It's so rare that a clergyperson ever makes news that I thought it would at least behoove me to make a comment or two about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his (former) congregant, presidential candidate Barack Obama. I do it from the perspective of a pastor. And I'll warn you up front--I'm sympathetic to Wright.A relationship between a pastor and a member of their congregation is a funny thing. We're not friends (although we might well be friendly). I don't presume that they agree with everything that I say or do. I presume that sometimes they think I'm ridiculous or way off-base in things I say or write. I presume that sometimes they think I'm just plain boring and can't wait until I'm done yammering away.
But as their pastor, I do presume that they know that I care about them as a human being. I presume that they know that I am interested in them and want what's best for them (assessed, of course, within the frame of our shared faith). I presume they know that I try my best to love them. If they ever get the sense that I don't really love them--or I don't love them in the ways they need to be loved by a pastor, they will probably go away... and this happens quite often.
I also presume my congregants accept me as their pastor because they trust my sense and knowledge of God. Obviously, no pastor has a monopoly on knowledge of God, but in the same way that one can generally trust a history teacher to have a good grasp of history, congregants trust that I have a fair to middlin' knowledge of the God of the Bible AND what it might mean to live a life as though that God were real. If congregants were to ever stop believing that I knew something of what I was talking about with respect to God, they would go to another church and find someone who was better at it than I. The same principle holds for a doctor, a lawyer, a mani/pedi person, whomever. If they're not doing the job, you find a new one. It's a religious marketplace out there.
That's the extent of the pastoral relationship.
Barack Obama sat at the feet of Jeremiah Wright for a long time and learned from him. My guess is that he did it for two reasons:
1. Wright loved him
2. Wright taught him some essential truths about God.
Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding pastor. By all accounts, he is warm and personal, funny and intelligent. He is deeply aware of the God of the Bible and what it means to live as though that God is real. Wright is aware of the God who is a Liberator of oppressed people. Obama, for many years, needed that God in his work as a community organizer for low-income black folk and as a State Senator in Illinois representing the same constituents.
Jeremiah Wright is passionate and opinionated. He has staked his ministry and his life on the idea that God is ALWAYS with oppressed people--but not just in general. God, for Wright, is present with and for the historically oppressed and disenfranchised residents of Chicago's South Side. Wright, as every pastor should, makes God's love and solidarity more than just a general, abstract principle--he makes it come alive within a specific socio-political context.
Wright's ministry and vision of God once gave Obama's community organizing and political work essential strength and moral depth. Now, Obama realizes that Wright's highly contextualized ministry looks racially polarizing to the wider world. Obama may still agree with what Wright is doing in Chicago, but because he envisions himself as a political figure who can unify Americans along historical divides such as race, he can't afford a relationship with Wright anymore. Obama doesn't have time to try to explain to white America what it's like to live and exist and maintain faith as a black person on the South Side of Chicago. His only expedient move was to disown Wright. A bit Machiavellian, or expedient, or cowardly, if you ask me... but totally understandable, too. Obama believes a greater good is served by his presidency than by defending Wright's ministry.
But should anyone be denigrating Wright? If you've ever read the Bible and lived in a poor black neighborhood, you know that Jeremiah Wright both speaks the truth about the God of the Bible and applies it incredibly well for the people in his own context. Speaking through the mouthpiece of the national media, he tried to speak the truth about life in his community and about the God he knows to whomever would listen. But the frosty reception he received, not only by his former congregant, but also by the liberal media, reveals that America simply wants to "get beyond" the racial divide without acknowledging that it still exists as a wound in our nation's life. And for Obama's part, Wright's contextualized understanding of the truth about God, poor people, and power--which was once, for him, so life-giving, begins to sound quite different--and more threatening--the closer to power he gets.
Obama, sadly, needs another pastor--perhaps one whose ministry embodies Galatians 3:28 rather than the Exodus. Wright's vision is no longer what candidate Obama can afford. But isn't that what always happens with American Christianity? The wealthier and more powerful the believer, the more sanitary and safe the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ becomes? I hope and pray, for the sake of this nation, that if there is a President Obama, he doesn't distance himself from the God to which Jeremiah Wright first introduced him. He may not feel he needs the pastor anymore, but our nation--and our world--need a God with special care for the dispossessed. We need that God very much. Maybe more than we need a President Obama.
Well, I think what caused the break was the Rev. Wright's performance (I choose that word deliberately) at the National Press Club luncheon. It was egotistical performance art. The Rev. Wright had a smirk on his face as he answered questions in a flippant way. He was clearly enjoying the uproar he was causing. It was all about him, him, him. It was not about ministry.
ReplyDeleteRev Wright seemed to me to be a John the Baptist-seemingly out there, crazy and wild eating locuts and honey screaming that "the rough way will be made smooth" and raging against the machine shaking his fists.
ReplyDeleteIt is easy to dismiss him as a nut. He is so passionite. How wonderful it would be if we had that kind of passion, whether we agree with him or not. I certainly can disagree with a lot of what was said, but as a black american I can understand his frustration, and find kernals of truth that hit home in my heart.
It is a shame that to move forward with his campaign, America has forced Obama to cast aside a man who meant so much to his spiritual life. To have stayed by the Rev. Wrights' side(though the moral thing to do) would have been career suicide.
The problem with Rev. Wright isn't that he's wrong, or too passionate. The problem is that he doesn't understand how to adapt his message to a different audience. He is used to communicating with an audience who looks to him for meaning and clarity. He doesn't understand that the broader audience he is now addressing (and the impetus for his new-found fame outside of his church) isn't looking to him for leadership, it's looking to him for controversy. His new audience doesn't care what great deeds his church has done, or get impressed by his knowledge of the Bible or black history, it wants to hear him say things that are even remotely divisive. And he obliges, because he lacks either the rhetorical skill or the social awareness to know how to adapt his message for his new audience.
ReplyDeleteThe irony, of course, is that Barack Obama is where he is in large part because he does have that ability. He understands that, while there is a place for people like Rev. Wright in the cause of oppressed peoples, it is not people like Rev. Wright who ultimately succeed in making progress against oppression. I don't believe for a second that Obama, privately, feels any different about Rev. Wright's message now than he did years ago, no matter what he says. I believe that he understands, however, that in order to take Rev. Wright's message to the masses, that in order to produce REAL change, the message needs to be delivered in a different way. Unity is the foundation of his campaign.
The great irony is that history is repeating itself before our eyes. Rev. Wright is following squarely in the footsteps of another person whose lifetime of good deeds and hard work nevertheless eventually undermined the very person who could have put his life's work into action. That person, too, didn't understand that the way to influence true change in the masses isn't to get up on a soapbox and lecture, it's to influence events such that people who are sympathetic to your cause come into a position of power, even if it means altering the message (and even the style of the message) you have been delivering all your life. The other person I speak of is Ralph Nader. It would be a tremendous shame if, like Nader, Rev. Wright's words ultimately serve to undermine the one person who truly has the capacity to deliver change in the country over the next four years.