Heh. Just like you guys stand by your man who occasionally makes nutty comments! Who I won't name, but I think we all know what I'm talking about...

The Senator is runing for President of the United States.  You know, that United States of KKK.

But no matter that his pastor, his "mentor" of 17 years,  thinks that the Government the Senator aspires to run commits genocide.  And that 3,000 of its citizens - who died horrible deaths beyond imagination -  had it comiing on 9/11.

Some rabbis give banal sermons.  It all balances out.

Dub, that's harsh. Cut the guy a break. I mean it's not like Rev. Wright said something truly horrifying to the TNR crowd, like "No, no, no. God damn Cape Cod" or something like that.

If instead of preaching that the U.S. government invented aids to commit genocide against African-Americans, Wright had preached that Jewish doctors invented aids to commit genocide against African-Americans (the Steven Cokely/Nation of Islam version of this conspiracy theory in the late 1980s), can you envision Marty Peretz writing this same piece?  The same logic would apply, it would just be "Jews" rather than "whites" being smeared.  But whatever, compared to Marty's using the Darfur genocide as nothing more than a tool to attack his enemies, this is trivial.  

dubya, in China priests in the Patriotic Catholic Church give sermons where they daily extol the virtues of the Communist party (it is either that or the Laogai prison camps). Even though I am Catholic I would easily take the occasionally loony rantings of Rev. Wright over the right thinking of the "Catholic" priests in China any day because I generally like my religious freedom to be, oh I don't know, free. But by all means, lets make every candidate vet every religious sermon they go to, that will really help our society so that we can all be right thinkers like the Chinese are. I knew the Chinese were taking us over more and more but this is ridiculous.

Or we can just say that our candidates religious lives are private and should not be subject to daily scrutiny by the media. I think our souls should not be picked over by anyone but God, but hey, pretending we are godlike is our American heritage so why not. Open the confessionals, lets make every politician be like Gov. Paterson of NY and fill us in on all the details.

Blackton, your moral relativism is awesome!

Hey Dudyadoute.  He did not say the US had 9/11 coming... that's the snippet.

He said:  "Chickens coming home to roost"... making clear he was quoting an American ambassador talking about blowback on Fox News.

He then talked at lenght about the staggering horror of 9/11 in graphic detail.

He then said we must contemplate what our rightful response must be.

He then warned, taking as his text a psalm, lest the vengeance include innocents... "and they shall take the babies and smash their heads against a rock.."

Take a look at

www.youtube.com/watch and www.youtube.com/watch

The reality is ever so much more interesting than the snippets would lead one to believe.  Do please be curious enough to look.

Also go to www.TUCC.org.  Wright proudly puts on his bio that he was a marine for 3 years and a navy medic for another 3...

I mean weren't any of you curious as to what the reality of those snippets might be?  How about the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth before we all rush to judgment.  Go look, please and then tell me what you think.

Would that most rabbis and most ministers had that clarity.  Did none of yours say, after 9/11: "we must beware that our search for vengeance not destroys us and innocents"?  Well they should have.

Peter... Blackton a moral relativist?  Huh?  I would say on the contrary.  He seems to have a pretty clear moral backbone.  How do you transform his statement into moral relativism?

Since my post on my visit to TUCC for this Easter Sunday service hasn't made it here, I'll try again.

First the sanctuary was filled to overflowing and numbered about 2,500, with others filling every chapel and assembly hall.  So the seemingly florid style that comes across strangely on a television or computer screen, fills that size space with so many people appropriately.

Then it is purposefully earthy and down to earth.  It is intended to speak to people who do not have the education of bloggers here... and I mean speak to them.

The sermon by the new young pastor Otis Moss was a rhetorical tour de force.  He took as his text a passage in Luke, Jesus on the cross between the two thieves and made it resonate with references in each of our lives.  Not "thieves" but thugs... and forced each member of the congregation to recognize the thuggishness within ourselves and within our neighbors.  It doesn't make much sense in recounting and Easter sermon here... suffice it to say it contained a long fugue on the second thief request of Jesus to "remember me in paradise" not as memory but as Re_ Membering, making whole again, restore, renew, rebuild... there must have been a dozen synonyms all starting with "re" and speaking not merely on behalf of the thief but the community, but each and every member of the congregation.

TUCC takes as its motto: "Unashamedly Black  and unabashedly Christian"  Well surely one wouldn't expect them to take as a motto: "Ashamedly Black and abashedly Christian"?  What people accomplishes anything without pride in itself and without taking responsibility both for and for the repair of the brokenness of its own community.  This is what Wright has preached and done for lo on 35 years.  It is Tikkum Olam at its very best.

I am an unashamed Jew and an unabashed secular humanist.  Yet never in my nearly 70 years have I understood the power of the crucifixion/resurrection/salvation story for an oppressed people.  No wonder Obama came to Christ in that setting and stayed in that community for 20 years.  I for one received far more spiritual sustenance there on easter Sunday than I have sitting in many other services of all denominations.

The Spirit moved and inspired and soared in a 150 person gospel choir.

There was an op ed letter in the Chicago Tribune today by a White man, married to a Black woman who has been a member of TUCC for 25 years.  His wife decided that as an upcoming young black leader she couldn't not marry him, a White man.  Wright called her in, persuaded her that such racism was not acceptable and married the couple a few months later.

Here's a secret.  The truth is almost always ever so much more interesting than the tidy little boxes we try to stuff it into because then it doesn't challenge us to listen with open ears and hearts and minds.  i

For some reason the address of the fuller context of the Wright sermons on the internet did not come through so I am typing them out as well.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbEzHdV24AU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqPUXjFY38

www.youtube.com/watch

www.youtube.com/watch

To follow up on what Annabella posted, the sermon in its entirety can be heard here (the YouTube clip only shows about 10 minutes of the sermon):

odeo.com/.../view

Listen to it in full and tell me if you think Wright was saying that the 9/11 victims "had it coming."

"Violence begets violence" does not mean that any of the violence is deserved.  Fathers beat their sons, who then go on to beat their own children, but this does not mean that anybody deserved what they got.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  Wright's full sermon explicitly warns against attacks on innocents.

I'd say Blackton's moral relatvism is on display here. Our candidate's religous lives should be private? I'm guessing if McCain's personal minister, not some jackass who supports him, came out and blamed Jews for anti-semitism or said African-Americans wer responsible for their current plight, he'd be posting pretty quick that McCain showed a lack of moral judgement by not switching churches. I get that 99% of Rev. Wright's sermons are not racist or bigoted. That's great. But how many times would he have to say 9/11 was the chickens coming home to roost or the federal government was responsible for the AIDs crisis for  Obama's decision to stay at Trinity to be a legitimate issue? One more time? Two more times? Blackton also said yesterday if my Catholic priest spouted hateful things, am I supposed to leave the church? Uh, yes you are. Feel free to drive five miles and find a church where the minister is not preaching hateful stuff even it's only one percent of the time.

I just find the outrage that posters here have over Clinton supporters leaning on Pelosi while morally rationalizing away the Wright issue just absolutely hypocritical. And then there's my favorite Obama supporter canard: 'Well, look Falwell and Robertson have come out for McCain and why isn't anyone making a big deal about that?' Feel free to make a big deal of it! I'm not voting for McCain and that's one of the reasons. It doesn't excuse Obama remaining a member of that church.

As I've said before, Obama is likely to be our next president. Fine, I don't agree that electing a guy who was a state senator four years ago the president of the free world is such a good idea, but I'll vote for him and wish him well.  I'm just saying this Obama supporter sense of moral self-rigteousness and liberal puritanism is not going to play well long-term and will just submarine your candidate's ability to actually accomplish anything.

You say his preacher doesn't matter? Fine. Let's make a deal: I'll stop talking about his preacher if you guy will just stop, well, preaching.

There is an op-ed in today's Chicago Tribune by a member of Trinity United which I found revealing.  In it, the writer describes how, many years ago, his fiance got cold feet before their wedding because the couple was interracial, and she wasn't sure that her family or other friends and acquaintences would be accepting of her fiance.  The member told Rev. Wright about the problem, and Wright sprung into action.  He asked that the couple meet with him at their earliest convenience, and he argued to the woman why race should not dictate her decision.  The session worked, and Wright presided over their wedding.  What I found interesting was that the writer was white, and the woman was black.

Wright found unacceptable -- to the point of inspiring emergency intervention -- that a black person would consider not marrying a white person because of race.  These are hardly the words or deeds of a "racist" or a "bigot" or a rabid "black nationalist" or a black David Duke or any of the other terms and epithets being deployed so freely against Wright based on 30 seconds of video.  Rather, they jibe more with Obama's description of an open church led by a respectful and respected man who is animated to some extent by an unreformed 60s-style anger over racial injustice and who has, as a result, said some stupid things.  (Among those voicing respect and strong admiration for Wright, by the way, is Hillary's pastor.)

This writer, who had been introduced to the church through his fiance, also relayed that over the many years of his membership he had seen the church do more pragmatic good in its community than any government program could ever hope to achieve.  In this context, when we're asked to condemn by association, this observation, shared by many, should not be dismissed.

I, for one, am not ready to condemn Wright based on what appears to be a misleading caricature, much less Obama for having Wright as his pastor and friend.  The only concern I can perceive is the one Marty mentions -- that Obama shares to some degree Wright's more corrosive views or buys his outrageous utterances.  He does not.  That should be clear.  (Obama has made it clear, and will continue to do so.)  His love for America, his support for Israel, and his belief in the politics of unity of every sort are not only genuine but intelligent, and that's the sort of patriotism, policy advocacy, and politics we should all want.

Remaining concerns -- about "judgment" and so on -- amount to, if we're honest about it, the above-mentioned concern in disguise.  Obama, I suppose, should have -- politically speaking -- categorically dropped his church and Wright when he ran for Senate in the general election.  Putting aside the question whether that would have worked, one man's naivete is another man's loyalty, and I'm developing a serious concern that our stupidest political theater demands the utter abandonment of virtue -- virtues like loyalty and honesty -- and relentlessly demands instead lies, including the lie of petty piety where the petulant audience knows it's being lied to but views anything else as an affront.

Obama, under this view, is not to be punished for the substance of anything he has thought, anything he has said, or anything he has done, but rather for declining to succumb to ritualistic entrapment and belittlement.  The audience demands extreme dishonesty -- in this case, an insincere condemnation of someone who, we already know, was an important figure in Obama's spirtual life not to mention his early career -- and proceeds, after its given, to brand the candidate as just another dishonest, corrupt politician.  We demand that politicians bend over so that we can call them whores afterwards.  Does nothing else compute?

Obama, the "uncommon candidate," so described by the Tribune's conservative editorial board, broke script.  He refused to play.  For some, this is seen as tantamount to political suicide.  For me, anyway, it amounts to a refreshing break from, and bracing challenge to, to the dumbest aspects of today's political orthodoxy.  I don't think Obama can transcend politics any more than he can transcend race.  Transcendence is, to my ears, an ugly word.  It signifies a disconnect from reality -- a flight above the mess, a willed ignorance.  We own the mess and we live in the mess, and it won't be denied.  True transcendence is impossible.  But change isn't.  (If you think it is, you are not only a profound cynic but ignorant of history.)  Obama doesn't propose to transcend; he proposes to build change.  He doesn't want to pretend the mess doesn't exist.  He dares to approach the task of cleaning it up, and play clean besides.

I for one don't think Obama is too proud or too naive for denying the vultures their pound of flesh -- for insisting not only on his own dignity but the dignity of the political process.

Annabella -- I see that you already flagged the op-ed piece in the Tribune -- have to be quick here!

jhildner--That was extremely well-put.

Anabella and AlanSP:

Doesn't everything you write make Wright that much more dangerous?  When he preached that the US government is a genocidal anti-black killer and that "Israel is a dirty word," why would the kids in the pews not believe him?  This tremendous person who did so much for his community?  He was a marine -- surely he wouldn't say that about the government if it wasn't true.  Even a school teacher wouldn't carry the same weight.  Go talk to a Jew in Crown Heights and ask if they think such rhetoric matters as long as the rest of the sermon is uplifting.  I don't think anyone doubted that Wright was good to his community or an inspired leader -- Trinity wouldn't be what it is if he wasn't.  But the Bible teaches that good works to some does not redeem wrongs done to another.  

Personally I heard honest confliction in Obama's speech -- this is far from a deal-breaker issue even if I disagree with him and I have no problem moving on.   But Obama's supporters have launched this wave of support for Wright that gives lip-service to his hatemongering (however ocassional) and then tries to bury it through praise.  As a purely political matter I don't think that helps him at all -- you make it sound like it's a no-brainer, and that will make people think Obama's speech was more political calculation than honest struggle.  How can that help?  

Great post jhildner!

This whole thing has been hilarious.

What did Wright say, anyway "America is run by rich White people!" ?

OMG!!  The Horror!

Maybe if we go through the household trash of everyone who's ever gone to school, church, or ridden the bus with Barack Obama we can come of with more of this Very Important Information.

This argument about whether those who sit in the pews have a moral responsibility for what is said from the pulpit comes down to a question of where one draws the line.  Clearly, for white people, that line is an easy one for a black preacher to cross -- we are very sensitive to angry black men accusing us of being more evil than we think we are.  All Marty is saying is that we draw that line differently in our own churches and synagogues than we would in someone else's.  

Fair enough.  However, the point cannot be that there are no lines, but rather that we need to draw them with more care.

There are clearly some lines that matter - a speech of Bella Abzug's may offend Marty's sensibilities yet not cross a line.  But what about a speech condemning the Catholic Church as a "whore' or referring to Judaism as a "gutter religion"?  What about "G_d damn America"?  Is that really not over the line?

How does one sit in the pews each Sunday and listen to the priest condemn abortion and urge parishoners to vote for the man who lied to start a war, killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and authorized the torture of prisoners?  Having sat in these pews, how does such a person condemn Obama for tolerating the excesses of Jeremiah Wright?

I understand Marty's point - believers put up with a lot in exchange for access to what is sacred to them, and to be part of a faithful community that is much more than the rabbi or minister at its center.  But it is the duty of every member of society to speak up against intolerance even when it is mouthed by a preacher.  It is not sufficient, as Marty claims, to silently roll one's eyes and allow such things to pass as if they were endorsed by the congregation.

Such passivity is at the root of our failure as a nation to exercise appropriate judgment in the launch of the current war.  We all silently acceded to the war lust of George W. Bush, and for five years have done nothing to stop him.  This is a failure of our responsibility as citizens that has much in common with our failure to speak out against hateful preaching.  We go along with too much.  Such good Germans we have all become.

Neil  

Judging by the convoluted logic and evasiveness of most articles supporting Obama’s position on the Reverend Wright, (not excepting Marty’s tendentious piece) I would say that Obama could not be right.

I wish the controversy had focused in on Obama’s preacher’s views on Israel. I would have liked to have seen how Obama would then have handled the issue since he would have had to choose between his support for Wright and his support for the State of Israel.

It is one thing, btw, to know the difficulties Israel faces vis-à-vis both the Arabs and the Palestinians and to have to deal with the difficult political realities when Obama becomes President.

Frankly judging from his handling of the Wright controversy and some other issues which comes down to his inability to stand up to pastor personally for 20 years and to walk away I am not sanguine about his ability to withstand pressure on Israel once in office.

I am sure that whatever Hillary’s short comings, not being able to withstand political pressure is not one of them. The same goes for McCain.

"What about 'G_d damn America'? Is that really not over the line?"

Not if you believe in the truth of the Bible. If you have a problem with a Christian preacher or a rabbi warning of God's damnation for the sins of the nation, then you don't have a problem with that preacher or that rabbi. You have a problem with the Bible. Which is fine, but let's not pretend that the Bible is a pro-American document.

The really ironic thing is that, except for some of his conspiratorial political views -- views that are, in one form or another, quite common among clergy for the simple reason that if they were not inclined to see deliberate causation behind events, then they would not have such deep faith in God -- most of the "outrageous" sermons we've seen excerpted are actually excellent Christian sermons when you hear or read the whole text.

Rhubs, one more time: there were children in those pews.  When they hear Wright slam Israel as the embodiment of evil and tell them that the AIDS that may have killed a love one was part of a genocide plot -- in fact, even decontextualizing Nagasaki and Hiroshima the way he did -- they will believe him.  It probably puts the stamp of truth (and Trinity the instutiution) on things they've heard adults say.  ***That's*** what is over the line.  

lymon1, children tend to be more skeptical than their parents. I could see some swallowing the line *if it were the line* i.e. a prevailing and unceasing theme of Rev. Wright's sermons, but for what you're suggesting to be a valid statement, we would need more information, not snap theoretical hypotheses and judgments

peter, you are wrong. Hell, I support McCain and would be delighted if he were to win the Presidency. I also (though I don't agree with his positions) like Mike Huckabee a great deal. I will say again, I don't care or even want to know the private religious affairs of any candidate. It is not my, nor your business. Church is meant to be a sanctuary and a place to commune with God and your fellow man. In China such a sanctuary is essentially illegal. Peter you choose to make it so in America as well.

Judge the candidates on their political positions, leave church and state separate. Personally, I think Mormonism is a crackpot religion, but if I agreed with a Mormon on the issues (like Harry Reid for example) of course I would vote for him, and would not spend one moment reading Mormon doctrines into his actions. We are none of us stupid as well, if any Candidate crossed the line between church and state we can see it. Also if Obama started to blame Aids on whites I wouldn't care where he got that information, but certainly wouldn't vote for him.

I also am under no obligation to live my faith as you see fit, if you want to drive across the country to a minister who fulfills all of your requirements, that is your right. I demand that you extend the same right to me. Leave my priest out of any discussions about political issues and I will certainly leave yours out.

And just because people criticize McCain's religious leaders as a double standard doesn't make that right either. I judge McCain only on his positions.

Are you suggesting that the private religious lives of all candidates be subject to public scrutiny?

Rhubars, Powell, et al don't seem to be bothered by Wright's antisemitic comments.

oh and Peter, moral relativism means saying that the things that Rev. Wright said isn't bad viewed in context, blah blah. I never said that, much of what he said was idiotic ( I don't see it as harmful though, idiocy might make people angry but for those blacks that are stupid enough to believe whites caused aids to kill them, are also too stupid to do anything meaningful about it). I just find the cost of opening up the religious lives of every candidate to far outweigh the supposed benefits. Or are you going to decide which churches are to be open for inspection and which are off limits?

Obviously, I realize the problem here is that Wright himself sold the dvd's, but as I respect his religious freedom to do so and also have no interest in becoming a member of the UCC that doesn't mean I have to buy them.

lymon,

That's not quite what I was saying.  I think that Obama was going through an honest struggle, as he should have been.  Wright certainly said things that were outrageous, and in some cases (notably the comments on AIDS) potentially damaging.  These things matter.  My point is that they are far from the only thing that matters.  Too many people are simply ignoring the good and focusing only on the bad (or, as you suggest, the reverse), when we should look at both.

Andrew Sullivan made the same comment about good works.  Specifically, he wrote, "I'll acknowledge Wright's good works, but the Bible teaches us that good works towards some do not excuse sins towards others.  Your constant 'I don't condone his statements but...' won't cut it."

I posted a response to that in the Spine version of this thread, but I'll repost it here:

I think Sullivan's philosophy here is deeply flawed.  If we insist on focusing only on people's flaws while ignoring their virtues, we'll be left with a grim and distorted view of things.  Should we ask candidates to denounce and reject Thomas Jefferson the slave owner, Lincoln the man who imprisoned 18000 people without trial, or FDR the man who authorized Japanese internment?

Sullivan's reasoning suggests that we should.  After all, nothing Wright has ever said or done is anywhere near as bad as slavery or Japanese internment.  Sure, those presidents did a lot of good things, but it doesn't excuse those sins.

The problem is that this was never about "excusing" anything.  Japanese internment is a black mark on our nation's history, but it is only a part the legacy of a man who led the country through the Great Depression and World War II.  Condemning the action but not the man is exactly the right course to take.  In evaluating Wright, as in evaluating anyone else, we should consider both the good and the bad, and for neither one is a couple minutes on YouTube sufficient.

quick correction.  The quote was from one of Sullivan's readers, not Sullivan himself

I am not concerned in the least, jackson. Moreover, I am absolutely confident that neither Wright nor Obama is an anti-Semite in any way shape or form. And for that matter, I don't think McCain's supporter Hagee is anti-Catholic. Has anyone seen some of the things Martin Luther said about Catholics? Or that the Bible says about Jews?  It's not hard to find some pretty startling soundbites if that's the exercise.

Evaluating candidates on the basis of some obscure phrase out of millions uttered by a supporter, in a Biblical context no less, thrown out there as if it could be used to deduce the entire moral philosophy of everyone involved, is simply ridiculous.  I liked the "native garb" photo better.

Alan:  We may not disagree all that much (as I said, I think Wright's comments were "disown-worthy" but I don't think it's such a huge deal and/or cut and dry that I can't easily continue to support Obama), but I have a couple of problems with your analysis.  Like the WWII internship -- what if FDR were here today and still defended it -- said he wouldn't change a thing if he could do it all over again. That would make it a bit cloudier and that strikes me as more analogous.  Also, we would we expect a Japanese victim of the camps to forgive FDR, especially if FDR was unrepentant?  It's not like Wright has backed off any of his remarks (oh that he would).  I think the Biblical reference is a hint to look at this from the point of view of the wronged.  What I see going on in these comments isn't a justification of Obama refusing to disown a friend he has a bitter disagreement with but an attempt to reform Wright by diluting his comments.  They may only be a few moments in a couple of sermon DVDs, but apparently Wright expressed views like these regularly.  Of course, the Bible also says judge not...

Yeah, I can't imagine Andrew Sullivan saying anything like that -- as I've written here before, I think he sees a sort of redemption for himself (for his support for the Iraq war) in Obama and it has turned his disdain for the Clintons into an unhinged rage that prevents him from truly being objective or critical about Obama.  

Welcome back Robert. Good to see you on these boards again. I witnessed your epic struggle with Goldberg's "Liberal Fascists" on Yglesias boards. You acquitted yourself well I thought; as is to be expected from a TNR vet. "The Horror".

Lymon - I think Andrew Sullivan needs to ease off on the dope a bit. He's getting The Fear from Hillary's candidacy. I'd imagine it's no more complicated than that.

Robert Powell said:  "I am not concerned in the least, jackson. Moreover, I am absolutely confident that neither Wright nor Obama is an anti-Semite in any way shape or form. "

If Wright is not an antisemite he is doing a good job impersonating one:

"A June 10th, 2007 issue of the newsletter featured an open letter written by Ali Baghdadi, appearing on the "Pastor's Page," that calls Israel an "apartheid" regime. The letter says Israel worked on an "ethnic bomb" that kills "blacks and Arabs."

www.cbsnews.com/.../entry3973700.shtml

Of course Obama never read that church letter.