Wright on Right (and Wrong)

I actually did catch most of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's interview with Bill Moyers over the weekend, and I found him to be articulate, with a deep knowledge of history and Scripture, whose message is really not as it is has been caricatured in the media (of course). Moyers took the time to give full context to the snippets of his sermons we were treated to for weeks on end, and it revealed some interesting results. For example, that "America's chickens are coming home to roost" line was not Wright's, but him quoting some "ambassador" on Fox News a few days after the 9-11 attacks. He was describing someone else's viewpoint, and it was ascribed to him, as if that were his immediate reaction to the fall of the Twin Towers. Wright also has as many harsh words to say about African-American men who fail to live up to their responsibilities as he does for selected actions of the government. He understands that when you love someone, you want them to do the right thing, and when they don't you express your disappointment or frustration to nudge them in the right direction. It's as true with a person as it is with a country, and that value of dissent is one value on which this country was built. So yes, Mr. Stephanopoulos, I think Rev. Wright loves this country as much as I do. And I think we both love it more than you.

Here is a very difficult but enlightening concept discussed on the program:

BILL MOYERS: Hermeneutic?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Hermeneutic is an interpretation, it's the window from which you're looking is your hermeneutic. And when you don't realize that I've been framed- this whole thing has been framed through this window, there's another world out here that I'm not looking at or taking into account, it gives you a perspective that-- that is-- that is informed by and limited by your hermeneutic. Dr. James Cone put it this way. The God of the people who riding on the decks of the slave ship is not the God of the people who are riding underneath the decks as slaves in chains. If the God you're praying to, "Bless our slavery" is not the God to whom these people are praying, saying, "God, get us out of slavery." And it's not like Notre Dame playing Michigan. You're saying flip a coin; hope God blesses the winning team, no. That the perception of God who allows slavery, who allows rape, who allows misogyny, who allows sodomy, who allows murder of a people, lynching, that's not the God of the people being lynched and sodomized and raped, and carried away into a foreign country. Same thing you find in Psalm 137. That those people who are carried away into slavery have a very different concept of what it means to be the people of God than the ones who carried them away.

BILL MOYERS: And they say, "How can we sing the song of the Lord of a foreign land?"

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct.

BILL MOYERS: That chapter ends up with some very brutal words.

REVEREND WRIGHT: It does. And--

BILL MOYERS: You used them in one of your sermons--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes, I did. I was trying to show how people- how the anger- and we felt anger. I felt anger. I felt hurt. I felt pain. In fact, September 11th, I was in Newark. September 11th, I was trapped in Newark 'cause when they shut down the air system I couldn't get back to Chicago. September 11th, I looked out the window and saw the second plane hit from my hotel window. Alright, I had members who lost loved ones both at the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center. So, I know the pain. And I had to preach to them Sunday. I had to preach. They came to church wanting to know where is God in this. And so, I had to show them using that Psalm 137, how the people who were carried away into slavery were very angry, very bitter, moved and in their anger from wanting revenge against the armies that had carried them away to slavery, to the babies. That Psalm ends up sayin' "Let's kill the baby-let's bash their heads against the stone." So, now you move from revolt and revulsion as to what has happened to you, to you want revenge. You move from anger with the military to taking it out on the innocents. You wanna kill babies. That's what's going on in Psalm 137. And that's exactly where we are. We want revenge. They wanted revenge. God doesn't wanna leave you there, however. God wants redemption. God wants wholeness. And that's the context, the biblical context I used to try to get people sitting again, in that sanctuary on that Sunday following 9/11, who wanted to know where is God in this? What is God saying? What is God saying? Because I want revenge.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed enemies, these soldiers who captured the king, those soldiers who slaughtered his son and put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned the towns, burned the temples, burned the towers, and moved from the hatred for armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents, the babies, the babies . "Blessed are they who dash your baby's brains against a rock." And that my beloved is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are in 551 BC and that is where far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.

This of course is why a Fox News anchor said on Sunday "I fell asleep midway through, Moyers blew it!" As Pastor Dan says, this is a stunning level of discourse for the soundbite culture to grasp, and one that's easy to rip from context. He's basically saying that we must pause at responding to a cycle of violence with more violence and try to determine the moral course, the one that offers redemption and wholeness, while acknowledging our imperfections and rushes of emotion. If you want Rev. Wright to stand in for Barack Obama, I would say this speaks extremely WELL of him. Pastor Dan gets this right:

One of the best things to happen to the media in the past twenty-five years was the emergence of conservative advocates who condensed the Christian faith to two simple talking points: abortion and homosexuality. It gave them a nice handle on the Christian story: churches comforted their flocks and sang nice songs on Christmas and Easter, and to the extent that they were political, they cared about these two issues and only these two issues. Everybody else was a dangerous radical.

It's the same story we keep hearing about any number of issues today. The corporate media has drawn the boundaries for acceptable discourse on religion with a decidedly conservative tilt. You can be against abortion and homosexuality, or you can be quiet about your political applications of your faith. Otherwise, you're part of the "fringe," and therefore suspect.

Wright threatens that consensus. He knows that the Bible has plenty to say about today's headlines, and he's not afraid to articulate it. As if that weren't bad enough, he's had the bad taste to teach the next president of the United States that Christianity might be relevant.

I'm not a Christian but I accept and embrace any religion that has a moral obligation to connect the faith to the issues of the day, to man's inhumanity to man, to the constant struggle for survival, to hope and justice and human rights. The Dobsons of the world use religion as a spear; Wright uses it as a clarion call. It's easily misunderstood.

Wright continued his public appearances by speaking at the Detroit NAACP and this morning at the National Press Club on the "invisibility" of black church traditions in mainstream American life. He could have been talking about the moral and spiritual center of religion.

People are going to continue to attack Obama on this issue, even, I see today, John McCain, who used some favorable interpretation of an Obama comment to get his licks in.

But McCain noted that Obama said on Sunday on Fox News that Wright was an issue, seemingly opening a door for McCain to connect the Democrat to his former pastor.

"I saw yesterday some additional comments that have been revealed by Pastor Wright, one of them comparing the United States Marine Corps with Roman Legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our Savior, I mean being involved in that. It's beyond belief..." McCain said.

"I can understand why Americans, when viewing these kinds of comments, are angry and upset," McCain said.

Jeremiah Wright was a Marine. His comment had nothing to do with the crucifixion and everything to do with America's role as a world superpower.

These are intentional misundertandings and discolorations. I'd like to believe that there is a simple power in Wright's point of view that can transcend his first impression created by the media but we all know that's not true. And yes this will be an issue until November. However, having heard his pastor I believe Obama has more wisdom and sense of justice than I previously thought possible in a Presidential candidate. In other words I found it to be a dog whistle for me.

UPDATE: I'm assuming that Atrios is referring to Wright:

There's this guy on my teevee talking about how our government supported Apartheid and the peasant-killing Contras using money gained by selling arms to Iran. Oh and 4000+ US troops died in Iraq over a lie.

What can be said about Wright is that he has a memory and he doesn't repaint our national picture by touching up the edges. His portrait is real and honest and informs the future. That's much too gray and shaded for the black-and-white robotic Republicans.