Jeremiah Wright refuses to be silent

Barack Obama partisans must be wishing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright had chosen to lay low, so maybe the "preacher issue" would go away, so maybe Obama wouldn’t have to deal with white anxiety over an angry black man. But Wright will not go quietly. He is defending himself and making his case, most recently before the National Press Club. If you don’t watch the entire speech on C-SPAN or a video replay, we don’t have much to talk about.

Wright is as formidable an intellect as he is a "controversial" preacher. He is a preacher of the Gospel, coming from the prophetic tradition…his name is Jeremiah, for goodness sake. If the Gospel doesn’t sometimes make you uncomfortable, you haven’t really read it. If the election is decided on a sound byte of "God damn America" vs. the nuanced and complex message this Jeremiah delivers, then…

Or, as Obama put it in his magisterial address, we could say "not this time." Unfortunately, I increasingly fear that won’t happen. Old habits die hard. Old prejudices. So we will march forward to the McCain presidency. If so, then let Jeremiah say all the things that make the comfortable feel uncomfortable — so it is in the Bible.

It doesn’t matter now. God’s will be done. That’s what Christians pray every Sunday in church, "the most segregated hour in America," many without even realizing what they’re affirming.

Does this Jeremiah have anything to teach us?

In his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, we get a fuller context of the sermon from which the "God damn America" sound byte came. Wright preached:

Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God
does not change. And I’m through now. But let me leave you with one
more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of
Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate – the Roman government failed. The
British government used to rule from East to West. The British
government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria,
Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven
seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the
British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese
government failed. The German government failed. And the United States
of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian
descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came
to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She
put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens
of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The
government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put
them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in
substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in
the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the
law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and
locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The
government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a
three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no,
no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That’s in the Bible, for
killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as
less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act
like she is God and she is supreme!

I’m sorry to tell you, dear reader, that the history is correct, and the theology is correct, in that God did not bless the Hebrew rulers that strayed. Of course, the history is also incomplete, for no nation has been more generous, or tried to make amends in many ways. And a full reading of the Bible shows the arc of history bending to reconciliation and forgiveness, as Wright himself would agree. But why is white America so afraid of this Jeremiah, flawed, complex, worth hearing? Are we so fragile?

President-elect McCain said Wright’s remarks were "beyond belief." Of course, he actively sought the support of a preacher, John Hagee, who said New Orleans deserved Hurricane Katrina because of its "level of sin," i.e. a gay pride parade, and that the Roman Catholic Church is a "whore." He laughed it all off on Sunday, and got away with it, with the odious George Stephanopoulos. He’s not even challenged on the other pastor, Rod Parsley, who claims America is divinely driven to destroy Islam. These are as flaky as Wright’s worst hyperbole, and lack any of his intellect.

But, as I say, it doesn’t matter now. America has a chance to renew itself with Obama, or even stave off disaster awhile with Hillary Clinton. We have agency, free will. But that may be too much trouble for just enough people. Just enough Fox News summer soldiers who think a flag pin means patriotism. Just enough global warming deniers. Just enough people who think oil prices are high just because of greedy oil executives. Just enough people who are afraid when they see Osama bin Laden’s face and run to Daddy McCain. Just enough to swing the election, particularly when the vote is already suspect in many places.

Obama’s future may be in the wilderness, perhaps like Churchill, but perhaps for an entirely different calling.

ADDENDUM: See Obama’s repudiation of Wright here.