Issues of Wright and Wrong

Parsing the Jeremiah Wright sermons.

I know I went on record a few weeks ago as saying that nothing between March 4 and April 22 would matter in the primary season, but since the craziness about Rev. Jeremiah Wright refuses to go away, I'll weigh in on the matter. I stand by my opinion that it doesn't matter in the slightest. More than anything else, I'm irritated by how distorted and skewed these sermons have become by major news outlets in an attempt not to discredit and smear Barack Obama, but to simply sell a story.

The phrase "God damn America" is ubiquitous now. A simple Google search on the phrase yields over a million hits. Pretty impressive stuff for a sermon delivered over five years ago on the south side of Chicago. Yet if you ask nearly any American what the speech was about, I doubt very much that any of them could tell you anything beyond "he hates America." That's troubling to me. My frustrations about the us versus them mentality of post-9/11 patriotism aside, I want to point out that Rev. Wright is not attacking America here. He's mourning. You can see that in the text of the speech. Amazingly, considering all of the YouTube videos in circulation containing sound clips from the speech, I wasn't able to find a complete text of the sermon. (If you can, mention it in a comment and I'll get it posted up here.) The title of the sermon is "Confusing God and Government." He spends his 40 minutes arguing that citizens look to their government for the things that only God can provide. Specifically, he makes the distinction between an good, benevolent, and merciful God and a petty, human, and flawed government. The comparison should surprise no one. No government, nor any other man-made institution, can claim to be perfect. He made several references to the American government, especially the war in Iraq, but didn't limit himself, also referencing the Egyptian, British, German, Russian, and Japanese governments.

The sound bite about America was what drew the most attention, though. Yet listen to the quote - the whole quote - and tell me if this is a sentiment you really disagree with:

"When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them in scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That's in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme."

Admittedly, the quote has an air of conspiracy theory to it. But if you think of the government as the common man, then there's little disputing what he says. Blacks have been repressed for years. There's still a very real element of racism in America today. That's undeniable. Wright is denouncing the sin of pride in America for her sense of superiority, and that's something that's hard to argue with.

The other thing causing all of this flap is his argument that America is reaping the rewards of imperialism abroad with terrorism at home. Here's an excerpt from that speech, delivered days after the September 11 attacks:

"We took this country, by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians - babies, nonmilitary personnel. We bombed the black community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers, and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hardworking fathers. We bombed Khadafi, his home and killed his child. Blessed be they who bash your children's heads against the rocks.

"We bombed Iraq, we killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed the plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy - killed hundreds of hardworking people - mothers and fathers, who left home to go that day, not knowing they'd never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school - civilians, not soldiers. People just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africa and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas is brought back into our own front yard.

"America's chickens are coming home, to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism."

Again, you can disagree with the idea that the American government has a secret agenda to systematically remove undesirables from within its borders or overseas. But there's little disputing America's foreign policy has created a powerfully anti-American feeling abroad. And it's in that sense that Rev. Wright said "God damn America." He's not angry. He's mournful, wishing that history could have led us to a different place. He's preaching accountability for transgression, saying that we need to be responsible for our actions and take our lumps. Above all, he's preaching repentance, coming back to the suffering of Jesus Christ as a way to redemption at the end of both of these sermons.

You can disagree with his choice of examples for his sermons. I don't think that politics has a place in religion. They'd do well to stay apart. But his points are completely valid, I think. They just need to be read in context. They also need to be read in a state of mind free of hyperpatriotism, remembering that America isn't the center of the world and that criticizing the government and the country isn't the grievous sin it's made out to be.