Sunday, March 23, 2008
Furor over sermons needs more context
Shanna Flowers
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On this, the holiest day in Christendom, when forgiveness and redemption are the center of our celebration, what would Jesus do about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?
Well, I doubt he'd hijack the presidential campaign of one of Wright's flock.
Any churchgoing voter in America knows you can't control what comes out of the mouth of clergy. Often the words are inspiring. Frequently they are benign. Occasionally they are outrageous.
Whatever the pastor's words or actions, you don't hold members of his (or her) church individually accountable for them. Just ask the followers of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Al Sharpton, Oral Roberts, Ted Haggard or John Hagee.
Snippets of Wright's sermons caused a furor with a lot of people when they came to light last week. Snippets never sit well without the benefit of context, and in this case that was completely lacking.
The only reason anyone noticed at all is that Wright happens to be the longtime pastor of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama. And Obama is in the middle of a fierce campaign increasingly marred by the exploitive racial politics of his rival and her surrogates.
Holy Week, a time to revel in the redemptive love of Christ, got upstaged in the pillorying of Wright by critics who didn't like what he said, and by political opponents of Obama who understood how to use Wright against him.
Granted, the Good Reverend Doctor's words were incendiary. But he didn't say anything we haven't heard before.
Anyone who acts surprised that a black man would vent about the social injustices against blacks is disingenuous. Even Wright's baseless claim that HIV is a genocidal plot is nothing new. Though Wright offered no proof, the sentiment would echo with a people aware of the very real, decades-long syphilis experiment at Tuskegee Institute.
Everybody remembers Falwell's proclamation that 9/11 was God's punishment for America's tolerance of gays and abortion. Did anyone accuse Falwell of betraying his country? No. People called him silly, ignorant and crazy.
Yet when Wright took a page from Falwell's book and called 9/11 a payback for America's ill-treatment of other nations or railed about the treatment of blacks in this country, he was painted as anti-American and racist.
Unfortunately, in this situation it's Obama who is paying the price.
As criticism of first Obama's faith, then his church and finally full-blown coverage of Wright's sermons have gained traction, my emotions have run the gamut from mild bewilderment to bemusement, then to surprise.
Bewildered that people are so easily taken in by orchestrated electronic chain-letters without trying to find out whether they are true. (To his credit, one of my e-mail buddies diligently has sought to vet each missive he has received.)
Bemused that critics could be so transparent in their effort to manufacture an excuse not to vote for a candidate they weren't going to vote for anyway.
Surprised that people would judge a politician by five or six out-of-context phrases that his pastor uttered during a 36-year career.
If Wright's critics think he directs pointed words only at America, they're misinformed. I had the pleasure of hearing Wright preach twice about 10 years ago, once at my church in Detroit.
His text was Luke 8, about a mentally unstable man possessed with demons. After Christ exorcised the man of his unclean spirits, the man sat down rationally in the Lord's company.
Wright applied the message to disenfranchised black men to illustrate that if they cleaned up their lives, they could be productive and respected individuals.
Following are the concluding words of the 2003 sermon titled "Confusing God and Government." The sermon has drawn the most ire because in it Wright said God should "damn" America for its racist policies.
"Where governments fail, God never fails. When God says it, it's done. God never fails. When God wills it, you better get out the way, 'cause God never fails. When God fixes it, oh believe me it's fixed. God never fails." He concluded by talking about the salvation of Christians through Jesus Christ.
Honestly, I don't know what Jesus would say to Wright. But I know what I would say to Wright's critics who by and large have given other preachers a pass:
"And why behold thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
Shanna Flowers' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
