If I believe all that I hear lately, Barack Obama, whose being Muslim has been well documented on countless blogs and talk shows over the last year or so, somehow has a pastor [or, more correctly, until recently had a pastor] at some strange mosque in Chicago called the Trinity United Church of Christ. “Trinity,” “church,” and “Christ” seem like strange words to be in the name of a mosque, but I am not an expert on Islam.
Maybe a “pastor” is some special kind of imam.
This “pastor,” Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, jr. baptized Mr. Obama several years ago and also officiated at his marriage and baptized his children.
I am not sure where baptism sits among the Muslim rites, but as I said, I am not an expert on Islam.
I do know something about a Christian denomination called the “United Church of Christ” [UCC] which is a predominantly white Protestant denomination. I have been a member of one of its congregations since 1968 and at one time was actually a student at one of the denomination’s theological seminaries.
I have heard many of their mostly white, male, and straight clergypeople and I have heard several who were not white or not male or not straight. I have read articles and position statements from the denomination’s people, both clergy and lay.
The things which Dr. Wright is quoted as saying may be surprising but if the Trinity United Church of Christ were indeed a Christian body like the other congregations who use the UCC label, instead of the secret mosque it must be, the comments certainly would not seem shocking when one considers that the entire denomination seems to be extremely tolerant of strangeness and does not seem to have any conception of heresy.
Dr. Wright has apparently said, “God damn America” as part of a sermon. Isn’t that what white Baptist Phelps is essentially saying when he brings his strident pickets to military funerals? No. actually Phelps is saying that God is already damning America. CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT. In fact I can think of a lot of situations in which religious figures, clergy or lay, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish might string those three words together in the right context
Dr. White was senior pastor at Trinity mosque for over thirty years. He must have delivered a lot of sermons or messages or lessons or whatever they’re called. Why not look at a little more before rushing to judgment? The membership of his church at the time of his recent retirement was almost one hundred times what it was when he started there. Considering that people are constantly dying, moving, and changing faiths, to move a church from 80 to 8,000 probably meant that at least 12,000 people must have joined Trinity Church while he was there, yet nobody outside Illinois and the religious community ever seemed to hear of him. Whatever he was doing must not have been too scary or somebody would have “outed” him earlier, and if Obama were truly a good politician he would have had an earlier opportunity to run away.
Somehow a lot of our leading people say outrageous or stupid things and still stay respectable. Andrew Young said that the British had invented racism, but somehow he stayed respectable and was confirmed to be our Ambassador to the United Nations and later served as mayor of a major American city. [Of course the claim was not accurate, since there are no new sins and racism was around before there were British, but it was only mild hyperbole since the British have done a lot to perfect racism.] W went to Bob Jones University, a school whose president once called on God to strike President Reagan and Secretary of State Haig dead for establishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and praised the Reagan legacy and he went on to be appointed president. Jimmy Carter stumbled over “ethnic purity.” In a 1976 debate, Gerald Ford, the sitting president running behind in the polls, said that he did not think Poland was under Soviet influence, yet was gaining on Carter in the polls up until election day. It used to be common for the American people to judge a man or woman by a broader context than we sometimes are tempted to do in this news-, but not necessarily well-compiled or placed in context news-obsessed society.
I don’t know who [if anybody] I will be supporting in November. Actually, I find national politics not particularly important sometimes. However, I am impressed with Senator Obama’s handling of this matter. He seems to have acknowledged the goodness of Dr. Wright and appreciated his work while giving his own perspectives on race and faith. He has not shoved Wright off into some kind of limbo as President Clinton did with Zoe Baird or Lani Guinier or his Arkansas friends involved with Whitewater.
I know Obama is an Ivy League lawyer and politician and I would expect him to be a persuasive speaker and I am sure that these things helped him, but he does seem to show a sincerity on racial matters that we don’t see often, if ever.
And if you drive by a building and see that it hosts a United Church of Christ, don’t assume that it is a mosque with a cross on it.
Posts
4 comments:
You aren’t very persuasive that you think we swallowed that Muslim stuff and you may be (to use one of your words) harping on that too much, but it is interesting how we aren’t hearing that the Senator is some secret agent of Islam any more.
I really wonder if when this isn’t over, that Barack will wonder if he wouldn’t be better off actually being Muslim.
Cherokee Park lawyer
I think Obamma should be given credit for choosing his church for personal, religious reasons. I don’t know how many other politicians do that. Can you imagine Hillary or McCane going to a church that offered any thing that questioned the prevailing society?
They'd be too chicken.
Hazel Park from Highland Park
Well, Hillary said that she wouldn’t be a member of Barack’s church or have his pastor, that you can’t chose your relatives, but you can choose your church. I think Obama should be commended for his choice, then. Hazel Park is right. She wouldn’t have the nerve to join any church which would shake her up or teach her anything. That’s not wrong, necessarily, since not everything that every church teaches is right, but it is a sign of the bland religiousness that most politicians have.
Midway Barb
I imagine that all three of you have points. While I really don’t think that Barack will wish he really were Muslim before this is all over, I guess we cannot say for sure. And it does seem that almost all the major politicians I can remember have attended services primarily for the symbolism that such attendance gives and, while they sometimes make Biblical references in speech, few of them have ever let it be known their religious sentiments have affected by what they have said or done.
However, to be fair to the politicians who have attachments to bland churches, we tend to become uneasy when somebody whose religious affiliation seems too visible becomes a seriously considered for President. The people in the media had a cow when Baptist Jimmy Carter had become destined to get his party’s nomination in 1976. There were even people who wondered if Quaker Richard Nixon could effectively make war and peace decisions since Quakers are traditionally pacifist. [I suppose that the question might have been more รข propos had Nixon been a good Quaker, but by 1968 it should have been obvious that he wasn’t. Of course he still made wrong decisions in war/peace matters.]
Of course it would make no sense for Hillary to go to Obama’s church since she doesn’t live in Chicago. But part of what HIllary says scares me.
How many steps is it between questioning somebody’s church and questioning whether one’s clergyperson should be a pastor instead of a priest or a priest instead of a rabbi or a rabbi instead of an imam?
Post a Comment