People are funny. Information can surface the internet for weeks and months without a significant response… in fact, a person may be asked on occasion to address the information, as it pertains to him, when a tiny response does begin to brew and, lo and behold, eventually Good Morning America might put a packaged-and-wrapped sample of the information on live television and there goes the neighborhood! Of course, I am referring to the, as it has been so often called, “soundbite” video clip of Reverend Jeremiah Wright of the United Trinity Church of Chicago, Illinois and his… how do I put this… “racy” words. To get the ball rolling, Jeremiah Wright is a pastor in Chicago. The man is a black preacher for an inner city church who grew up in the hardships of the civil rights movement. Without defending the man, because I don’t believe him to be a great one by any means, give him a break. Take your camera into every church, synagogue, and mosque in this country and film a couple sermons and you’ll have a field day putting together clips of ‘controversial’ material. There is no such thing as “PC” or political correctness in a church because, much to the dismay of the Bush administration and everyone so shocked that a politician could actually have different views to his pastor, its not a place of politics! I challenge you to sit in your pew at whatever respective prayer house you belong to and agree with everything you hear coming from the pulpit. Now, film the whole thing and pick the moments in each sermon that got you and put them altogether for maximum effect! With this said, the news and mainstream media has taken these words and emphasized the parts that really curdle the blood to a point where the brain isn’t able to actually look at what is being said. The words themselves are atrocious and quite uneasy to stomach, but that might be because it has been fed to all of us as the product I spoke of earlier (thank you ABC) and we were not sitting in the pews for that sermon (lucky us – who knows how much spit comes flying off that lip). When he urged his congregation to say “God damn America” instead of “God bless America”, he doesn’t stop at the America… there was a little bit left of that sentence and it said “God damn America FOR TREATING ITS CITIZENS AS LESS THAN HUMAN.” Quick note to Reverend Jeremiah Wright: the country you are damning is the same country that allows you the freedom to stand by the pulpit and say what you want to say, you tool. You can criticize the country for its actions against whomever you want, but “damning” is a bit overboard don’t you think? Anyway, while the man is off-base and, a little bit disturbing in his rhetoric, his aim doesn’t seem to be to incite a hatred for this country, its to give his congregation a kick and warn them that through his eyes he doesn’t see it as a stable and steady friend to their community. And, when you think about his own history and the history of the black people in this country, you can understand that the relationship is a little bit shaky. Let his mistake of going over the top and saying “God damn America” be his own mistake though and not Senator Obama’s who was not even in attendance when this was said! And the argument that he would have ‘heard about this kind of thing’ would imply that the congregation would have gossiped about that fiery line in the sermon, but as I understand, people don’t leave church and criticize the pastor unless of course he doesn’t do his job. And by the fact that he has been preaching at the church for decades to regulars like Oprah Winfrey (yes, she also goes to his church), I have a hard time believing that he doesn’t do his job. Wright is an orator who uses powerful (even unnecessarily so) images to convey his message and as Reverend Floyd Lake of Allen A.M.E Church rightfully says, “anyone can grab a snippet and make something out if it, particularly if they have a political agenda.” I think the fact that people like Oprah haven’t been targeted for their own membership at this church shows that this is a political target. What people are being so fickle about is that the black church specifically (although all religious prayer houses are prone) is passionate and “prophetic”. While sometimes speculative and inaccurate, and often times exaggerative, they seek to inspire with such styles. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the Vietnam War as an example of American imperialism that may incur “God’s wrath’ and implying that America would be “put in its place” because of it. In fact, Reverends, ministers, pastors, and clergymen from around the country have sympathized with Wright because, quite frankly, its his job to fire up his congregation and I very much doubt that a man who himself speaks on peace and bridging the gaps of unity would support the notions of hatred that have been associated with Reverend Wright. If John Hagee (ya know, that pastor who sort’ve brushed up on the McCain radar then went away) can talk about Hurricane Katrina as a punishment to America and its harboring of homosexuals, you would think we’d all be a lot less sensitive to this kind of thing. In fact, speaking of McCain and pastors associated with him, his own pastor has come out against this huge media storm against Obama because of his minister. Reverend Dan Yeary, McCain’s long-time pastor, has said that the reality of a pastor and his congregant is that of a spiritual friendship. In fact, he claims that in the 15 years they have known each other they have never spoken about politics and he finds the idea that people could associate Obama’s views with Wright’s laughable. He said, “All preachers have a tendency to overstate because our passion is so intense. But I thought Obama did a fine job in response. He preserved his friendship with his pastor while disagreeing with him.” He also stated, “I’m sure John McCain would probably say the same thing about me if he were asked ‘so, do you agree with everything your pastor said?” while laughing. (Quotes from Yahoo! News) This country might have had the lines between church and state blurred in the last 7 years, but get a grip. If the presumptive Republican nominee’s pastor is coming out and defending Obama and his pastor, you might be able to understand just how far they actually should be and specifically in this case, how far the two different things are. Don’t fault someone on the man he chooses to speak to about his faith or to inspire him to lead a better life because of things that man has said about things totally unrelated. You’ll never be happy with a response by Barack Obama no matter what it is because you choose to live in fear of something you pretend not to know about because you refuse to actually research it. If you did, of course, you would have known about it BEFORE it reached Good Morning America… or did you only see it on FOX?
