“Imagine if someone took the five stupidest things you’ve ever said, and played them nonstop, as if those five things represented the totality of your worldview.”
That’s presidential candidate Barack Obama, once again defending his pastor Jeremiah Wright by making equivocations. Showing his courage and desire to answer tough, serious questions, Senator Obama appeared on The Viewand replied in that manner to the controversy over Jeremiah Wright’s statements. For all the people out there who seem to have forgotten, these statements include: The government engineered HIV to kill black people, the government ships crack cocaine to the streets to imprison black people, America’s chickens are coming home to roost (concerning who’s to blame for 9/11), God dam America, and the U.S. of KKK.
And yet Obama continues to defend this guy. He continues to make excuses for him. He continues to ask that we look at all the nice things Reverend Wright has said, all the peaceful loving messages from Jesus. Am I the only one who’s incredulous about this? I want to know why millions of Obama supporters aren’t out there dropping this guy in droves. Can we get some accountability here? Are Americans so bedazzled by his charisma that they can’t see anything deeper than his smile and his rhetoric?
Senator Obama is acting as if Wright is being taken out of context, as if these types of statements are anomalies. Maybe the guy was just angry that day, right? This is garbage. Wright has been saying things like that for years. Those sermons were on the church’s website, as representative of what you will get if you listen to Wright. How do you take comments like that out of context? How do you justify listening to sermons like that for most of your adult life, and daring to say that he “also said many nice things”?
Jerry Falwell also said many nice things, and helped many people, so would Senator Obama and his legions of followers be willing to forgive Republican presidential nominee who consider Falwell a “mentor”? Would they not beat that horse repeatedly and demand that the Republican answer for the hateful, ludicrous things Falwell has said?
Let’s be even more specific. Suppose it came out that John McCain had attended a church in which the white pastor made statements analogous to Wright’s, such as: “Black people are the reason there’s so much crime in America. Blacks are an inferior race who are prone to smoking crack and joining gangs. Blacks are to blame for the genocide in Darfur because civilized white people don’t do those types of things. The United States sacrificed thousands of good white people to end slavery, and the blacks are still complaining and whining.”
How loud would the rightful uproar be? And suppose Senator McCain defended this pastor by saying, “Those are just a few stupid things he’s said. Listen to his peaceful loving sermons. He’s really a great guy who taught me about Jesus.” All of us would be out there in the streets demanding that he resign from the race. His professional career would justifiably be over, and everyone knows it.
So where is the uproar concerning Wright? All I see is more fawning over Senator Obama, even in the news media. So what if he made a good speech about race in this country? Are Americans really going to continue supporting a guy who makes excuses for a man like Jeremiah Wright? This is untenable. This is absolutely and stunningly absurd.
Hey, guess what, Senator Obama? We don’t care that your pastor also said many good things. There are plenty of pastors out there who say good things, and they manage it without the hateful filth and lies. Why didn’t you pick one of them to be your mentor?
The Bible and biblical theology are much more complicated than many prosperity preachers rant about and most of the unlearned Christians care to know. For those of us that have been through rigid theology programs or divinity schools and understand Hebrew and Greek, it is not necessarily out of line to see the Old Testament as a book of Hebrew, i.e. Jewish liberation theology. The Old Testament is essentially a book about the Jewish people protesting against Egyptian rule and seeking to govern and control their lives. Many Christians (that do not study Bible and Ancient world history) have oversimplified Jesus whose name in the Hebrew and Aramaic would have been Yashua, i.e. God is our Liberator=Yah means God/Creator and “shua” is Hebrew and means to save. There is no J. in Hebrew or Aramaic the language “Jesus” would have spoken. Jesus comes from the Greek and is a derivative of Ze-us, i.e. Zeus of Greek mythology. Bible scholars and any Christian that has studied the Bible know that the Old Testament is a captivity story and the New Testament shows further struggle against Roman oppression.
Secondly, I was curious about “Liberation Theology” myself so I did a little research. The black liberation theology espoused by James Cone and Jeremiah Wright and others has its roots in Latin America theological tradition. In this theological, prophetic tradition evangelists and missionaries from the earliest colonial days in Latin America–churchmen questioned the type of presence adopted by the church and the way indigenous peoples, blacks, mestizos, and the poor rural and urban masses were treated. According to most history books the white slave owners of enslaved Africans in America used Christianity and the Bible as a moral justification for enslavement and brutal treatment of Africans. Likewise, the enslaved Africans in America and the Caribbean read the Bible and sang songs, i.e. spirituals, where they were the Children of Israel and the slave master was Pharoah. I recall such songs as a boy sung by a woman from the Caribbean that went: “Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell ol’ Pharoah to let my people go”, “Walk together children don’t you get weary, there is a great day a coming in the promised land” and ” Wade in the water, wade in the water children, God is gonna trouble the water”, or “Everybody talkin bout heaven ain’t going there.” The church music of the enslaved Africans often had a double meaning. Wade in the water means Jewish people crossing the Red Sea but it also could mean slaves crossing a body of water to escape slave patrollers. Even the line “everybody talkin bout heaven ain’t goin there” is a jab at the slave master who was usually at the slave church services. A good book for you and the readers of your blog to read on these double sideded mesages is Miles Mark Fishers “Negro Slave Songs in the United States” http://www.amazon.com/Negro-Slave-Songs-United-States/dp/0806500905
I am from the UK and one thing I have noticed is that the school/educational systems of America do not equip Americans to think and rationalize beyond what they see on television. I was very curious about Jeremiah Wright and came across two interesting blog posts: one looking at Wright and Martin Luther King http://dymaxionq.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/martin-luther-king-jr-and-jeremiah-wright-clergymen-speaking-truth-to-power/ and another discussing Caucasian reaction to those deemed inferior http://dymaxionq.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/reframing-african-slave-insolence-jeremiah-wright-us-presidential-politics-and-the-legacy-of-race-in-america/
It is good reading your blog. Carry on.
Comment by Donald — June 17, 2008 @ 2:52 pm |