Last night, Jeremiah Wright, the supposedly “racist,” “anti-American” pastor of Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ, was interviewed by Bill Moyers on PBS.
Watch the interview. Please.
If you expected a loon, a radical leftist hate-America-firster, you will be sorely disappointed if you watch the videos.
Instead, what I saw was a man who is deeply committed to Christ and building his kingdom here on earth. A man who loves his congregation and longs to see the African American community emerge from the legacy of slavery and oppression. And a man who was quoted OUT OF CONTEXT and then vilified by the entire mainstream media apparatus.
Two examples:
The media and the right-wing noise machine have claimed that Wright was blaming the United States for the attacks on 9/11 when he stated that “the chickens have come home to roost.”
But if you watch the sermon on context, what he was saying instead was the same as what Jesus said. “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.” Violence begets violence, not peace. And so, as a nation which has engaged in numerous wars in its history, it is only logical that one day war would find itself back in our nation.
Rather than the media narrative that Wright was saying America deserved 9/11, instead he was simply helping people understand why wars happen in the first place.
The second, and more widely mentioned of his two remarks, was the sermon where he stated “not God bless America, God damn America.” However, this sermon too was quoted out of context.
And here this the context: God in the old testament blesses those who do good and curses those who do evil. And it is clear that God would NOT bless the litany of wrongs our nation has committed in the past: stealing the land of native American people, slavery, Jim Crow, and so forth.
Wright was NOT saying that HE damns America or that even God damns America in general, but like when Israel disobeyed the lord and oppressed its poor, he DOES damn the evil actions of its past.
And so should we all.
The bottom line here is that like with Al Gore’s supposed claim to have “invented the internet” (which he never made), and Howard Dean’s supposed crazy scream (which in the context of a VERY noisy room wasn’t so crazy at all), the media and its right-wing echo chamber have chosen to take soundbites out of context to try to destroy the political fortunes of one man (Barack Obama) and vilify a man whose love for Christ comes through loud and clear when you actually listen to what he is saying.
I have supported Barack Obama since early in the primary season, and hearing the words of his pastor only strengthens that support in my mind. It’s time for me to write a letter of encouragement to Rev. Wright and to give some money to Barack Obama. We can’t let these thugs in the right-wing noise machine lie their way to the destruction of another good candidate. It’s time to stand up to them.
For the sake of our country AND the sake of our church.
