Incendiary Distillations

I took the time last night to watch Bill Moyer’s Journal, something I rarely do, but last night the guest star was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I saw very little about his appearance or the replay of his now infamous sermons I viewed as objectionable. His angst over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I disagreed with, of course, but his views are not that uncommon. Some of his other nuttiness was also unfortunate. By the same token, this man is not, remember, the man who is running for President.

Nor, as I have said repeatedly, are his utterances any less vile than those of, say, the late Reverend Falwell, Pat Robertson, Bob Jones, or James Dobson. One of these days, I might make one of those two column quizzes where you match the statement to the correct minister, under the heading-

GOD WILL DAMN AMERICA BECAUSE

The numbers of given reasons could be significant.

A. Abortion
B. Homosexuality (and increasing tolerance of same)
C. Our sex-obsessed culture in television, movies, etc.
D. Our historical sins (slavery, abuse of the Indians, etc.)
E. Our arrogance and avarice in the world
F. Unjust wars

These are a pretty even mix of conservative and liberal thought, each one as valid as the other in some respects, and in other respects, every bit as invalid-assuming of course there is even a God who cares enough to damn us in the first place.

I saw enough to be left with the impression that this man is not a hater, he just believes what he believes (albeit wrongly in some cases, in my view) and feels compelled to express what he feels is God’s POV. His reasons come not from his own prejudices and preconceptions, but directly from the Bible, by the way-or at least according to his interpretation of the Bible.

He even hinted mildly that God might have allowed slavery to transpire for some greater good. To justify this position, he reminded us of the old story from Genesis about how Jacob’s brothers sold him into Egyptian slavery due to their jealousy over the favored status in which their father held him.

Joseph rose in power in Egypt, and thus found himself in the position of delivering aid to his father and brothers-the same ones who earlier sold him into slavery-by allowing them to enter Egypt when a famine cursed the land of Canaan, where they dwelled at that time as foreign immigrants.

That is quite unusual, I am thinking. Note he was not justifying slavery, merely giving an example of how God might make lemonade out of some very sour lemons. Usually, white preachers are the ones who make the point that God wanted black people brought here. You usually here how they were collectively better off here than there, or at least over time were certainly better off than are their African cousins-especially in this day and time of constant warfare, tribal based violence, and rampant starvation and disease, all of which seems unfortunately consistent occurrences within the dark continent.

According to Jeremiah Wright, he first met Obama when the latter approached him for help getting to know the various movers and shakers in the neighborhood. He was not a Christian-nor, for that matter, was he a Muslim, as is also falsely claimed by many today. He was just a man with no true belief system. Wright converted him to Christianity from what seems to have been the position of a religious skeptic.

Wright is an interesting man. Whatever your take on his beliefs, he is certainly a scholar of the Bible, and is well versed in the history of his people, especially as pertains to their religious journey here in America. One thing he said knocked me over with its simplicity, and yet, its common sense.

The slave owners and slave traders, he said, worshiped a different God than the one worshiped by Africans, in their chains down in the bottom of the ship. Wow! What a profound statement. This had nothing to do with differences in outer religious beliefs. This is just a simple fact. Were all the Africans Christians, of whatever denomination, it would be just as true as if they had just completed a sacrifice of their oldest child to Moloch.

For this reason, Wright did not enter the profession of Christian ministry easily, or without serious reservations. He understood how white people expected blacks to worship, from the earliest times, according to the cultural dictates and norms of white European society. The style of singing, the musical instruments favored, should fit into mainstream Christianity. In America, the transition over time to natural cultural expression was not as difficult as it was perhaps in Europe.

In American white churches, you get gospel music. In American black churches, you get jazz and the blues. White churches sing somberly and piously. Blacks sing raucously and exuberantly. They also dance, by the way, and stamp their feet and clap their hands and pretty much party down. Few white churches act in this manner, though there are some that do to at least a degree. Blacks that act like whites in church, by contrast, are pretty much members in good standing within majority white churches.

There has been a lot of angst over Wright’s appearance in Moyer’s show on PBS, beginning well before the program aired last night at ten o’ clock pm. It was widely assumed that this would further hurt Obama by keeping the controversy in the news. Actually, what damage the sound bites from Wright’s sermons did to Obama’s campaign was at the time and perhaps still are permanent, and could and might yet only get worse as the general election unfolds. Wright’s appearance might not help Obama, but on the other hand, it couldn’t hurt.

If God damns America, for whatever reason, don’t blame Wright. We will have no one to blame but ourselves. Whether Wright is right or wrong, about the particular reasons for God’s wrath, is an all-together different issue, and perhaps just another matter of opinion. There are many valid reasons to vote for Barak Obama, and many valid reasons to vote against him. The words of this minister is not a reason to vote either for or against him.

I think it might be appropriate to end this with the words of Fredrick Douglas, courtesy of Howling Latina-

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour."

Ah, but we have come a long way, haven't we?