Brass Knuckles

Even though Rev. Jeremiah Wright has voluntary left Obama’s campaign, the issue of the pastor’s incendiary rhetoric and legacy still remains. Quite a chasm between what Barack Obama knows of Jeremiah Wright’s preaching at Trinity United Church of Christ and the fiery oratory that is freely available on the internet.

“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation,” the posting said, adding that over the years, “Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life.

“In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”

MSNBC is downplaying the whole issue, trying to bury it and dismiss the controversy as just the actions of supporters over which the campaign has no control, and as “old news”.  

The videotapes of Wright’s sermons have long been available for sale on the church’s Web site, raising questions about why they suddenly became an issue again late Thursday, NBC’s Ron Allen reported.

Of course, they fail to recognize that this is even more evidence that it’s not likely that Obama could have been ignorant of the sermons. They’re on the church’s website; there has been no effort to bury them in the archives or otherwise temper their availablility.  MSNBC also fails to note that even though Rev. Wright has resigned from Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee, the current pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Rev. Otis Moss, III still remains on the committee.

The Obama sphere is trying to cast these sermons as outliers – isolated events that happened well outside of the main body of Jeremiah Wright’s work; aberrations that were out of character of the rest of his preaching, but that does not seem to be the case.  Michelle Malkin talks a little bit about the strategy in her post Jeremiah-gate: Glowbama’s losing his glow.

Obama’s minimization strategy–implying that Wright’s diatribes were cherry-picked rarities out of hundreds and hundreds of sermons–also failed miserably. “Black liberation theology” (with all its attendant anti-American pathologies) is Jeremiah Wright’s bread and butter. Wright knows it. His congregation knows it. Obama knows it.

I saw the Jeremiah Wright interview on Hannity & Combs, arguing that to understand his sermons and put them in context, you have to read and understand black liberation theology, people like James Cone and Dwight Hopkins.  I’m not fully conversant with their works, I’ll be the first to admit.  Hard to argue that the meaning of those sermons change in almost any non-comedic context, though.  I’m not completely ignorant of of liberation theology; I’m Mexican-American of a certain age, got a Political Science degree from the University of Texas at El Paso and grew up Catholic at a time when the church was militantly involved in Latin American liberation theology and activist for Hispanics here in the U.S.  I was young once, and Chicano back then.

I can’t presume to fully understand a man’s convictions and the road that leads him to a particular expression of faith, but I have to discern the faith of our leaders based on word and deed.  A man running for President cannot expect that his expression of faith not be examined or considered; religion and a community’s spiritual culture exist at least in part to form and finish a man, and prepare him for his dealings with the world.  Barack Obama’s minister and his church take a view of the Gospel, our country and the American culture through the prism of racial discord and struggle.  Obama would have us believe that he doesn’t, though he’s been a member and nestled in the bosom of this church for twenty years, got married in the church and attends with his children. So Obama loves the church, but distances himself from not all, but certain sermons that have raised controversy.  Rev. Wright is a mentor, but is being jettisoned from the campaign because he’s attracting scrutiny? 

And a little after, they that stood by said again to Peter, Surely thou art one of them: for thou art a Galilaean, and thy speech agreeth thereto. But he began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not this man of whom ye speak. And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me.

And when he thought thereon, he wept

- Mark 14:66-72