dismay with the Jeremiah Wright situation: While many of us in middle-class churches - black and white - go on preaching words of comfort to the comfortable, words of prosperity to the prosperous, the poor and the oppressed to whom Jesus promised good news and release continue to suffer. The gospel promises that communities, even nations, will be judged not simply for wrong actions but for silence in the face of this kind of systemic injustice.
However poorly Jeremiah Wright may have chosen his words in the past, he has fulfilled the calling of a preacher: to testify to the presence of the living, redeeming God who promises good news to the poor and justice for the oppressed. I fear the same cannot be said for many of the rest of us who have been entrusted with this vocation.”
May 6th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
http://tomhoberg.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/jeremiah-wright-is-right/
http://tomhoberg.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/jeremiah-wright-is-right/
I gotta admit my own bias in this. I am a firm believer in the kind of Liberation Theology that Wright is about, that Oscar Romero was about, the kind of theology that teaches that God is on the side of the poor and oppressed, and is decidedly not on the side of the rich and powerful.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
well what a breath of fresh air you are. i was also disappointed when obama distanced himself from wright.
i understand it, in this world where the media mession is completely conrolled by corporate and right wing power. to get in office he has to dance to the right.
but what wright said resonated with me. i don’t disagree with any of it except, as you said, wondering about the AIDS thing. but in a world where the US government has intentionally allowed black men to be used as guinea pigs in radiation experiments, in the shameful Tuskeegee experiment, has supported infecting developmentally disabled kids with hepatitis, one can be forgiven for seeing the bogeyman of right wing government behind the devastation that is AIDS.
in my view, wright speaks the truth. that’s why everyone’s so outraged. we can’t bear the truth anymore. in this increasingly homogenized, dumbed down world, having the fight and the courage and the intellect and the fearlessness to speak truth to power makes him a hero to me.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
oops! media message . . . must have been thinking “media mess” . . .
May 6th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Hi Bigassbelle,
I thought you did an excellent job in your post about the Wright situation. Here it is for my readers: http://bigassbelle.blogspot.com/2008/04/bill-moyers-and-reverend-jeremiah.html
May 9th, 2008 at 2:01 am
In many ways, I agree with Pastor Wright. I have no problems with some of his comments. However the comments on how AIDS was placed into the Black Community, is very silly. The subject of Liberation Theology is simply another way of getting the congragation to move and work in our society. The biggest problem we have in our neighborhoods is a lack of organization and participation by people in their government and schools. That is why I created Empower American Communities. This PAC is designed to work with communities to get them organized into associations that will strengthen their voice in government, provide leadership in those groups, and support political candidates from those communities who believe and work for the cause of empowering their community through organizing. If we do not get our people involved in the process, they will be continually left out of the process.