The current media flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, strikes me as nothing short of strange. Anyone who attends church on a regular basis knows how frequently congregants disagree with their ministers. To sit in a pew is not necessarily assent to a message preached on a particular day. Being a church member is not some sort of mindless cult, where individuals believe every word preached. Rather, being a church member means being part of a community of faith—a gathered people, always diverse and sometimes at odds, who constitute Christ's body in the world.
But the attack on Rev. Wright reveals something beyond ignorance of basic dynamics of Christian community. It demonstrates the level of misunderstanding that still divides white and black Christians in the United States. Many white people find the traditions of African-American preaching offensive, especially when it comes to politics.
I know because I am one of those white people. My first sustained encounter with African-American preaching came in graduate school about twenty years ago. I had been assigned as a teaching assistant to a course in Black Church Studies. The placement surprised me, since I had no background in the subject. But the professor assured me that "anyone with experience teaching American religion" would be able to handle the load.
The subject matter was not, as the professor indicated, difficult. The emotional content, however, was. To prepare, I had to read literally thousands of pages of black preaching and theology covering the entire scope of American history. While the particulars of preaching changed through time, one thing did not. Throughout the entire corpus, black Christian leaders leveled a devastating critique against their white brothers and sisters—accusing white Christians of maintaining "ease in Zion" while allowing black people to suffer injustice and oppression.
Typical of the form used by black preachers is Frederick Douglass' address, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" first delivered on July 5, 1852. The address, a political sermon, forcefully attacks white culture. "Fellow-citizens," Douglass proclaims, "above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wails of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them." He goes on to calls American conduct "hideous and revolting" and accuses white Christians of trampling upon and disregarding both the constitution and the Bible. He concluded his sermon with the words, "For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."
This was very hard to take. I confess: nearly everything I read that semester pained and angered me. But four months of listening to voices that I wanted to reject made me different. I began to hear the power of the critique. I came to appreciate the prophetic nature of black preaching. I recognized that these voices emerged from a very distinct historical experience. And I admired the narrative interplay between the Bible and social justice. Over time, they taught me to hear the Gospel from an angular perspective—the angle of slaves, freed blacks, of those who feared lynching, of those who longed for Africa, those who could not attend good schools. From them, I learned that liberation through Jesus was a powerful thing. And that white Americans really did need to repent when it came to race.
Learning to listen was not easy. It took patience, historical imagination, and lots of complaining to my friends—even my African-American ones. Eventually, I figured out that even if your ancestors had been the oppressors, you can enter into the world of those who had been oppressed with generosity and a heart open to transformation.
As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright's "radical" sermons today, I do not hear the words of a "dangerous" preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique. I hear Frederick Douglass. And, mostly, I hear the Gospel slant—I hear it from an angle that is not natural to me. It is good to hear that slant.
That is not, of course, comfortable for white people. Nor is it easily understood in sound bites. It does not easily fit in a contemporary political campaign. But it is a deep spiritual river in American faith and culture, a river that—as I had to learn—flows from the throne of God.
Diana Butler Bass holds a doctorate in American religion from Duke University. She is the author of six books including Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperOne, 2006).
I think it is not entirely true to say that many find Black church offensive. Yes but there is more.
It would be more accurate to say that many people find the Christian God offensive. What does it mean to have perfect hatred (Ps. 139) or to pray for God to break the teeth of your enemies (Ps. 3)?
Rev. Wright, in a sermon, asked for God to damn America. That offends many people. But I think a deeper violation is not racial or patriotic but our image of God. We are uncomfortable with a God of vengeance and like to imagine Christ as the anti-Deity to the Old Testament God.
The gospel of Rev. Wright is not angular, it is straight-on. The fact is, like Diana B. Bass says, the Christian church has become alienated from its roots to the point where it doesn't even recognise its own God.
The African American church in North America has, in the west, safeguarded a long tradition from before Christ of penning Psalms of Lament to God.
To lament is to express ones outrage at God for injustice. To lament is to damn evil and invoke divine outrage. These sermons don't imagine a God removed from suffering and oppression, they imagine a co-suffering God. The African American church, in their preaching tradition, have developed the most Biblical theodicy within the Christian church today.
Lament demands answers and justice. These Psalms were meant to be read in small groups. The primary purpose is restoration and rehabilitation of those experiencing evil and suffering. They provide language and structure in which pain, suffering, grief and despair can be ritualised and worshipers moved from one way of seeing their situation to a radically different way of seeing.
Laments are a means of reframing suffering in light of Christs hope and promise. This doesn't necessarily include physical deliverance (although it is anticipated) but rather it is a spiritual move which opens up possibilities that were not previously available.
Lament expresses rage, anger, hurt, disappointment and hope with a goal of reconciliation with God. It aims to transform the community and subvert the oppressive power. It does this by affirming that despite any lack of evidence, God is active in this world.
Lament asserts that the world is not about false hope in human progress but rather to create characters within us which can live with unanswered questions and unresolved injustice not by repression or denial but by active acceptance of the reality of evil and suffering and Gods love for us in the midst of this.
Community is central. Lament requires friendship that will sustain us moving from lament to joy- friends who open roofs and drop us down at Jesus feet (Lk. 5).
And finally it is protest and resistance. These sermons which we find violent are actually peaceful. They counter and resist evil ultimately defeating it through peaceful cries of lament. Lament moves us from anger to acceptance- it gives us a voice and reminds us that not only is God offended, he suffers alongside with us. That deliverance is not ours but Gods.
Frankly I think that not only do most Americans not understand the African American church, I don't think they understand the Old Testament God or have a proper understanding of Christian worship.
That Wrights sermons could be construed as hateful bother me not only because it shows a lack of awareness of African American Christianity, it shows an ignorance of Christianity and, ultimately, our God. Those services and those sermons would feel like home to the early church. They fit right in with the cries of the Psalmist and Christs silence on the Cross who was rejected humiliated and scorned and whose despaired call for God on the cross echoes the cries of Gods children before and after Him.
These sermons by Wright aren't hate speech, it's God speech. I would compose a post on this but I don't have time. I did however write up some notes which I typed up above from a God & Human Suffering class I took. The Psalms of Lament are very interesting for me. We read them lots of mornings in our chapel at school- bloody verses calling out for vengeance. Most Christians recoil at those verses and have no idea what they mean no more than they understand the sermons of Rev. Wright in Chicago.
This is not about Obama. This is bigger than Obama. This is about our God. Or, our hope stands on Christ alone, not Obama.
Not only is the God of those Psalms our God, He is also the God who damns America with us- who cries with us for justice and who transforms us individually and corporately. These sermons are not about earthly powers or politics, they are about our ultimate goal and salvation, Christ.
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Truth is hard to listen to, for me anyway
Diana:
Your comments and observations are a blessing to read because they ring true. Black Liberation theology is about dealing with a history of real and evil oppression. Rev. Wright's sermon is a stark reminder to white upper middle class United Methodist folks like me that a very real price was paid by many Africans and African Americans as a result of the Dutch/English/American economic model of the slave trade. It seems to me that racial and cultural reconciliation on a grass roots level has been moved aside. The focus of my United Methodist Church, at least in the main seminaries that are connected to major secular universities, is on human sexuality and modern gnosticism. (OURSELVES and what we want.) Diversity has been hijacked by the sexuality agendas. "Queering the church" is the new agenda. The very real issue of racial and cultural diversity and reconciliation is not politically correct anymore. Look at our member numbers in the US -- mostly white people of means, and hardly any racial diversity. I truly applaud those church leaders who continue to intentionally reach out to the Native American, the Mexican American, the African American, the Korean American, the disabled, the prisoner, the mentally ill, the lonely, the poor in spirit and the powerless. Let any sinner or saint be ordained, but don't forget those who do not have the power of popular media to support their causes. We have reduced scripture to a jumble of culturally-accommodating myths, Jesus to a nice prophet, and the church to an hierarchy of acamadecians. The only UM seminaries that focus on producing pastors are St. Pauls, SMU to some extent, and of course, Asbury. Jesus would not recognize us. The liberal church and the conservative church have aligned themselves to cultural and political values, and they have cherry-picked scriptural truth to meet their biases and sharply-focused agendas. Despite this, I love and embrace the church and pray for God to give me the strength, courage, trust and opportunity to make a difference for Christ.
Peace and grace,
Mike M. in Colorado