Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Dr. Jeremiah Wright

  • Tolerance: A Value, Not an Absolute

    In watching some of the material on Dr. Jeremiah Wright today, I’m reminded of the potential problem of tolerance–getting it above its proper rank as a value. I have been confronted numerous times in face to face discussions with the statement that I cannot be truly tolerant, because to be tolerant, I must tolerate intolerance.

    But that is a sort of binary thinking that is, quite frankly, the basis for a great deal of stupidity. For me tolerance is not an absolute. Tolerance is something I value. I do not value it above all else. It is the sort of thing that when overvalued can become self-destructive. To illustrate from the physical world, I value my home. But when a hurricane is coming, I value my life and my family more highly than my home. So I evacuate when it’s appropriate. Some don’t, and end up dead or injured.

    There are a number of comments by Rev. Wright that I am quite willing to defend. I’m even willing, as you will have noted, to defend a large part of his “God damn America” speech, while confessing that I would never have expressed it that way myself. I can get behind the rhetoric to a good point.

    But in embracing Farrakhan, I believe Wright steps over that line to tolerating intolerance. Farrakhan has, in fact, done some good things in the African-American community. but he has more than balanced that with hateful speech and acts, and with his anti-Semitism. Barack Obama was correct to reject (and denounce!) his support. Rev. Wright does himself a disservice by embracing him.

    To quote from MSNBC.com:

    At the press club, he jokingly offered himself as Obama’s running mate and embraced Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan even though he said he doesn’t always agree with him. He criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the U.S. invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. “Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said.

    To tolerate Louis Farrakhan in this fashion is to tolerate intolerance, and this is a liberal danger. We wish to be so careful not to be intolerant. We want to be even handed, and love all the disadvantaged, underprivileged, and oppressed people. Those are good impulses. But we need to be careful to draw moral lines. We can desire justice for the Palestinians without justifying their killing of Israelis. We can recognize the economic hardships that contribute to terrorist recruiting without justifying the use made of it by terrorists. We can recognize the need for pride in the African-American community without also justifying a new form of hate and racism.

    Besides embracing Farrakhan, who has stepped way over the line, he continues with the claim that HIV was produced by the U. S. government. Based on things done in years past, I would be prepared to hear it if evidence turned up that some secret agency had done this in some way. U. S. government agencies have done some quite evil things. But the key there is the need for evidence. Right now there is no such thing. One of the nastiest ways one can vilify one’s opponents is by suggesting that they have done the things that they are capable of. We are all capable of some form of evil, but we do not all do everything of which we are capable. Evidence should precede accusation; all else is a smear.

    Rev. Wright should be aware of this, considering that around 10% of the American public believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim. The accusation has been made, and it doesn’t matter how much evidence there is that he is not, some of the slime will stick. A pastor, especially should be very careful with his words.

    I am not going to get into the game of blaming associates of associates, i.e. that Barack Obama needs to distance himself further from his pastor so as to be distanced further from Farrakhan. I didn’t like the “associating with people who associated with communists” attitude during the cold war, and this one is certainly no better. But Rev. Wright is responsible for his own words, and along with quite a number of good challenging ones, he has spoken some that are dangerous, hateful, and irresponsible.

  • Bill Moyers Interviews Dr. Jeremiah Wright

    I think we all draw boundary lines between those with whom we disagree, yet consider valid voices in our culture or community, and those whose views we think are so far off the map that conversation cannot continue. For many Americans, Dr. Jeremiah Wright has fallen into the second category.

    I would suggest, however, that in making such a determination one must consider context and intent. The context in which remarks are uttered can completely reverse their effect. Reported by a Jewish writer, “his blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25) reports on some words, and may express hostility by one group of Jews toward another. Repeated by a crowd of Christians in the middle ages, they became a frequent call to bloodshed.

    I commented previously that I believe that the preaching style was taken outside of the context of the African-American church. Others have noted, and I agree, that many of the comments (especially “God damn America”) were also taken somewhat out of context.

    There remains points on which I disagree, but that is really unimportant. Dr. Wright is a person who has accomplished much of value, and much of what he said is also valuable. In my view, Barack Obama went too far in distancing himself from the pastor who first brought him to Christ, baptized him, performed his wedding, and then baptized his children. I am disturbed that so many Christians seem to believe that is a relationship to be discarded. Dr. Wright was very gracious about it, speaking of the differences between pastoral and political roles.

    I commend Bill Moyers’ interview, which presents what seems to me a much more balanced view of the man, one which accords with my suspicions after tracking down the context of some of the snippets that have been posted.

    I would particularly commend the idea of “arguing with the text” that he mentions late in the second part. Biblical characters were willing to argue with God. If it seems to us that a text is demanding something improper, perhaps we should take a page from their book.

    (Hat tip to if i were a bell, i’d ring for the video link.)

  • Frank Schaeffer on Dr. Wright

    Frank Schaeffer has produced some stir with his notes supporting Barack Obama, and now he has written something about the imbalance between the response to Dr. Wright’s comments and the response to those of his, Schaeffer’s, father. He says:

    When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

    I’m not going to try to make comparisons. But I would note that there are moments when many, many preachers have pointed to “God’s curse on America” for some moral failing or other. The question just seems to be who’s the pointer and who’s the pointee.

    I’m guessing a number of folks on the right are a bit annoyed with Frank Schaeffer at the moment!

    HT: Dispatches

  • It Looks Like Obama is Going to Educate

    Yesterday in my first post on RedBlueChristian.com, I referred to a conversation with my wife in which she suggested that Barack Obama has an exceptional opportunity to educate and help America grow.

    I just read an article on MSNBC.com talking about his proposed speech in Philadelphia on the topic. If he does this right, it could be great.

    This paragraph struck me as precisely what I was thinking:

    The fact is Wright is the man who brought Obama to Christ. He is the one who married him and Michelle Robinson. He is the one who baptized their children. He is the one who helped supply a sense of community rootedness and black identity that Obama, by his own account, says he so yearned for as the credentialed but confused son of a racially mixed marriage.

    Absolutely! And those are good things that Dr. Wright supplied. Obama certainly should not deny the great things he got from his church. He needs to explain to white America the value that he gained there, and also why he is moving forward to a new approach, without making light of or putting his church in a negative light. It will be interesting to see how well he does that.

    I’m delighted that he is going to try. His ability to communicate is a strong positive characteristic; one of the reasons I’m supporting him. He needs to display that ability in full measure in this speech.

    Fineman, in the article already cited, notes:

    But Obama can’t — and should not — try to deny that the church and the Rev. Wright are the essence of who he is. Obama has said as much, in memorable prose, in his two books. And there is no need to jettison him entirely.

    Fineman is absolutely right. Those who are getting shrill about these sermon snippets would like him to deny and toss Dr. Wright out with the garbage, but that is not the right thing to do even though it may seem the way to make the problem go away. I hope that in this speech we will all learn something about how people grow, what they need, and how we can deepen our understanding of one another–even of one another’s anger.

  • Another Jeremiah

    I recalled Micaiah before I thought of Jeremiah in this case, even though Dr. Jeremiah Wright shares the great prophet’s name. Micaiah is the prophet of who never prophesied anything good about Ahab (1 Kings 22). Jeremiah, on the other hand, was definitely an anti-patriot. Very little that he said was appreciated by the hierarchy of Judah, and he certainly was not an advocate of dialogue.

    Which brings me to Barack Obama’s former pastor, who doesn’t speak in terms of dialogue, and doesn’t sound like a great American patriot. But leaving aside message for a moment, he definitely does have the tone of a prophet. Prophets tend to have an abrasive personality, or else they are driven to abrasiveness by the messages they are called upon to deliver. I remember one church at which I taught on the gift of prophecy. After I had discussed rebuke as an element of prophecy, one of the members told me that they didn’t do rebuke at that church; they preferred encouragement. All I can say is that if you prefer encouragement, you probably won’t like the tradition of the Hebrew prophets.

    (more…)