So how do you respond to the Jeremiah Wright episode? Most pastors would be thrilled to discover that after one's retirement from pastoral ministry millions of people watch videotaped excerpts of their sermons. Wright probably isn't thrilled.

The broadcast on YouTube of excerpts from some of Wright's sermons has generated widespread

denunciations. It has threatened the presidential campaign of one of his church members -- who is being publicly excoriated for associating with this minister. Many a preacher has warned many a child not to associate with people of ill repute. Few ministers have imagined themselves to be the ones ruining others' reputations.

The school of the Spirit offers some painful lessons for those of us who preach in pulpits and sit in pews. What lessons will you take away from this?

The broadcast on YouTube of excerpts from some of Wright's sermons has generated widespread denunciations. It has threatened the presidential campaign of one of his church members -- who is being publicly excoriated for associating with this minister. Many a preacher has warned many a child not to associate with people of ill repute. Few ministers have imagined themselves to be the ones ruining others' reputations.

The school of the Spirit offers some painful lessons for those of us who preach in pulpits and sit in pews. What lessons will you take away from this?

One obvious lesson is always tell the truth.

No doubt, most of what Jeremiah Wright preached throughout his illustrious career was biblical, true, prophetic, and transformative. His leadership has produced fruit in the lives of thousands. But not all he said was factual. Some of his statements were exaggerated beyond any possible connection to reality. Those statements were spouted in a pulpit dedicated to the proclamation of the Word of God.

Let no one among us defend the telling of falsehoods from the pulpit. Most all of us will indict as shameless liars those colleagues whose ideology we find obnoxious, and then we will rationalize the uttering of falsehoods by colleagues whose ideology we support. Wrong. Let no falsehoods be proclaimed in the name of Jesus. End of story.

On the other hand the finger pointing forward does connect to the three pointing back. Who among us wishes to play prosecutor to Wright, while the film editors prepare their set of excerpts drawn from our worst words -- in pulpit or pub -- for broadcast on YouTube, as Jesus bends down and writes with his finger on the ground?

Moreover, how could he -- how could we -- fall into the practice of exaggeration and public damning of others? The answer is simple. Crowds love it. Politicians of all parties in all nations have long understood that naming enemies, painting caricatures of them, and then spewing derogatory exaggerations and even falsehoods about them will excrete testosterone to surge through their hearers' veins. The rhetoric of contempt rallies troops to take up arms. In the process the rabble-rouser gets congratulated for being a person of courage. Polls track their growing popularity, as undecided voters tilt in their direction.

It's a great way to run a war. It's a proven way to win an election. It's an awful way to lead a church.

But many church leaders use the tactic unconsciously. Whenever we make a point by formulating the opposite idea and then trashing it, we likely are refuting a caricature of our own invention rather than a fair characterization of those other persons and viewpoints. Might we allow the Jeremiah Wright saga to shake us into truth-telling?

And might we, who sit in the pews, stifle our "amens," and even take our own preachers and teachers to task -- prodding them to speak only the truth?

This saga pushes us to open our eyes to one other lesson. The burgeoning growth of Trinity United Church of Christ, which is "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian," presses us all to ask why race-specific preaching can be so popular in downtown Chicago, not to mention in many other places in our country. Answer: racial integration remains an unfinished project in America. As Barack Obama's speech on the matter has reminded us, the great gains achieved in race relations over the past 50 years have moved in the right direction, but we have so much further to go.

As a denomination in covenant partnership with the United Church of Christ, we rightly ask how many of our own Africa-centered congregations are thriving as is Trinity UCC? What efforts are we investing toward the realization of our denomination-wide goal, set in 1996, of increasing our racial ethnic membership to 10% by 2005 and 20% by 2010? (Fact: in 2006 the number was 8.3%.) How are we doing at cultivating truly multicultural churches? (Fact: just a handful of congregations qualify.) And, perhaps most importantly, are we willing even to discuss these matters? As news commentators have been reflecting nationally, many white Americans find such a subject an inconvenience they'd rather avoid. They just may vote white simply to cut off the discussion.

These are painful topics to discuss and painful lessons to learn. Better to discuss and learn than to dismiss and live in blind ignorance.

-JHH

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Retired Associate Minister, New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
written by Jack McClendon, April 30, 2008

In your editorial "painful lessons-April 21, 2008" you ask the question "Who among us wishes to play prosecutor to Wright?" You did the hatchet job very well; just as YouTube did when they drew excerpts from his worst words, to use your phrasing.

You set up the case for exaggerated speech, using Wright as your prime example. You did not, to use your own phrasing, present a fair characterization of him or his viewpoints. You write, "Might we allow the Jeremiah saga to shake us into truth telling?" Again you write, "No doubt most of what Jeremiah Wright preached throughout his career was biblical, true, prophetic and transformative. His leadership has produced fruit in the lives of thousands." But rather than cite some of his prophetic words, you proceed to accuse him of indulging in statements "beyond any possible connection to reality. Those statements were spouted in a pulpit dedicated to the proclamation of the word of God."


You allow for no distinction between exaggerated speech and prophetic utterances, and that I find most offensive. Exaggerations have a derogatory connotation. The prophetic tradition engages in imaginative, evocative rhetoric to speak about events -- what was, is and may be, e.g., the writings of Brueggemann, the way they both use the Exodus story.

Wright, like his namesake Jeremiah, along with Micah, Hosea, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., James Cone (author of "Black Theology"), Walter Brueggemann, speak and write about a sovereign God who judges and shows mercy to nations and peoples. And how, as Paul Tillich described, in the Christ, we are accepted, though unacceptable. Yes, politicians have their own way of speaking but we preachers do, too, especially when addressing social justice issues, e.g., poverty, homelessness, speaking for those without a voice, the dispossessed, the deprived, and always motivating people to work our way out of the wilderness and into the Promised Land.

Some of Dr. Wright's words have been taken out of context and appear in sound bites and then are called exaggerated speech. I urge you to request copies of these sermons and decide for yourself what Wright has said. The address: Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W. 95th St., Chicago, Ill. 60628 (telephone 773-962-5650).

While you tell us that Wright and his Church is a UCC denomination, you did not commend that Church for being the first to ordain women and gays into the ministry of the church. To wit, let us not allow the backlash against Wright's social justice sermons allow us to retreat from our concern for the poor, homeless, poverty, marginalized in our society, and from our mission to motivate our people to address these issues.

Elder, past Moderator of Presbytery of Chicago
written by Gordon Zerkel, April 26, 2008

With regard to Jack Haberer's editorial of April 21, Painful Lessons, and to the Jeremiah Wright debacle ...the strong inference to the reader is that Rev. Dr. Wright is not telling the truth ...based, at least, from what you can tell from a 15-second sound bite! Pilate's question aside, we all have our truths, and I believe Dr. Wright was preaching (in the prophetic tradition), the truth as black America sees it.

Yesterday evening I watched the Bill Moyers interview with Dr. Wright on PBS. I wish all of America could have seen it. It included the several minutes of recorded sermon which preceded the now-infamous, "...No; God damn America!", sequestered sound bite. Given the full and complete context of Dr. Wright's remarks, I do not see this as a great departure from the Black-American prophetic preaching tradition.... in spite of the use of spicy language!

Last week I attended a national ecumenical conference where, in one of the workshops dealing with racial dynamics, the subject of Jeremiah Wright's sound bites inevitably came up. In that same workshop was a person on staff at our denominational headquarters. This [presumably] ethnically-sensitive staff person got up and spoke of Dr. Wright's remarks in a way that clearly did not understand the African-American milieu or the prophetic tradition. As a fellow Presbyterian in a ecumenical gathering, I was embarrassed!

Jack closed his editorial by making reference to Sen. Barrack Obama's "race" speech and to the work we need to do as a denomination to meet our 1996 goals of being a more racially diverse representation of the Body of Christ. I would suggest that we have a lot more to do than re-examine our goals.

Our covenant partner, the United Church of Christ, has taken up Sen. Obama's challenge and is now commencing a serious study of race relations within the church! We would do well as a denomina! tion to follow their lead. I am proud that we here in Chicago Presbyt ery are at least conscious of the need and included in our last (April 8th) set of Assembly Floor Papers, copies of the National Black Presbyterian Caucus' letter in defense of Dr. Wright as well as Rev. John Buchanan's March 30 statement also in defense of Trinity UCC's ministry and that of Dr. Wright.

I am sure that Bill Moyers' interview will be re-broadcast or is available through his website or that of PBS. I would urge all of OUTLOOK's readers to view it. We do indeed have a lot of work to do as a people of God. I would strongly urge our denominational leaders to begin. With or without their leadership the church must do this if we are to indeed have any credible role in the national conversation.

First Presbyterian Church, Lambertville NJ
written by peter gregory, April 26, 2008

The initial intoxication of Identity based theologies or paradigms based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or other sub-group identifier is that for the user and the consumer it can be powerful, uplifting, liberating, and easily digested for those who are the intended audience. Difficult to translate to those outside the target group or audience.

The drawback from the media attention on Rev. Wright is that a man's career and work has been condensed into five second sound bites lifted out without context, background or meaning provided. A clergy person can preach for 35 years and say in the course of that career 5 billion words in the context of preaching or religious address. Who if any of us, could survive if 5 or 10 words out of that billion were lifted out of context and exploited for a narrow interest.

The real danger of course when one drinks from the fountain of Identity based theologies is that it is a short leap from that to something I saw serving in Iraq on a daily basis. We called it 'Tribalism' or 'Clanism', my ethnic/religious subgroup is more pure or better than yours. That usually ended in a bullet to the skull, or one's hands cut off with the benefit of pain killers. But such is the world of religion gone bad. If only the good Pastor Wright, got it right the first time, 'God Bless America' 'God Bless America' You have no idea how blessed we really are.

...
written by Phil Leftwich, April 23, 2008

Facing reality and truth telling, though not the same, at their best are equal partners. Words of prophesy have never been popular, and sometimes seem ill timed, or inappropriate. The inappropriate matter, however, is also a matter of one's life context. Under what circumstances does one live, or merely survive? What anger may be demonstrated in words and actions because of oppression, or the fear and hatred from others? Indeed, do Jeremiah Wright's words become a kind of proof text of a lifetime of faithful preaching and ministry? Have not all of us fallen short of the grace of God in something we have said or done? But the real point seems not his words, but his audience. In the truest sense he was 'preaching to the choir,' which seems less than the prophetic role of speaking to the thrones of power who control much of our national life. I suspect he was well aware of this. Most of us who preach know our memberships fairly well and find it easy to say some things to the hearts of the people we know that we might not say at all outside of that community of faith. This seems a far cry from the portrayal of Rev. Wright by the media as a 'prophetic voice.' Perhaps Rev. Wright has done us a greater service, however, than we realize. His comments whether taken in context, or out of context, point us to the still deeply seeded evils of racism, war, and living out the proof of class divisions visible in what is still the most segregated hour of the week. Will the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) meet its goals of multiculturalism? It seems doubtful based on the timelines set in 1996. It also seems apparent that Jesus is still writing to us in the dust. The problem seems our avoidance of wanting to read and hear the messages. It is far easier to shift our focus to guilt by association. To condemn than to discuss. To throw the first stone. And, perhaps the most unfortunate trait of all, to buy the lies that hide the harsh realities that still exist in 'the land of the free and the home of the brave.' God help us to be 'brave' enough to seek out the truth that love can overcome every evil; every principlality and power that defies truth and fights reconciliation.