The Reverend Wright Controversy: An Easter Exhortation to Christians
This is a note to all you religious folk out there, especially those who may vote Democratic in the next Presidential election:
After YouTube clips were released of irate comments from the sermons of Barack Obama’s former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, many in the liberal and progressive communities have urged Obama to divorce himself entirely from the man who officiated at his wedding and gave him communion for over twenty years - to in essence denounce the man’s existence. Many have called the Reverend a racist un-American Commie, and insinuate as much about Obama for the mere fact of his association with the clergyman. There has been so much thunder, more vitriol even than in the Reverend’s commentary of "Goddamn America" removed from its Scriptural context.
But it’s Easter! Let’s engage in some Goddamn Perspective, shall we? Millions of you who call yourselves Christians turn a blind eye and ear every Sunday while your pastors urge God to smite gay people with festering, incurable diseases. You’ve let politicians try to rewrite the founding document of our land to keep me from sharing in any benefits of being in a committed partnership, or adopting a child. The Christians of modern America, whether they’re politically liberal or conservative, employ charity as a tax deduction and the Cross as a hood ornament.
And you Christians who attack Wright and Obama by denying that race or gender or orientation is still a factor in this country - you only afford the luxury of doing this because none of those things has ever been a factor for you. Uniformly, 100 times out of 100, everyone I’ve witnessed insinuating that Barack Obama is a racist simply because he heard his pastor deliver a fiery sermon was not an African-American.
Yet a clergyman who is very much of his generation, who witnessed relatives and friends sprayed by firehoses and lynched in trees, a minister who calls the faults of America as he sees them with an eye toward actual Scripture, THIS MAN is the one who deserves your vitriol? He’s the Un-American? The Anti-Christ? I’d hasten to say that Christ himself at his angriest - ranting in the temple - would sound disturbingly similar to Reverend Wright. From a false institution of faith to a false institution of government; from a pliant and misled religious body to a body politic that ignores all but those at the top - what we face is not new, and it is not simply a failure to respect race, or class, or creed. It is the failure on our part to effect the change of attitudes necessary to shove the boulders of history away. It is a failure of literally Biblical proportions.
On this Easter amid the crumbling, massive artifice of economy and the crushing March sun, we are witnessing America inert and doubled over, beating itself to death. And you armchair critics who expect perfection from Barack Obama but allow opaqueness and outright lies from both the other candidates: you are only throwing punches at yourselves. There is no proof more positive to me of the lack of a higher being than the fact that though you may be faithful your attitudes may remain unshaken, your avarice unchecked, your political atrophy unabated, and your hatred for your poorest brothers kept foremost in your minds and hearts. Yet you still enter and exit your church doors without any lightning strike, any burning brush, or so much as a cloud on your conscience.
No, Barack Obama is not Messianic, nor is Rev. Wright. And no one honestly looks to Obama as an inhuman leader. We look to him as a human leader who reminds us of the potential for bettering ourselves. Those of you who believe yourselves progressive, and dare to call yourselves Christian while engaging in racial double standards ought to strongly and thoroughly reevaluate what you think Jesus would say about you, us, and America. I remember something about a splinter and a log, but I’ll let you finish that one.
I’d say the fucking lot of you are racists to expect restraint, genteelness, and a muzzle on black mouths that you would never in a million years demand of whites - but we liberals could never possibly be racist, could we?
After YouTube clips were released of irate comments from the sermons of Barack Obama’s former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, many in the liberal and progressive communities have urged Obama to divorce himself entirely from the man who officiated at his wedding and gave him communion for over twenty years - to in essence denounce the man’s existence. Many have called the Reverend a racist un-American Commie, and insinuate as much about Obama for the mere fact of his association with the clergyman. There has been so much thunder, more vitriol even than in the Reverend’s commentary of "Goddamn America" removed from its Scriptural context.
But it’s Easter! Let’s engage in some Goddamn Perspective, shall we? Millions of you who call yourselves Christians turn a blind eye and ear every Sunday while your pastors urge God to smite gay people with festering, incurable diseases. You’ve let politicians try to rewrite the founding document of our land to keep me from sharing in any benefits of being in a committed partnership, or adopting a child. The Christians of modern America, whether they’re politically liberal or conservative, employ charity as a tax deduction and the Cross as a hood ornament.
And you Christians who attack Wright and Obama by denying that race or gender or orientation is still a factor in this country - you only afford the luxury of doing this because none of those things has ever been a factor for you. Uniformly, 100 times out of 100, everyone I’ve witnessed insinuating that Barack Obama is a racist simply because he heard his pastor deliver a fiery sermon was not an African-American.
Yet a clergyman who is very much of his generation, who witnessed relatives and friends sprayed by firehoses and lynched in trees, a minister who calls the faults of America as he sees them with an eye toward actual Scripture, THIS MAN is the one who deserves your vitriol? He’s the Un-American? The Anti-Christ? I’d hasten to say that Christ himself at his angriest - ranting in the temple - would sound disturbingly similar to Reverend Wright. From a false institution of faith to a false institution of government; from a pliant and misled religious body to a body politic that ignores all but those at the top - what we face is not new, and it is not simply a failure to respect race, or class, or creed. It is the failure on our part to effect the change of attitudes necessary to shove the boulders of history away. It is a failure of literally Biblical proportions.
On this Easter amid the crumbling, massive artifice of economy and the crushing March sun, we are witnessing America inert and doubled over, beating itself to death. And you armchair critics who expect perfection from Barack Obama but allow opaqueness and outright lies from both the other candidates: you are only throwing punches at yourselves. There is no proof more positive to me of the lack of a higher being than the fact that though you may be faithful your attitudes may remain unshaken, your avarice unchecked, your political atrophy unabated, and your hatred for your poorest brothers kept foremost in your minds and hearts. Yet you still enter and exit your church doors without any lightning strike, any burning brush, or so much as a cloud on your conscience.
No, Barack Obama is not Messianic, nor is Rev. Wright. And no one honestly looks to Obama as an inhuman leader. We look to him as a human leader who reminds us of the potential for bettering ourselves. Those of you who believe yourselves progressive, and dare to call yourselves Christian while engaging in racial double standards ought to strongly and thoroughly reevaluate what you think Jesus would say about you, us, and America. I remember something about a splinter and a log, but I’ll let you finish that one.
I’d say the fucking lot of you are racists to expect restraint, genteelness, and a muzzle on black mouths that you would never in a million years demand of whites - but we liberals could never possibly be racist, could we?