Coment Moderation Has (Alas) Finally Been Enabled

Because a few isolated individuals (not regulars at this blog) have abused the privilege to comment here, I have regrettably decided to enable comment moderation. I will post guidelines for commenting here later tonight or in the morning. In the meantime, rest assured that in the 2 1/2 or so years this blog has been up, and over the course of now over 400 posts, I can still, despite the comments that have been bounced since I started posting on Jeremiah Wright, count the number of comments I've censored on my two hands. Don't need to go to toes just yet.

So, by and large, any comment left here will be posted. But there is no such thing as an inalienable right to post on someone else's blog, and I reserve the right to post or not post comments at my discretion.

I'll post in more detail on this later, but in the meantime, if you're new here, or in need of a refresher, see this.

Wright's -Post 9-11 Sermon (in Context!)

Tom just sent me a link to this, which posts Jeremiah Wright's post 9-11 sermon, including the infamous "chickens coming home to roost" comment in context!

That same blog (Bald Eagle 08) also does the same thing for Wright's "God damn America," here

For your viewing pleasure, here's the post 9-11 sermon:

Mike Huckabee on Jeremiah Wright

Here is part of what Mike Huckabee said concerning the manufactured controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright on MSNBC's Morning Joe:

As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

(h/t: Daily Kos and Political Base.)

Obama's Speech

From Barack Obama's website.

Of Roosting Chickens

I've been attempting to avoid commenting on the manufactured "controversy" surrounding Trinity UCC in Chicago and their now retired pastor Jeremiah Wright. That church and its esteemed pastor have been dragged through the mud as a part of an ongoing attempt to smear Barack Obama as being of suspect religion. First he was painted as a Muslim, the new dangerous "other," and now as that is losing traction (by and large, anyway) we're back to that old dangerous other.

The controversy surrounding Trinity UCC - a controversy that exists solely because one of their members has a good chance to be the first black person elected president of the United States - is not about religion, though it is couched in religious language. Ultimately it is about race. It is about how white ears hear powerful black claims. It is about the inability of many whites to understand the prophetic tradition of black preaching, and the unwillingness of many whites to recognize the distance between white and black religious language, and to suspend judgment until they have the requisite grounding to properly interpret statements.

The best case in point of this concerns Rev. Wright's now infamous declaration just after 9-11. But, before I get to that statement, I want to echo these words from Rev. Otis Moss III (one of the key-note speakers at my seminary's recent Festival of Theology), who recently replace Wright as the pastor of Trinity UCC:

Dr. Wright has preached 207,792 minutes on Sunday for the past 36 years at Trinity United Church of Christ. This does not include weekday worship services, revivals and preaching engagements across America and around the globe, to ecumenical and interfaith communities. It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite.

I could not agree more. To reduce a 36 year preaching career to a few statements yanked entirely from their historical and textual contexts is at best unprofessional and grossly negligent, and the main stream media should be ashamed for their participation in the dumbing down of American racial and religious dialogue. What we're seeing is at best a lazy narrative, and at worst latent racism once again rearing its ugly head in American public life.

In the coming days I may offer posts on Black Theology (Rev. Wright was greatly influenced by James Cone, about whom I have written many times on this blog - to understand Wright's prophetic message you have to have a basic understanding of the theological presuppositions and commitments of the Cone school of Black Theology) and the prophetic tradition. Today, however, I want to narrow my focus to a single quote from Wright, because the way that this quote has been represented in American media illustrates my contention that this discourse is at least lazy, if not outright racist.

The New York Times (whose article is the most responsible journalistic treatment of the manufactured "controversy" I've encountered, as it interviews both James Cone and the University of Chicago Divinity School's legendary Dwight Hopkins, two leading voices in Black Theology, making it the only journalistic attempt I've seen to place Wright properly in his theological context) reports that just after 9-11, Jeremiah Wright preached a sermon that included:

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,

and

America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

That same Times article includes - very responsibly - Wright's explanation for those words, and how they functioned pastorally in his congregation. However, neither it nor any other source that I've seen mentions what many in Wright's congregation undoubtedly knew even as they were hearing this sermon from their seats in the sanctuary that morning: Wright was echoing Malcolm X.

In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X explains the controversy that served as the excuse used by Elijah Muhammad to silence him, which in turn was the mechanism by which he left the Nation of Islam. He was asked by Elijah Muhammad to give a speech at the Manhattan Center, shortly after the assassination of president John F. Kennedy:

The title of my speech was "God's Judgment of White America." It was a theme familiar to me, of "as you sow, so shall you reap," or how the hypocritical American white man was reaping what he had sowed.

The question-and-answer period opened, I suppose inevitably, with someone asking me, "What do you think about President Kennedy's assassination? What is your opinion?"

Without a second thought, I said what I honestly felt - that it was, as I saw it, a case of "the chickens coming home to roost." I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, finally had struck down this country's chief of state.

Malcolm X connected the assassination of president Kennedy to the violent hatred in America; in other words, to racism. Now, to white ears this sounds at first at best a reckless stretch, and at worst - well... we've seen the sorts of labels applied to Wright for saying something very similar. However, an appreciation of the historical context quickly shows that Malcolm X had a point. For instance, on the day that Kennedy was killed, the University of Tennessee - only recently integrated, with a handful of black students - had to close. Was this in commemoration? An act of remembrance for a beloved president? Was this due to collective shock that in this unstable time not even the most powerful person in the country is safe?

No. This was because there were so many white Southerners in the streets of Knoxville celebrating the death of that n- loving president. (If you don't believe me check out the brilliant new documentary on ESPN, Black Magic. It contains both first person accounts of this, and archival footage.) Across the American south there was a large, vocal minority of the white population that saw Kennedy's death as the justified result of his stance on civil rights. It was not a stretch at that time to say that racist white anger, fear, and paranoia led either directly or indirectly to Kennedy's assassination, even if such an assertion is less credible today.

In order to understand the statement by Wright quoted above, yanked as it is out of his context, you have to have some appreciation of its use of Malcolm X. Just as Malcolm X linked an American tragedy to American sin, Wright is doing the same thing. But instead of pulling a Jerry Falwell, he is coming from a very different, more prophetic tradition.

The New York Times piece linked to above provided some space for Wright to explain his words, to place them gently back into the context from which they were yanked:

Asked in an interview last March to explain the sermon, Mr. Wright said he had been questioning the country’s desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, counseling his congregants to look inward instead.

Immediately after the attacks, the country’s response was “to pay back and kill,” he said. But before it got “holier than thou,” he said, the nation should have considered how its own policies had led to the events of that day.

The quote in question from Rev. Wright, like the Malcolm X quote to which it points, has been interpreted as saying something sinister, like America deserved to be the victim of a terrorist attack, like the attack was somehow justified. But placed in this context, neither Wright nor Malcolm X are saying any such thing. They are offering explanations, not justifications. They are using their prophetic voices to note the connection between a horrific event and social, economic, and political policies that create the landscape within which that event takes place.

If America were not such a violently racist country, built on the backs of slaves, over the corpses of the native population, it may not have produced the conditions in which John F. Kennedy was killed, and in which many white racists celebrated his death. This is Malcolm X's point.

In the same vein, Wright says, "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." If we had not done this, then the necessary conditions for the attacks on September 11 may not have been met. This does not justify those attacks. But neither does it let us blindly ignore our own corporate participation in them.

This is not hate speech, it is prophetic speech, in line both with the prophets of ancient Israel and the prophetic tradition of black preaching. It may grate on our ears, but listening to it and taking it seriously may just do us a world of good.

(My next post will concern what I mean by the prophetic tradition.)

_______________________

Update: 3-19-08, 1:27 pm

Finally having some time to check on some of the blogs I like, I saw this excellent post by Liam. It is similarly concerned with Wright's statements, but does perhaps an even better job critically examining them and placing them in context. More importantly, Liam's focus is slightly broader than mine, and so he addresses multiple statements rather than the single one I parsed out here.

A Beautiful Post

I haven't been blogging lately, for the usual reasons. Add to that some logistical issues (my house was built in 1941, and the electricity to my basement office is on the fritz) and a recently intensified search for a PhD program (things are getting serious!) and I've all but abandoned the blogosphere.

But I had a little bit of goofing off time this morning, so I visited the usual suspects on my sidebar. There I find this beautiful post at Debunking Christianity. As a deeply if unconventionally religious person, I've found much of the content at that blog more than a little off-putting. It is argumentative (not such a bad thing), but in an oft antagonistic way, too often mirroring the combative evangelical strategies of the worst elements in Christian fundamentalism.

On the other hand, I have a great deal of respect for that blog's founder, John W. Loftus, who despite his occasionally prickly Internet persona, strikes me as a throughly decent and kind human being, who is also an excellent communicator and critical thinker. So, even though I often leave in a huff (especially after reading posts that John didn't write, or after reading the comments left by evangelicals attempt to convert a blog-community of atheists and agnostics) I keep returning to the site, hoping to be as pleasantly surprised as I was this morning.

The post, written by Shygetz, explores the social function of communities of faith, expressly separating that function from any creedal commitments. It does so in the form of a story about how the author - an ex-Methodist turned atheist and freethinker - and his wife - a secular Jew - joined a Unitarian Universalist congregation out of concern for the social well-being of their three year old daughter.

While I am no atheist, I appreciate the need to separate the various social and communal functions of any particular community of faith from their creedal commitments. This in part stems from my understanding of faith, which is distinct from belief, but it also comes from the deep disconnect between my own theological commitments and the various creeds of my tradition. If being part of a community of faith meant simply believing what the rest of that community confesses, all communities of faith would be both exceedingly small and theologically impoverished, and I may not be a part of any of them.

As such, I was encouraged to read Shygetz post, and happy for him that he has found a community in which he can find himself.

Check out his post.

Democrats Play the Fear Card, Too

I saw this new add from the Hillary Clinton campaign, at Political Base.



So, which candidate is using Karl Rove's playbook?

Political Links

I've been knocked out for a while with the flu-bug-from-hell, and am still a little wobbly. So, absent any coherent thoughts of my own after spending the better part of the last six days feverish, weak, and coughing my lungs out (whatever you do, don't come near me - you want no part of this) I'm posting links to a few political posts that my addled brain has found either interesting or encouraging:

Here Mark Nicholas, formerly of BluegrassReport.org (which is now once again all-but-defunct) now with Political Base, explains why Hillary Clinton has lost his vote. While Mr. Nicholas - who still considers himself a supporter and fan of former president Bill Clinton - tosses a little vitriol Hillary Clinton's way, this piece is also a somewhat belated love letter to Barack Obama. Most interestingly, he argues, "Barack Obama is the natural continuation of that Clinton legacy, not Hillary Clinton."

Evidently, while I was either unconscious or totally incoherent Tuesday night, Texas state Senator Kirk Watson appeared on CNN in support of Barack Obama. Well intentioned, no doubt, but... Let's just say, with friends like these...

Sen. Watson's performance was a disaster, as many have noted. When asked to produce a single one of Obama's legislative accomplishments, he could not. This reinforced the myth (here I mean, more strongly, the colloquial lie) that Obama is all style, no substance. In response, Michael Westmoreland-White at Kentucky Fried Politics offers this partial list of Obama's accomplishments.

On the same subject, Jack Turner of Jack and Jill Politics has an even more comprehensive message on Barack Obama's experience. Included is a two-part strategy for how to be helpful when responding to the criticism that Barack Obama has no substance:

1. Demonstrate that he does have substance (both Turner and Westmoreland-White's posts do this), and

2. Flip the question.

Turner notes that appearing on behalf of Sen. Clinton, Stephanie Tubbs Jones did no better outlining legislative accomplishments than Kirk Watson did for Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, unless you've been trapped in a cave like me, you've probably seen that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is getting some questions about his relationship with a blonde lobbyist. Sorry. No link, and no comment. God knows there are enough reasons not to vote for McCain, who recently reversed his courageous stand against torture, without a sex scandal. Having sold his once maverick soul to win the GOP bid that had always eluded him, I don't care what he did or didn't do with this or any woman (or man). In my moral calculus, sex has nothing on supporting the perpetuation of an unjust war, and removing limitations on conduct within that already unjust war.

So long, Straight Talk Express.

(For more on the once-noble McCain and torture, see here.)

Quote On Christianity and "Empire," Plus Reflections

Sorry I've been mostly AWOL of late, breaking my blogging fast only on occasion, merely to post Obama video clips.

I've been reworking some of my theological and academic projects, and such work can't be broken down in a nice and neat way for this blog. This blog started as a response to my own (accidental) participation in the "culture wars," and the content here has reflected that. While I grew up an evangelical Christian, I also grew up a liberal Democrat, and that created and interesting dichotomy from which to write. Additionally, my brief experiences as a pastor, and especially the abuse I took from a congregation that led to my resignation from ministry (and nearly, for a time, to the dissolution of my marriage) motivated me to write out my peculiar theological take on hot-button social issues.

While I have yet another post on abortion and scripture (an exegesis of Exodus 21:12-27, focusing on verse 22) outlined and ready to go, I can't bring myself to write it, much less post it. Why? Frankly, I'm tired of that conversation. It isn't getting us anywhere.

Many of the conversations that have happened here over the years have been the same way. Though I've loved them, at their best they serve merely to provide some relatively safe arena in which those on the left and the right rehearse their best arguments. There's a place for that, no doubt. That place may even be here. But I simply haven't been able to get up for those conversations lately.

Neither have I been able to get up for conversations concerning the role and authority of scripture, or principles of Biblical interpretation. And while I still hold that religious language is principally metaphorical, and that faith is a condition of radical dependency and a commitment to a comprehensive way of life rather that the ability to articulate intellectual agreement with speculative propositions, there really are only so many blog posts I can squeeze out of that.

Meanwhile, I've been cruising toward graduation wondering what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Least importantly, but most pertinent to this conversation, I've been wondering how I'm going to spend my academic life. One of my advisers tells me that at some point I'm simply going to have to drop anchor somewhere. But where? That question, far more than any of the artificially hot-button social issues that comprise the so-called "culture wars" that I've been fighting in and commenting on, has been burning in my brain.

To wit, I've been working on two separate thesis ideas, with one question navigating the treacherous waters between them: Am a philosophic theologian, or a theological ethicist? Of course, both of those rest on contrived distinctions created in an academic climate that favors specialism to the detriment, I would argue, of authentic theology (that is, theology that refuses to be sequestered into its own little corner of the academy). But, in the meantime, my friend who counseled me to "drop anchor" is right. I probably can't learn everything about anything, but I certainly can't learn everything about everything.

So I'm trying to choose between an overtly philosophic thesis that uses, among others, William James, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Alfred North Whitehead to speak to the relationship between religion and science, and an overtly ethical thesis that explores the history of Christian reflection on violence, especially revolutionary violence.

That overtly ethical thesis idea, you might guess, started with a post here on James Cone's defense of revolutionary violence. But as I study more, I'm beginning to notice that the way I've laid out the topic for myself, narrowly looking at Christian tools for resisting oppression and empire (which go hand in hand) especially concerning the moral permissibility of violence is flawed in two related ways: First, it is too limited, and second, it fails to understand the nuanced nature of empire and oppressive power differentials. Consider this quote (which made me jump up and down, and then run to the computer to break my unintentional blogging fast) by Joerg Rieger, from his essay "Christian Theology and Empires" from the book that he helped edit, Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians:

The fact that despite widespread initial support among the population some churches and bishops in the United States opposed this war [that is, the US invasion of Iraq - CB] might be seen as a sign that the empire can never completely control Christianity.

Yet this rejection of war is not enough because the methods of empire have changed dramatically. War is not the only problem and perhaps not even the primary one; war has not been particularly effective in recent history and many of its supporters have become disillusioned. The deeper problem has to do with more covert expressions of economic and cultural power which drive broad processes of globalization.

So what?

Broadly, this means that violence isn't the whole picture, and perhaps isn't even the biggest part of the picture. Violence is only one of many forms that coercive power manifests, and isn't always particularly effective. And any Christian ethic of resistance has to be concerned with much more than just the ethics of violence- whether it be criticizing oppression as a form of violence or reflecting on the moral permissibility of the oppressed responding violently to the violent oppression.

My task then, if I choose the theological ethics route, is to reflect on what tools Christian theological reflection has for responding to the complex phenomena of empire, oppression, and power differentials. The biggest tool, however, that I think Christian theological reflection (or any theological reflection - this claim is by no means limited to Christianity) has to offer is this: a prophetic refusal to allow the broad spectrum of human goods to be reduced purely to economics.

More on that later, as that is a rich sentence that needs to be unpacked.

Oprah on Obama

Looks like my blog is turning into Obama Central...

I just saw this video at Jack and Jill Politics. There are a number of juicy sound-bites, but my favorite is this:

I would never vote for anyone based on gender or race. I'm not voting for Barack Obama because he's black; I'm voting for Barack Obama because he's brilliant!