A defense of Obama’s church and minister

A lot has been said in recent weeks about Senator Barack Obama’s religion and his church, Trinity United Church of Christ. Even some of Obama’s political aides have reportedly referred to the “inflammatory rhetoric” of the church’s pastor, The Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I haven’t heard too many defenses of Wright or Trinity in the mainstream media honestly so when I noticed this one I decided to blog about it to encourage dialogue, even though I’m not for Obama and don’t necessarily agree with it.

One of my high school classmates, Kesha Boyce Williams, has written a defense of Wright and Trinity UCC.

Excerpts:

Rev. Wright is a prophet. And prophets are not often heralded for speaking the truth. True prophets are not popular, especially in their own communities and countries. That is not why they speak.

Prophets speak so that peoples consciousness may be awakened. True prophets say what God tells them to say and often it is not what people want to hear.

I digress…

I was a member of Trinity when I lived in Chicago. People who attack the church without having experienced Trinity are missing the whole point.

Trinity elevates the community.
Trinity encourages OUR children.
Trinity strengthens OUR marriages.
Trininty honors OUR elders.
Trinity celebrates our heritage.

And it is not that we celebrate in the disrespect of anyone else. Some of the most beautiful worship experiences I’ve had in my life were at Trinity. To be there when they dedicated the babies in the period African ritual was a sight to be seen. A community of new children being lifted to the sky and anointed to deal with the bitter, sweet and rich of life as the congregation celebrated.

Trinity is being attacked because of its belief system. It is all over the Internet. Read some of the comments connected to these news stories and you will see TRUE VENOM. People are attacking Trinity’s black value system, but not attacking the larger structure that CREATES THE NEED FOR IT. More on the black value system here http://www.tucc.org/talking_points.htm.

[…]

A church is a family. That’s why everyone calls each other brother and
sister (and that goes beyond black churches - other churches do it to).

Trinity is a family. If you attack my brother, you attack me. And if
this church can be attacked, any church can. Believe that.

The bar continues to shift (as Sis. Michelle Obama says). Sen. Barack Obama is being held to a higher level of scrutiny because he is a black man in America who is LEADING the Democratic nomination.

On the flip side, it is good he has haters, because haters make you better in the long run. His first name means BLESSED and he will continue to be. If he is meant to be President of the United States and it has already been pre-ordained by someone higher than all of us, there ain’t nothing anybody can do about it.

And even if he doesn’t become President of the United States, we still need the ministry and community commitment of Trinity and churches like it and we still need prophets who speak the truth and not the popular.

From Kesha’s blog:

Kesha Boyce Williams has been an award-winning journalist and interactive professional for more than 12 years. She’s written for The Charlotte Observer, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis) and the Times-Union (Jacksonville). She’s managed Web sites for a variety of corporations and non-profit organizations. A Laurens, S.C. native, she currently resides in the Midwest, but has a heart in the Diaspora. She’s the proud wife of Zachery Williams, publisher of The Black Public Intellectual online magazine.

Kesha’s note is a reply to the ABC News report that has garnered a lot of attention this week.

Some excerpts from that report:

[…]

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

“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, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.

[…]

Rev. Wright, who announced his retirement last month, has built a large and loyal following at his church with his mesmerizing sermons, mixing traditional spiritual content and his views on contemporary issues.

“I wouldn’t call it radical. I call it being black in America,” said one congregation member outside the church last Sunday.

“He has impacted the life of Barack Obama so much so that he wants to portray that feeling he got from Rev. Wright onto the country because we all need something positive,” said another member of the congregation.

Rev. Wright, who declined to be interviewed by ABC News, is considered one of the country’s 10 most influential black pastors, according to members of the Obama campaign.

Obama has praised at least one aspect of Rev. Wright’s approach, referring to his “social gospel” and his focus on Africa, “and I agree with him on that.”

Sen. Obama declined to comment on Rev. Wright’s denunciations of the United States, but a campaign religious adviser, Shaun Casey, appearing on “Good Morning America” Thursday, said Obama “had repudiated” those comments.

In a statement to ABCNews.com, Obama’s press spokesman Bill Burton said, “Sen. Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they’re offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church. Sen. Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Sen. Obama deeply disagrees. But now that he is retired, that doesn’t detract from Sen. Obama’s affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done.”

Other responses
James Joyner (who I finally met the other night along with Matt of Blackfive):

Obama’s association with Wright is, one might reasonably conclude, closer and of longer duration than McCain’s with Hagee and Parsley. But I have shrugged off all these stories along with those about Obama’s association with Tony Rezko and McCain’s relationship with Rick Renzi (indeed, I’ve conflated Rezko and Renzi in my mind and had to look them up) for the simple reason that they don’t seem to shed much light on the candidates.

Do any of us believe that Obama or McCain are secretly conspiracy theorists who have repressed a lot of whacky ideas? Or that, even if they actually believed this nonsense, they’d try to enact it into policy? Of course not.

Unfortunately, the process of building a winning national coalition means appealing to some unsavory types. Politicians walk a fine line when accepting endorsements from these people and expecting them to denounce every nutty idea any of their supporters might harbor is asking too much.

That’s not to say that the words of Hagee, Parsley, Wright and others aren’t worth looking into. They’re influentials who voice — and shape — opinions that many Americans have. Understanding that the shared consensus of polite society is not universal is worthwhile and illuminating. But we should stop short of assuming guilt by association.

Carpetbagger Report:

Perhaps, but there is a key difference — Obama has denounced Wright’s more extreme statements and made clear he “deeply disagrees” with the offensive remarks. McCain prefers to pretend that Hagee’s and Parsley’s extremism is innocuous and barely worth commenting on.

Nevertheless, expect to hear quite a bit more about Jeremiah Wright. It might cause the number of people who believe Obama’s a Muslim to go down, but it may simultaneously drive the number of people who believe Obama’s a Christian black nationalist to go up.

The Campaign Spot:

Jeremiah Wright says during his sermon, regarding Obama, “he ain’t white, he ain’t rich, and he ain’t privileged.”

Some may quibble with that description. Obama’s mother was white, the Obamas’ income hit $1.7 million in 2005 and $991,000 in 2006, and he went to Columbia University and Harvard Law School.

Michelle Malkin

Now we know where Michelle Obama’s resentment of America comes from

Hot Air

Exit question one, courtesy of Tom Maguire: Does the candidate bring his kids to church to listen to this? And exit question two, via Kaus: What, precisely, makes Andrew Sullivan’s grasp of Obama’s post-racial appeal any more or less objectionable than Geraldine Ferraro’s?

Be sure to Digg this post.

Other blogging/coverage:
Hot Air
The Moderate Voice
Town Hall
LGF
Instapundit
No Quarter
Confederate Yankee