I have to admit that the Jeremiah Wright tapes that have surfaced in recent days make me nervous, though not in the ways they seem to make so many others nervous. When I watch those tapes I see decontextualized fragments from a fiery, activist pastor who is making valid points in ways designed to be controversial and spark conversation. The following are taken from videos of several different sermons given by Wright over the past seven years, starting with the most recent:
“Hillary Clinton ain’t never been called a nigger. [...] Hillary Clinton ain’t never been told by her own people she ain’t white enough.”
***
“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon. And we never batted an eye. [...] We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards.”
***
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America?’ No, no, no, God damn America–that’s in the Bible–for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
The videos are easy to find; if you haven’t seen them check out YouTube or Google Video or whatever. Of course, these clips provoke more anxiety than the ideas they represent might provoke on their own. They provide images of an angry black man rousing a multi-ethnic crowd. They remind Americans that there is, in fact, something to fear in that anger. They remind many of us, as if we needed reminding, that there are a great many reasons to be angry with this country and that, aside from the inflammatory rhetoric and occasional lapses into paranoid conspiracy theories, much of what underlies Wright’s tirades is valid.
But of course, Wright and his peers should not be president. They are reminders of what we need to overcome in this country. And Obama should probably have removed Wright from his “spiritual advisory committee” sooner. Obama has released a statement and a response to the controversy:
(Transcript here if you’re having trouble with the video.)
If I am remembering the relevant sections from Dreams from My Father correctly, Obama spent most of his life as an agnostic and came to the church primarily as a way to build connections for his community organizing. He writes of making a conscious choice to identify as Christian and that he chose the Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago primarily because of their social activism and their diversity.
I am, of course, frustrated by the general consensus that an openly agnostic or atheistic candidate could not win the Presidency in this country. But if we are to be saddled with churches, at least it makes sense to be saddled with those who marry their problematic prostelytizing with community-based local activism.
I am also frustrated by the relative inattention paid to McCain and his advisor Rod Parsely, a televangelist who says that marriage and “the family [are] under brutal attack of the forces of darkness” and decries “the agenda of America’s torture [by] an angry homosexual population.” Parsely, like McCain supporter John Hagee (anti-Catholic, anti-semite, etc.), also sees it as America’s destiny to destroy Islam in order to defend Christianity as the one true faith.
Of course the situation is slightly different. These aren’t McCain’s pastors, they’re supporters and occasional advisors who choose to support him even though they know he is not at all religious. They choose to support him because they trust him to advance a militarily aggressive and socially repressive agenda in his administration, and to preserve a status quo that continues to curb the rights of religious, sexual, and ethnic minorities in this country and around the world.
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1 response so far ↓
1 angela // Mar 17, 2008 at 6:48 am
I was having a conversation on this subject the other day. And you have made my points much more eloquently. It is always such a relief, when i feel like my ideas and thoughts are out of left field, to see and hear them in your voice.
thanks,
angela
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