What's Right with Jeremiah Wright?

The media's attention and responses to the podcast clips from sermons of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor Emeritus of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago were predictable.  Harsh rhetoric makes high ratings. 

On the one hand they did not present either of the two sermons in their entirety.   On the other hand they didn't show Clinton's or McCain's pastors with clips from their sermons, or attribute the views of their pastors to the candidates themselves wholesale. Is anyone looking for sexist, patriarchal, or racist language in their sermons?  Or, does the media not think we should know who and what is nurturing the claimed Christian commitments of all the candidates?  Without such an exposé, the attack on Dr. Wright is clearly an attempt at discrediting one candidate.

To understand Dr. Wright's rhetoric and the reactions to it one has to explore the ways in which the white and black churches came into existence in this country. For the most part the white church in this country has roots in debating whether Black people even had souls and justifying the conquest of the Americas based on the Israelite Conquest of Canaan. The art work presents a view of God as an old white man and Jesus as European.

The Black church grew out of the horrors of slavery and looked to God as a deliverer from the perversions of that institution and later racialist social systems.  While the world has changed somewhat, as exemplified by the viable candidacy of Senator Obama, the effects of slavery continue to influence our society and our views of the function of religion in our daily lives.  Thus, one should not be surprised there are different traditions of preaching and seeing the work of God in the life of the nation. 

The current turmoil regarding Dr. Wright's sermons reminds me of the reactions to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1967 sermon against the Vietnam War delivered at Riverside Church in New York.  In that sermon he charged the U.S. with crimes against the Vietnamese people and challenged the military industrial complex and the economic destruction of this nation due to that war.  King saw the interrelationship between racist actions in the U.S. and in Vietnam and connected the dots.  He did this in the finest tradition of Black preaching.  King was castigated for speaking about issues other than civil rights and for criticizing the nation and government.  We should not be surprised that more than 40 years later people still decry the marked difference in the ways in which many Black clergy approach the tasks of theologically calling the nation to judgment.   

I often wonder if those who criticize these homiletical strategies of calling the nation to judgment do not read the 8th to 7th C. BCE prophets, such as Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.  They delivered judgment speeches against the nations of Israel and Judah and their rulers because of the ways in which they oppressed the poor, perverted justice, and ignored the moral and ethical imperatives of the religion.

Similarly, Jesus pronounced judgment on the religious and political leaders of Judea.  He called them a brood of vipers. He even went into the temple and turned over the money changers' table where Roman taxes were collected. Thus, a part of the Christian religious tradition is proclaiming that a nation which oppresses the poor will be destroyed by God. It is in this vein that Dr. Wright proclaimed the oppression of others by this nation would bring divine wrath on the nation. "How dare he!" say commentators. He dares, because such is one of the messages of the Bible. One may disagree with the Bible on such a portrayal of God, but one cannot claim it is not a biblical portrayal.

By the same token, one of the major connections Black Christians make to Jesus is his being born to a single mother in a manger, interpreted as a sign of poverty. God comes to earth as one caught in poverty and shame and thereby identifies with us in our wretched condition here in the United States. Dr. Wright uses this social location as a preaching device to explore the lives of public officials. Such appropriation of the biblical narrative is expected and understood by those in the resistance tradition of the Black religious experience. 

So what is the problem?  Republican Ron Paul makes the claim that US foreign policy in the so-called Middle East led to the attacks in this country. No one has been asked to denounce him and his pronouncements. Some even voted for him. Is the difference in response to him and Dr. Wright predicated on their social locations?  Dr. Wright compared the social locations and backgrounds of the Democratic contenders. One was born into privilege. The other comes from a background of disadvantage. Both of them have similarly discussed their backgrounds.

So what is the problem?  Is it that Dr. Wright spoke of situations which happened to many Black people in 2007 which should be an embarrassment to the country?  Is the charge of divisiveness leveled against Dr. Wright because he reminds us that racism and White Supremacy are alive and well in this society and God doesn't like it?  Is the problem that he socially located and named by race, class, and gender the people who control the economics and political institutions of this society?  Is his problem that his naming may be right? 

As noted above, we need to know what the rest of the sermons say.  Does Dr. Wright go from charging the nation with sin to suggesting ways it can turn around and do right? Does he speak to Jesus' coming from the "wrong side of the tracks" helping Jesus to address the problems of Judea by giving hope and peace based in justice?  We don't know, because those parts of the sermons were not shared.  One would have to ask whether the answers to these questions in the affirmative would change the viewers' opinions of the sermons and rhetoric. I wonder. But, before one decides, one should know.