WWYPD:
What Would Your Pastor Do?
Jeremiah Wright - Barack Obama - Racism - & Christian Faith

I'm slow in responding to the whole debacle - and what I'd call sensationalist political inuendo and slander - of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity Church in Chicago (Obama's home community of faith). But here I am finally waying in. This editorial cartoon that I scanned from the SF Chronicle on Easter Sunday says it all. Of course I'm a man of words so I can' t just stop there in my response to this whole thing.


1. I think Jeremiah Wright is a damn good pastor. I would go to his church if I didn't already work at one and happened to live in Chicago.

2. We've somehow settled in our culture for a watered-down, anti-prophetic, bought-into-some-false-american-dream vision of church. We want our pastors to tell us in 40 days or 40 short stories about how simple it is to live lives of faith. I don't mean to criticize the who purpose driven life craze of Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, I just mean to compare it to the urban prophetic presence of Jeremiah Wright. What do we want of our religious leaders: that they'll tell us what we want to hear?; or that they'll challenge us with what we don't want to hear, not primarily as condemnation but as an invitation to both personal and corporate transformation? I'm down with the latter.

3. When did being Black - or whatever racial/cultural background we come from - become a bad thing? Trinity Church should be proud of being unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian! They actually practice what they preach - how novel?! As is stereotypically usual, we - the white establishment or majority culture (or whatever you want to call) - gets afraid when a person of color seems to be angry in particular in the way that they present their opinion, beliefs or assert themselves. I wonder if we 'maintstreamers' would ever have liked Jesus in the first place, that brown man who overturned tables in the Temple, invited the outcast into the limelight, and challenged the powers at be to legitimate leadership.

4. There's a ton of hoopla about Obama's pastor saying such things as "God damn America!" First of all we live in a screwed up culture in which we think truth and wisdom can be conveyed in 25 second sound bytes. Talk about decadence and intellectual bankruptcy! If you'd judged Rev. Wright on that sound byte, have you listened to his sermon!? I think - from the excerpts I've read - that it's one of the best I've heard in several years. Prophetic. Unapologetic. Challenging of cultural hegemony and privilege - and inviting to a new way of living and being. Sounds like the gospel to me.

5. When did people do exactly what their pastors say? People freak out about Obama following Wright's teaching to the letter. I ask people in my church to simply stop doing ineffective things, or to be team-players, or to simply follow-through on a task...and they don't do it. So why would we assume that Obama is simply a mind-washed follower of the pastor who used to lead the community of faith in which the Obama family has placed itself and grown spiritually?

6. Pastors are not meant to be the Way - to incarnate the Messiah - the living truth of God. They simply point to it - in all their weakness, depravity, sin and brokeness - indicating the way to journey, the goal to aim for, the relational-praxis-story that makes meaning of life. I cringe when people ask me to tell them what to do. Who am I to think that I'm that smart, wise or with-it? Why would anyone ask what would my pastor do? They should be illuminated, educated and trained enough to ask themselves what did Jesus do? and what will I do in my context?

7. Many articles in papers said that Wright's doctrine veers from Mainstream Christianity. Bullshit! When did Jesus talk to the middle and lower class challenging them to go shopping at the local mall and spending lot's of money to bring balance to the nation after a disaster? When did Jesus talk about excluding particular groups from the community of God as less than equal? When did Jesus teach that the poor are lazy, deserve to get what they get, or are cursed by God? When did Jesus encourage us to simply go along with the powers that be, assuming that they are following God in all that they do, say and enact as policy? Jesus consistently challenged notions of nationalism, tribalism and ethnic purity. He repeatedly subverted the notions of quasi-genocidal self-righteousness, social indifference, and racial inequality. Jesus taught that we are called to love each other as God first loves us, whether our neighbor be poor, black, white, latino, asian, democrat, republican, muslim, gay, straight, transgender, capitalist, socialist, a member of operation rescue or of al qaeda. It's not about self-esteem. It's not about feeling good and safe because we've found our life purpose. It's about living from the center that we've experientially discovered in the love of God in Christ. Jesus wasn't aiming to please the mainstream. He didn't placate the masses, nor did he offer an opiate to the proletariat. He turned the world upside down. That's why the powers killed him. Not because he was nice, or cute with all those baby lambs and kids. He was dangerous, challening, radical, revolutionary, PROPHETIC! Who is veering from mainstream Christianity to please and placate the masses? Let a retired pastor like Wright rest in peace. The question we should be asking is who are we as a church following? What is it or they teaching? And is it who we should be following if they're not actually "mainstream?"

So what do you think? Am I a heretic? Am I veering from mainstream Christianity? Or is there something else going on?

Here's some articles and blogs I've read and found helpful:

"Obama's Church Pushes Controverisal Doctrines"

OK - lot's of the articles in print are no longer "findable" on the internet.

Bruce Reyes-Chow on his blog
"the promise of our ideals"

Sarah Reyes on her blog (she's been to Trinity Church)
"The Power of the Pastor"
"Have You Worshiped at Trinity UCC in Chicago?"

Ruth Villasenor pointed out that in as much as Obama's speech on race and racism was great, it left out a whole invisible people that we repeatedly overlook yet who was first living here in the land we call home:
"Include the Invisible Americans in the Debate" by Tim Giago (so good that I have to include the whole thing since I can't link you to it on the web" Thanks Ruth for the article!!!!
____________

Opinion: Include the invisible Americans in race debates

Tim Giago syndicated columnist

Published Monday, March 31, 2008

As most of us knew from the very beginning of this political season when a black man and a white woman entered the final leg of the presidential contest, gender and race would also enter the arena.

Since day one, Sen. Hillary Clinton has taken her lumps for being a woman. Sen. Barack Obama started to get his lumps last week on the heels of the comments made by his pastor Jeremiah Wright. But in the case of Obama, the Republicans chose to attack him more for what they called his lack of patriotism rather than his race. Attacking him for his race would have been much too blatant and would have been seen as overt racism.

However, the comments by the Rev. Wright about America really steamed Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and the Glen Beck of talk radio. Of the attacks on the twin towers on September 11, 2001, Wright said it was the “Chickens coming home to roost.” Instead of “God Bless America ,” Rev. Wright said it should be, “God D*** America .” Now that is like waving the red flag of anti-patriotism in the faces of the conservative talks show hosts.

Their main despair was if Barack Obama sat in the pews of this church and heard these attacks upon America , which he admitted doing, why didn’t he leave the church? Or, according to many white Americans, why didn’t he cast the Rev. Wright out of his life?

The gender thing started early in Sen. Clinton’s campaign. For instance, have you ever heard anyone on television or radio comment on the suit worn by Obama or about his hair style? There have been plenty of comments about the clothing worn by Sen. Clinton and about her hairstyles. In fact when she wore a yellow pants suit it was called her “Bumble Bee” outfit by Ingrahams. Does this say something about bringing gender into the race?

Let’s get back to the issue of race. Americans, black and white, seem to think that racial discrimination only involves African Americans. Even in his speech to dispel doubts about his connections to the Rev. Wright, Obama talked about Hispanics and Asian Americans, but he did not mention American Indians.

When it comes to race relations, Native Americans are the invisible people. Any Indian living in North or South Dakota , Montana , Idaho , Arizona or even Washington , has felt the pain and the shame of racial prejudice. It has come in the school yard, in the search for decent housing, in restaurants and department stores. When I was publisher of Indian Country Today, the paper covered the story of an Indian man suspected of shoplifting at a department store in Rapid City and how he was wrestled to the floor and humiliated by the store’s security only to find out that not only was he not shoplifting, he was also a minister in the Episcopal Church. By reporting this story my newspaper lost a very valuable advertiser. The local daily did not carry the story.

There are still many issues about race that arise nearly every week in the states I mentioned involving Indians and Whites. Several school districts in South Dakota have taken the issue to court and won. The ACLU has stood up for the rights of the Indian people across America because the state and federal courts have often been so lopsided in dealing justice to Native Americans. In many Western states there is a dual system of justice when it involves Indians.

But even in the face of bigotry and discrimination, Native Americans have continued to be among the most loyal and patriotic of any ethnic group. According to The American Legion Magazine, 181,000 Indians have served in America ’s wars; 21,947 American Indians and Alaska natives are now on active duty; 3,868 American Indians and Alaska natives are currently deployed in combat zones; 47 American Indians and Alaska natives have been killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan since the war on terror began.

For several days last year our local daily newspaper printed the names of individuals with outstanding arrest warrants. Starting with A and running to Z the daily list was tedious, but it was noted immediately by nearly every Native American reading that newspaper that the vast majority of the names listed each day were those of Native Americans. This brings up the question: Are all Native Americans prone to criminal acts or is there an awful lot of profiling going on here? Although Indians make up only 10 percent of South Dakota ’s population, nearly 33 percent incarcerated in the South Dakota State Prison are Native Americans.

I have no doubt that if either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is elected president there will be a solid review of race relations in America . I only hope that they also include the long history of racial prejudice and discrimination against America ’s smallest minority, the American Indian.