Last night I watched the Bill Moyers interview with Jeremiah Wright, Obama's "controversial" pastor. He's controversial thanks in part to a few soundbyte clips from his sermons. One of the clips seems to suggest that Wright is blaming America for the September 11 attacks--that they were the result of our own sins. The other clip shows him saying, "Not God bless America but God damn America." Pretty damning stuff. In fact, those soundbytes continue to chase after Obama no matter what he says.
As a pastor I had a couple of responses to the whole thing. 1) Not outrage, but certainly a "What were you thinking?" response. That's pretty bold stuff to say God damn America from the pulpit.
2) The more prominent response was a certain sympathy or understanding. I took the time to talk with some African American friends to get their take and learned some things about African American culture that is foreign to my life experience. As Obama said, Wright speaks for an oppressed people. Wright himself said it best last night--The people on the top of the deck who believed that God condoned slavery were praying to a very different God from the God those slaves on the bottom of the boat were praying to. The Bible is written by and in the context of an oppressed people. Some very very "damning" things were said/written by them, too (see some of the Psalms!). As one African American friend put it--Wright was having a behind closed doors, so to speak, conversation with his people. In that context they use a certain kind of language to talk about the issues that they face in life. White congregations do the same thing using a different kind of language.
I also thought about the kind of monster someone could make me out to be if they took selected soundbytes of my sermons, out of context, and threw them up on Youtube.
But it still didn't calm my dis-ease about the clips. Until last night. During the interview I got to hear the heart of Jeremiah Wright. This is a man passionate about Jesus and about connecting Jesus to real life stuff--not just soul stuff, but life stuff--hunger, oppression, genocide, gangbangers, HIV/AIDS, and so on. I couldn't help but really like the guy and his understanding of Jesus. He further challenged me about my total lack of understanding of the African American experience. Some of us white folk are quick to say get over it. But being an oppressed people, who even in the 60's had very few civil rights, and who to this day still live under the cloud of oppression, doesn't heal quickly. It shapes a person's world-view much as affluence shapes mine.
But then I saw the sounbyte clips in their context and found out he was not saying what the clips made him out to say. In the context he was not blaming American for the 9/11 attacks, he was talking about how vengeance begets vengeance and how easily we can begin to take revenge not just on the professional killers or soldiers who attack us, but on the innocents (and he pointed out times in our history when we have done that.) When he talked about God damning America he was using prophetic language to say that God does not bless everything we do but curses/damns anyone or any country that oppresses or kills the innocent or uses power for evil purposes (and we have not been immune to that in our country either.) Like the Old Testament prophets who loved their country Israel and out of love used tough language to challenge their anti-God behavior, Jeremiah Wright is, at times, doing the same from his pulpit. The context changes everything about what he said, what he meant, and how he said it.
No doubt the political "enemies" of Obama are using these soundbytes to try to say something Jeremiah Wright did not say to bring Obama down.
It is so easy for us to buy into the prevailing media hype without understanding the context. It is so easy for us to condemn or write off someone based on soundbytes rather than taking the time to get to the real truth. It's so easy to write off someone whose cultural or life context is so very different from our own, wondering why they simply can't be like us!
The Jeremiah Wright soundbytes are a great reminder to us to step back and ask serious questions--to seek the truth for the truth really does set us free.
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Many thanks for this summary. Since we're traveling right now, we've not had a chance to view the Moyers' special. We've all had experience w/ the *out of context* oft-repeated quotes that make headlines. As Christians, we are the first ones who should be quick to dig deeper for understanding rather than being quick to judge malice - but it doesn't always seem to work that way.
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