Rev. Wright Gets a Bad Rap
DC underground strikes again:
For those of you who think Reverend Wright is a off his rocker, read the following before condemning him on a couple of sound bites. He has given his life to the service of his fellow man.
Excerpts from Rev. Jeremiah Wright Interview with Bill Moyers which will air tomorrow night on PBS. This is the first major Wright interview since the Obama "controversy" broke last month.
REVEREND WRIGHT:The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand thecommunication perfectly. When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose andput constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public,that's not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that arecommunicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as somesort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from the New York Timescalled me, a "wackadoodle." It's to paint me as something: "Something's wrong with me. There'snothing wrong with this country...for its policies. We're perfect. Our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them." That's not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the soundbites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.
BILL MOYERS:What do you think they wanted to communicate?
REVEREND WRIGHT:I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I amun-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult atTrinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to hischurch, hint, hint, hint? That's what they wanted to communicate. They know nothing about the church. They know nothing about our prisonministry. They know nothing about our food ministry. They know nothingabout our senior citizens home. They know nothing about all we try todo as a church and have tried to do, and still continue to do as achurch that believes what Martin Marty said, that the two worlds have tobe together. And that the gospel of Jesus Christ has to speak to those worlds, not only in terms of the preached message on a Sunday morningbut in terms of the lived-out ministry throughout the week.
BILL MOYERS:What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound bitescirculating as they did?
REVEREND WRIGHT:I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. Ifelt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very deviousreasons.
BILL MOYERS:Did you ever imagine that you would come to personify the black angerthat so many whites fear?
REVEREND WRIGHT:No. I did not. I've been preaching since I was ordained 41 years ago.I pointed out to some of the persons in Chicago who are in all of this,new to them that the stance I took in standing against apartheid alongwith our denomination back in the '70s, and putting a "Free SouthAfrica" sign in front of the church put me at odds with the government.Our denomination's defense of the Wilmington Ten and Ben Chavis put meat odds with the establishment. So, being at odds with policies isnothing new to me.
The blowup and the blowing up of sermons preached 15, seven, six yearsago and now becoming a media event, not the full sermon, but thesnippets from the sermon and sound bite having made me the target ofhatred, yes, that is something very new and something very, veryunsettling.
BILL MOYERS:Here is a man who came to see you 20 years ago. Wanted to know aboutthe neighborhood. Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion.He sought you out because he knew you knew about the community. You ledhim to the faith. You performed his wedding ceremony. You baptized his two children. Youwere, for 20 years, his spiritual counsel. He has said that. And, yet,he, in that speech at Philadelphia, had to say some hard things aboutyou. How did those words...how did it go down with you when you heard Barack Obama say those things?
REVEREND WRIGHT:It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak totwo different audiences. And he says what he has to say as apolitician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they're twodifferent worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened inPhiladelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded asa politician.
BILL MOYERS:In the 20 years that you've been his pastor, have you ever heard himrepeat any of your controversial statements as his opinion?
REVEREND WRIGHT:No. No. No. Absolutely not.
I don't talk to him about politics. And so he had a political event, hegoes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. Icontinue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of God about the thingsof God.
Some observations
McSame was being criticized for his embrace of the Christian Right, especially wack jobs like Hagee, Parsley, and Robertson, his strong supporters who set up rallies for him regularly. The positions these guys espouse daily are not the positions of the Christ, e.g., assassinate Chevez, New Orleans deserved the hurricane let them rot, The Catholic Church is the anti-Christ, lets help Israel bring on the end of the world. To get these inconvenient little issues off the table the Rovian folks at McSame headquarters went over years of sermons and the teachings in church bulletins on social justice until they found a few lines they could use. They assume the American people have no judgment and a grain of sand will cancel out a boulder. Why not assume that, it did in 2004. The swift boat boys convinced us that a rich draft dodger was equal to a Viet Nam war hero.
For those of you who think Reverend Wright is a off his rocker, read the following before condemning him on a couple of sound bites. He has given his life to the service of his fellow man.
Excerpts from Rev. Jeremiah Wright Interview with Bill Moyers which will air tomorrow night on PBS. This is the first major Wright interview since the Obama "controversy" broke last month.
REVEREND WRIGHT:The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand thecommunication perfectly. When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose andput constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public,that's not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that arecommunicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as somesort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from the New York Timescalled me, a "wackadoodle." It's to paint me as something: "Something's wrong with me. There'snothing wrong with this country...for its policies. We're perfect. Our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them." That's not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the soundbites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.
BILL MOYERS:What do you think they wanted to communicate?
REVEREND WRIGHT:I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I amun-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult atTrinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to hischurch, hint, hint, hint? That's what they wanted to communicate. They know nothing about the church. They know nothing about our prisonministry. They know nothing about our food ministry. They know nothingabout our senior citizens home. They know nothing about all we try todo as a church and have tried to do, and still continue to do as achurch that believes what Martin Marty said, that the two worlds have tobe together. And that the gospel of Jesus Christ has to speak to those worlds, not only in terms of the preached message on a Sunday morningbut in terms of the lived-out ministry throughout the week.
BILL MOYERS:What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound bitescirculating as they did?
REVEREND WRIGHT:I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. Ifelt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very deviousreasons.
BILL MOYERS:Did you ever imagine that you would come to personify the black angerthat so many whites fear?
REVEREND WRIGHT:No. I did not. I've been preaching since I was ordained 41 years ago.I pointed out to some of the persons in Chicago who are in all of this,new to them that the stance I took in standing against apartheid alongwith our denomination back in the '70s, and putting a "Free SouthAfrica" sign in front of the church put me at odds with the government.Our denomination's defense of the Wilmington Ten and Ben Chavis put meat odds with the establishment. So, being at odds with policies isnothing new to me.
The blowup and the blowing up of sermons preached 15, seven, six yearsago and now becoming a media event, not the full sermon, but thesnippets from the sermon and sound bite having made me the target ofhatred, yes, that is something very new and something very, veryunsettling.
BILL MOYERS:Here is a man who came to see you 20 years ago. Wanted to know aboutthe neighborhood. Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion.He sought you out because he knew you knew about the community. You ledhim to the faith. You performed his wedding ceremony. You baptized his two children. Youwere, for 20 years, his spiritual counsel. He has said that. And, yet,he, in that speech at Philadelphia, had to say some hard things aboutyou. How did those words...how did it go down with you when you heard Barack Obama say those things?
REVEREND WRIGHT:It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak totwo different audiences. And he says what he has to say as apolitician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they're twodifferent worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened inPhiladelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded asa politician.
BILL MOYERS:In the 20 years that you've been his pastor, have you ever heard himrepeat any of your controversial statements as his opinion?
REVEREND WRIGHT:No. No. No. Absolutely not.
I don't talk to him about politics. And so he had a political event, hegoes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. Icontinue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of God about the thingsof God.
Some observations
McSame was being criticized for his embrace of the Christian Right, especially wack jobs like Hagee, Parsley, and Robertson, his strong supporters who set up rallies for him regularly. The positions these guys espouse daily are not the positions of the Christ, e.g., assassinate Chevez, New Orleans deserved the hurricane let them rot, The Catholic Church is the anti-Christ, lets help Israel bring on the end of the world. To get these inconvenient little issues off the table the Rovian folks at McSame headquarters went over years of sermons and the teachings in church bulletins on social justice until they found a few lines they could use. They assume the American people have no judgment and a grain of sand will cancel out a boulder. Why not assume that, it did in 2004. The swift boat boys convinced us that a rich draft dodger was equal to a Viet Nam war hero.
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