posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
connielane at 01:18pm on 25/04/2008
connielane at 01:18pm on 25/04/2008I've been listening to some of the sermons of Senator Obama's former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Not the 5-10 second sound bytes that Fox News and every other media outlet has been running ad nauseam - the actual, whole sermons or long-ish clips of them. I'm not surprised that the media has boiled this man's 30-year ministry down to a handful of comments, but it enrages me nonetheless.
What I observe in what relatively little I've heard of his sermons is a man with a profound love for God, who tried to help his congregation relate to God and apply their faith to the modern world. I'm not wild about his rants about Hillary Clinton, but it's more the fact that he's ranting than what he's actually saying. I'm not comfortable with some of the parallels he tries to make, and I think he sometimes has played too much into the minority disillusionment of his congregation.
BUT
I can easily - very easily - see why many people, including Barack Obama, have been inspired by him. I don't agree with Senator Clinton's comment that "he would not have been my pastor." I have to assume that she is basing that on the same little sound bytes that everyone else has seen, and I think that's amazingly short-sighted for someone we're supposed to trust with our richly diverse and sometimes contradictory nation. I can imagine myself thoroughly enjoying one of his services, though perhaps occasionally bristling at a handful of things he says. He's someone I can easily see someone like Obama turning to for spiritual advice. You can find someone a spiritual hero without agreeing with everything they say and without even being able to stand their political convictions. You really can. It's even rather amusing to me that in this country, where the separation between church and state is part of the backbone of our government, people seem so unable to divorce a person's religion from their politics.
Out-of-context comments like "America's chickens are coming home to roost" take on a dramatically different meaning when you hear the five or six minutes that came before and the few that came after. I don't think there's a pastor alive in this world who hasn't said things that, out of the context of their entire message, wouldn't at least ruffle some feathers. Having grown up with a preacher for a father, I know full well the kinds of things that get said when a preacher is lit by the fire of the Holy Spirit. The message may come from God, but the mouth and the mind are still human. Sometimes they say things to wake people up - occasionally, these comments can be mistakes, but most of the time, they are perfectly reasonable, if incendiary, commentary on God's word and its application to the world we live in.
Example - My current pastor, several years ago, uttered the words "My God, where the hell are you?!" from the pulpit. Taken out of context, that might have upset a good many in our church. You just don't talk about God in that crude way. It could be interpreted in myriad ways, most of which would not be flattering to the person who spoke them. But what you wouldn't get, hearing that out of context, was that this was an idiomization of Jesus's exclamation from the cross - "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which translates in Mark 15:34 to "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" A cry of such desperation and anguish that the people standing at the foot of the cross couldn't even understand what He was saying. These are feelings most Christians don't normally like to associate with Jesus, and it was appropriate, I think, to express them in language that we likewise don't like to associate with Him.
I'm anxious to hear what Wright had to say to Bill Moyers. In its full context, though I realize it may still be whittled down for time. I know Wright is seen by many pundits as Obama's Achilles heel, but I rather hope Obama remains consistent in his treatment of his former pastor. He's a man who has made some questionable comments that could easily kill a friend's presidential campaign, but that doesn't mean he should be thrown under the bus for political expediency - like his influence on Obama's spiritual life means nothing at all.
What I observe in what relatively little I've heard of his sermons is a man with a profound love for God, who tried to help his congregation relate to God and apply their faith to the modern world. I'm not wild about his rants about Hillary Clinton, but it's more the fact that he's ranting than what he's actually saying. I'm not comfortable with some of the parallels he tries to make, and I think he sometimes has played too much into the minority disillusionment of his congregation.
BUT
I can easily - very easily - see why many people, including Barack Obama, have been inspired by him. I don't agree with Senator Clinton's comment that "he would not have been my pastor." I have to assume that she is basing that on the same little sound bytes that everyone else has seen, and I think that's amazingly short-sighted for someone we're supposed to trust with our richly diverse and sometimes contradictory nation. I can imagine myself thoroughly enjoying one of his services, though perhaps occasionally bristling at a handful of things he says. He's someone I can easily see someone like Obama turning to for spiritual advice. You can find someone a spiritual hero without agreeing with everything they say and without even being able to stand their political convictions. You really can. It's even rather amusing to me that in this country, where the separation between church and state is part of the backbone of our government, people seem so unable to divorce a person's religion from their politics.
Out-of-context comments like "America's chickens are coming home to roost" take on a dramatically different meaning when you hear the five or six minutes that came before and the few that came after. I don't think there's a pastor alive in this world who hasn't said things that, out of the context of their entire message, wouldn't at least ruffle some feathers. Having grown up with a preacher for a father, I know full well the kinds of things that get said when a preacher is lit by the fire of the Holy Spirit. The message may come from God, but the mouth and the mind are still human. Sometimes they say things to wake people up - occasionally, these comments can be mistakes, but most of the time, they are perfectly reasonable, if incendiary, commentary on God's word and its application to the world we live in.
Example - My current pastor, several years ago, uttered the words "My God, where the hell are you?!" from the pulpit. Taken out of context, that might have upset a good many in our church. You just don't talk about God in that crude way. It could be interpreted in myriad ways, most of which would not be flattering to the person who spoke them. But what you wouldn't get, hearing that out of context, was that this was an idiomization of Jesus's exclamation from the cross - "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which translates in Mark 15:34 to "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" A cry of such desperation and anguish that the people standing at the foot of the cross couldn't even understand what He was saying. These are feelings most Christians don't normally like to associate with Jesus, and it was appropriate, I think, to express them in language that we likewise don't like to associate with Him.
I'm anxious to hear what Wright had to say to Bill Moyers. In its full context, though I realize it may still be whittled down for time. I know Wright is seen by many pundits as Obama's Achilles heel, but I rather hope Obama remains consistent in his treatment of his former pastor. He's a man who has made some questionable comments that could easily kill a friend's presidential campaign, but that doesn't mean he should be thrown under the bus for political expediency - like his influence on Obama's spiritual life means nothing at all.