Jeremiah (known now, of course, as Jeremiad) Wright preaches in a way that white preachers like me just don't dare. And we don't even know how.
Let me speak for myself: I come from a tradition of reserved Scandinavian Lutherans, and I know that no Minnesota pulpit of my childhood would countenance the kind of impassioned gospel that Rev. Wright proclaims--and certainly not about things that might be "too political".
And I also know that the churches of my adulthood, my own Episcopal church and just about any other white Protestant church, is not familiar -- to put it mildly -- with the kind of preaching we see in Jeremiah Wright. We just don't know that tradition. We just don't know how.
We are subtle and nuanced when we broach a topic that might smack of politics. When we muster the occasional guts to preach a social justice sermon, when we dare to take on, say, this five-year war, or the need for immmigration reform, or a living wage, we are very very careful and we leave lots of room for interpretation and others' views. Our version of "pastoral" often means "do not offend." That's how we've been trained, not to mention socialized.
Now, many of us would say that Rev. Wright was more than offensive with his anti-American comments, that his words were divisive and hateful. If any pollsters are paying attention, Jeremiah Wright's ratings could be even lower than George Bush's right now.
And I would say that his statement regarding the opposite of "God bless America" was both a bad choice of words and bad theology; the overarching evidence of the bible shows us a God who redeems and rescues, not a God who "damns" anybody or anything.
Still and all, my guess is that when Jesus dumped over those tables in the temple, his speech might not have been pretty. And we need to remember that we preachers are called to preach truth to power: how do we do that? What words do we use to decry this 5-year war, our punishing neglect after Katrina, our head-in-the-sand response to climate change, the travesty of No Child Left Behind, our abandonment of our returning wounded soldiers, etc. etc. etc. What words do we use?
For my part, I envy Jeremiah Wright and his outrageous audacity to speak stinging truth as he sees it from his unique perspective as a black pastor in white America.
Speaking the truth, we remember this Holy Week, leads to the cross. The cross always carries a kind of irony. Brother Wright, with his outrageous and harmful choice of words, has made us face into one of the largest crosses in our American landscape, the cross of racism.
Wright's harm asks the rest of us to attempt healing, to use words that can be heard, words not of blame but of contrition, conviction and courage, words that name the crosses of our day.
Only if we face into this cross, and all the crosses we continue to plant, will we move through to the hope of Easter.
» Executive Director - The Rev. Anne S. Howard's blogWhen I heard the press around Rev. Wright's speech, I kept thinking about my own tradition's(Unitarian Universalist) shared congregational polity with the UCC that gives ministers the right to a free pulpit -- the right to express ourselves without limitation of dogma or institutional boundaries. I learned in divinity school that we are to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable" when we are in the pulpit. It has never once occurred to me that I have to agree with my minister on everything he says or that anyone who comes to my services has to agree with me on anything or everything. Indeed in my tradition, we expect as many "I really disagreed with you today" as "good sermon, Reverend."
But, we also have freedom on the pew. We encourage our congregants to take what they like, to leave the rest, to only believe our truths as it reflects their own. In all the reports on Reverend Wright, I haven't seen a news report that remembers to tell us that Trinity UCC has more than 6000 members and is the largest church in the UCC.
That's because these attacks on the Reverend Wright aren't really about him or his church -- they are about trying to discredit Senator Obama. In this "GOTCHA 24/7 news cycle" Governor Paterson felt he needed to tell us about the most private of issues in a marriage before the press could do a story on it, and every association that a candidate has is available for dissection and ridicule.
A hurrah to Senator Obama for saying what all of us in free churches know -- that our ministers have the right to speak their hearts and minds from the pulpit and the people in the pews have the right to love them even when we disagree.
Rev. Debra Haffner
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Mike Huckabee
I appreciated what Rev. Huckabee had to say. I'm glad that these attacks against Obama's church are being rebuffed successfully. The alternative would have been quite disturbing.