Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Sermons

This is a more extensive analysis of Wright's sermons than one gets in the sound bytes characteristic of much mainstream media. However, some of his views about AIDS and HIV really seem to be conspiracy theorists dreams or nightmares. However, this article at least makes such views understable within the social context of Wright's sermons.

Chicago Tribune - March 28, 2008
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Wright's sermons fueled by complex mix of culture, religion

By Manya A. Brachear Tribune reporter

On the Sunday in 2003 when Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. shouted "God damn
America" from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ, he
defined damnation as God's way of holding humanity accountable for
its actions.

Rattling off a litany of injustices imposed on minorities throughout
the nation's history, Wright argued that God cannot be expected to
bless America as the anthem requests unless it changes for the
better. Until that day, he said, God will hold the nation accountable.

And that's when Wright uttered the three infamous words that have
rocked Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Not long after a Democratic front-runner emerged from the pews of
Wright's church, the pastor's long-winded oratory found itself at
odds with the sound-bite culture that feeds the 24-hour news cycle
and YouTube. Thirty-second snippets of 30-minute sermons led pundits
to question how Obama could remain a member of Wright's flock.

Examining the full content of Wright's sermons and delivery style
yields a far more complex message, though it's one that some will
still find objectionable. For more than 30 years every Sunday, Wright
walked churchgoers along a winding road from rage to reconciliation,
employing a style that validated both. "He's voicing a reality that
those people experience six days a week," said Rev. Dwight Hopkins, a
professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Trinity
member. "In that sense, he's saying they're not insane. That helps
them to function the other six days of the week."

Appearances canceled

Wright preached his last sermon at his "unashamedly black,
unapologetically Christian" church in February but does not
officially retire until May 31. Wright had been scheduled this week
to speak publicly for the first time since debate over his remarks
erupted this month, but those stops in Florida and Texas were
canceled because of security concerns. Efforts to interview him for
this story were unsuccessful.

Obama has denounced Wright's most provocative remarks, but in a
speech on race last week he defended Wright as a person and refused
to disown him as his pastor.

Wright's preaching, which mixes theology with the often-troubled
history of race relations in America, is in the "prophetic"
tradition, one of many that have evolved in black pulpits.

Shocking words like "God damn America" lie at the core of prophetic
preaching, said Rev. Bernard Richardson, dean of the chapel at Howard
University. "The prophets in Scripture . . . their language wasn't
pleasing to hear, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that," he
said.

Some pastors and scholars criticize Wright for not moving beyond the
struggles of the civil rights era. Others say his messages are too
divisive and political. Some say he just goes too far.

Wright "goes beyond the bounds. That's why it's so hard to translate
and why excerpts don't do well," said Rev. Martin Marty, a retired
professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. "In today's
world, where you can debate these things instead of blast away like
the prophets did, it's sort of an alien language for most people."

But while the rhetoric may come across as harsh, experts say its goal
is to convince bitter skeptics that reconciliation is indeed possible.

"The anger comes from compassion," Richardson said. "It can feel
hard. It can sound hard. It's cutting. It cuts to make you whole and
bruises to heal you."

Wright's sermons closely follow the prophetic formula. Taking a
biblical text, he analyzes the history and language, highlights the
personal pain likely shared by people in the pews, calls out similar
injustices in today's society and emphasizes that God always
provides. His delivery is often provocative, sometimes even raunchy.

But the most provocative passages often don't convey the entire point.

For example, on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, Wright preached for the first time in three decades on the
"brutally honest" last verses of Psalm 137, which he said "spotlight
the insanity of the cycle of violence."

The sound bite taken from the sermon is something Wright on that day
termed a "faith footnote," in which he used the phrase "chickens are
coming home to roost" to sum up what U.S. diplomat Edward Peck had
said in a TV interview. Malcolm X expressed the same sentiment after
the John F. Kennedy assassination. But critique of foreign policy was
not Wright's central topic.

In January, shortly after former President Bill Clinton referred to
Obama's campaign as a fairy tale, Wright told his flock: "Bill did
us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."

Beyond that racy dig, however, the sermon seeks to admonish members
who may vote for Hillary Clinton because they think a black candidate
can't win. Wright likened their doubt to the doubt of Jesus'
disciples who did not believe he could feed a crowd with five loaves
and two fishes.Wright's recent comment that Hillary Clinton would
never know what it feels like to be called the N-word also touched
nerves. But Wright had his reasons for using that term, said Rev.
Frederick Haynes III, a Wright protege.

'From a different time'

"People need to understand how profoundly painful that word is," he
said. "It speaks to an experience. He came from a different time.
Because of the time he came from, he's not going to just flippantly
go along to get along in terms of how that word has hurt him in the
past."

Wright's fans describe his wrath as a "righteous anger." But critics
say it can cloud the Gospel message he is trying to preach. Rev.
Winfred Neely, associate professor of pastoral studies at Moody Bible
Institute, said that while churches should offer social critique,
Wright's presentation is too ethnocentric.

"I don't think some of the critiques were offered in love for
people," Neely said. "I think they were born of his own personal
anger . . . and not necessarily a critique coming out of a
heartbroken pain over the fact that God is being dishonored by what
is going on in society and culture."

Marty said he thinks Wright crosses a line when he equates American
power with white power. He also believes that both Wright's praise of
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Wright's stated belief
that HIV and AIDS were created to destroy the black community damage
his credibility.

But Wallace Best, professor of religion and African-American studies
at Princeton University, said that conspiracy theory is largely a
product of Wright's generation, which recalls experiments in which
black men with syphilis went untreated in the name of science.

"If put in context of the tragic history of what it means to be black
in this country, to think that a government would inflict a virus on
black people is not as far-reaching an idea as we've been led to
believe," Best said.

As for Wright's friendship with Farrakhan, Richardson said that might
be a fair litmus test for a politician seeking popular support but
not for a pastor.

Best, who teaches a course on preaching in America, questions the
sudden disdain for Wright's sermons, which are part of a tradition
around for two centuries.

"It's not like people should be surprised that they peer into a
church on the South Side of Chicago and the minister there who has
the obligation to uplift his people would be speaking in such a way,"
he said.

Last week, Best assigned his students a 1852 speech by Frederick
Douglass on the meaning of July 4 for African-Americans.

"I had my students read that and imagine that Jeremiah Wright could
be saying the same things," Best said. " 'There is not a nation on
earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the
people in the United States.' Put that on YouTube and spin it around."

___________________________________

Obama's "Multiracial Coalition" and the politics of "Racial Reconciliation".

This is from blackagendareport. This is an analysis of Obama that you will find nowhere in mainstream press reports. This type of analysis is not likely to deter black voters from voting for Obama, the other choice is even less appealing if anything. However, being associated with Wright might sabotage Obama's successful so far building of a multi-racial coalition. If Obama does win it could also cost him the presidency against McCain.

Obama's "Multiracial Coalition" and the Politics of "Racial Reconciliation"
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
“We took this country (from Native Americans) by terror...”

“We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We nuked far more than the numbers killed in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye...”

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and the black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas has been brought back to our own front yards? America's chickens are coming home to roost...”

These and similar statements by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, the long time pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ are not even particularly controversial in the Black community. They are, as the University of Chicago's Michael Dawson affirms well within the mainstream of Black opinion, and can be heard on street corners, barber shops, churches and around dinner tables all the time. The fact is, most African Americans agree with Rev. Wright.

But the common and ordinary wisdom of Black America is inadmissible in mainstream US discourse. In the reality-defying bubble of US corporate media, one must never speak of the genocide and dispossession of Native Americans as “terror”. Comparing the atomic bombings of hundreds of thousands of civilians in World War 2, the snuffing out of two million Vietnamese lives in the sixties and seventies or one million plus Iraqis and counting in the current war is, in mainstream media, strictly off-limits. And any suggestion that US imperial policies in the Middle East, Africa or elsewhere might provoke justified resistance or understandable retaliation is deemed beyond-the-pale anti-American hate speech.

The foundation of Barack Obama's electoral strategy is reliance upon a base of voters in black America motivated by a nationalistic desire to see one of their own in the White House, no matter what his beliefs. Thus the black vote, ordinarily the most dependably left wing bloc in the US can be safely and permanently taken for granted, leaving Obama free to move rightward, doing and saying whatever it takes to win white votes and corporate favor. Barack Obama is therefore the establishment's dream black candidate, almost entirely free of obligation to African Americans and our historic agenda, but getting our votes anyway.

Accordingly, to preserve his standing among white and Republican voters who imagine him as the “post-racial” candidate, Obama has for the past week sought to distance himself from his pastor of twenty years. In speeches and interviews Obama compared Rev. Wright to “that old uncle everybody has” who mumbles things we disagree with. He pronounced Wright an “angry” man, hopelessly stuck in the fifties and sixties. Obama's much ballyhooed March 18 speech went several steps further, suggesting that white American racism is a not a fundamental feature of American life, mischaracterizing his pastor's views on the Middle East, and blaming war and US imperial adventures that part of the world on “radical Islam” instead of on our insistence upon controlling their resources.

"...the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

The fact is that black America is more pro-Palestinian than any other constituency except Arab-Americans. Black America is highly suspicious of US claims to be an “honest broker” for peace in the Middle East. Obama's labeling of "radical Islam" as the transcendent national enemy, however, is perfectly in line with that of corporate media, as well as with Hillary's, McCain's and Bush's "war on terror" foreign policy framework. But it happens to be the exact opposite of where most of Black America stands.

If Barack believes, as he says, that "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" are the reasons we are at war in the Middle East, what difference is there between Obama and Hillary, between Obama and McCain or even between Obama and George Bush or the neo-cons? If Barack believes this, his promised withdrawal and “over the horizon” redeployment of "combat troops" (not of mercenaries or contractors or counterinsurgency troops or training troops or the rest of the occupation, just the "combat brigades") will be followed by another intervention somewhere else in hopes of squashing "the perverse and hateful ideology of radical Islam". Maybe Somalia, which we already bomb regularly. Maybe Afghanistan. Maybe nuclear-armed Pakistan, a target Obama has already identified.

A further proof of how liberated the black candidate Obama is from the will of black voters is his promised to increase the military budget over Bush levels, to add 90,000 more pairs of boots to the army and marines, and to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, where we support a coterie of arms and opium smugglers masquerading as a government. Increasing the military budget is lower on the priorities of African Americans than of any other constituency in the land, and takes money away from all the cherished priorities of African American communities like education, public transit, and job creation.

And of course our "stalwart ally", as Barack called Israel, in fact a murderous apartheid regime in which Arab "citizens" are forbidden from owning land in much of the country, where their marriages are not recognized by the state, where Arabs are issued different license plates so their cars can be profiled from a distance, and many other indignities. And those are Arabs with Israeli citizenship. Palestinians, the owners of the land only two generation ago, are still experiencing wholesale confiscation of their remaining land and assets, penned up into Gaza and the West Bank, humiliated, starved and murdered at will by Israeli armed forces and death squads. Obama knows these to be facts, and at earlier points in his political career would show up at Palestinian events in Chicago. But the political game he has chosen to play, and the allies he has chose to play it with require a selective memory.

And just as Ronald Reagan was seldom able to complete a paragraph on race without a reference to fictional Cadillac-driving welfare queens, Barack Obama was unable to make a speech on race without a gratuitous and pandering reference to the alleged shortcomings of black fathers. Is this what “post-racial” black candidates must do to prove they are not “stuck” in the sixties? Is this how a “multiracial coalition” is built?

"What would it have cost Barack Obama to try to educate, to lead, to lift the level of the American people by picking say, the least controversial of Wright's assertions, say that the country was taken from Native Americans “by terror” and actually defending it?"


Two decades ago he took the advice of a local pastor who suggested his work as a community organizer in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood would go better if he had a “church home”, and Obama chose Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street. In the very early 80s, long before most Americans knew Nelson Mandela's name, Trinity UCC had a “FREE SOUTH AFRICA” sign in front of its building. Meetings were held and collections were regularly taken up since at least the mid-1970s to aid liberation movements in what were then the white-ruled countries of Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Angola and South Africa. Rev. Wright was a theologian, an activist, a successful pastor and leader who built a thriving ministry that was one of the black south side's social, economic and political hubs for a generation. If you were up and coming on the south side, Trinity was one of the places to be, for many reasons.

Obama got what he could out of Trinity in the 80s,. He re-joined the church upon his return to Chicago after law school in 1992 to begin his political career. Obama admits that Wright married the him and his wife, baptized their children, and blessed their new house. But at this point in the campaign, Rev. Wright's message and ministry are as expendable as the political will of the rest of Black America has been all along. Campaign insiders have told reporters that if Rev. Wright was not retiring, Obama would have to change congregations, but since he is, that will not be necessary. In the end, Barack Obama is a grown man, a savvy and ambitious politician who will have to live with his moral and political choices. And so will we. We know what's in it for him. But what's in it for us?

What would it have cost Barack Obama to try to educate, to lead, to lift the level of the American people by picking say, the least controversial of Wright's assertions, say that the country was taken from Native Americans “by terror” and actually defending it? That would have been an historic and groundbreaking act of moral leadership. If Obama is not ready to lead now, when will he be? And where?

Obama's unconditional affirmations that America is “inherently good”, that white racism is not endemic, that “radical Islam” is the enemy, that apartheid Israel is a “stalwart ally”, and that his pastor and spiritual mentor, a man who accurately reflects the views of most of Black America is an angry, divisive old uncle stuck in the fifties and sixties --- all these may restore his credentials among whites as the candidate of “racial reconciliation”. But what is being reconciled here? Aside from the color of the president's face, what is being changed? And just what does Black America, its opinions and leading thinkers denounced, belittled and banned from the political discourse by the black candidate, no less, get out of this reconciliation, or this campaign?