As I indicated in my last post I am worried about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign being derailed by the rhetoric of others close to him. I believe that Obama, a man of mixed racial heritage from a multi-racial (black, white, Asian) family has the perspective and the attitude to unite Americans, especially the younger generation, along racial and cultural divides. But the latest uproar surrounding his pastor Jeremiah Wright’s sermons is a great weapon in the hands of his detractors which has the potential of drumming up suspicions about Obama in the minds of voters. What was being murmured already on numerous Internet rumor memes and slyly implied by the Clinton camp will now find voice in mainstream media debates; is he a crypto Muslim? a black militant? on the side of our enemies – a Manchurian candidate? can we trust him and his patriotism?
Is a double standard at play here? Definitely, say some. Angry sermons inviting death and destruction on America by white evangelical preachers who rail against its culture of abortion, feminism, homosexuality and the theory of evolution, as also false religions such as Catholicism and Islam are dismissed as the rants of overzealous fundamentalists. Some of these fire breathers are even given a seat at the table of national politics. Hate mongers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are regarded as elder standard bearers by the mostly white right wing moral brigade. Frank Schaffer, an erstwhile Christian fundamentalist writes that his late father, an angry white preacher was hailed as a hero and invited by several Republican presidents to the White House after denouncing America in words more intemperate than Rev Wright’s. (Shaeffer’s full article with excerpts from his dad’s speeches here)
When Senator Obama’s preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father — Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer — denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father’s footsteps) rail against America’s sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama’s minister’s shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
There is or should be a separation of Church and State we are told. The IRS looks askance at religious institutions that indulge in political speech and campaign. Yet, they go on all the time. The faith based social agenda of religious institutions rarely keep a distance from prevailing politics. Religious leaders routinely condemn or bless political leaders for their visions of the world and politicians shamelessly seek endorsements from religious groups. So, it is not the separation of politics and religion or fiery religious speech that are the issue in the case of Obama’s pastor and his church. The bone of contention seems to be whether the faithful and the ruling class agree with one another. Condemning Islam in violent terms does not raise eyebrows but questioning the status quo in racial politics and unjust American foreign policies evokes the specter of treason in the minds of many voters. Writing in The TPM Cafe M.J. Rosenberg of the Israeli Policy Forum describes the politics of a conservative Jewish congregation where just mentioning the possibility of a middle east peace process angers right wing congregants and the hate speech of ultra hawkish rabbis brings on cheers. We however never hear of that in the media. It is after all business (or politics) as usual in lock step with US policies. Rosenberg also explains why despite his severe disagreements with its politics, he has been for 25 years and continues to be a member of this congregation.
I’ve been a member of a conservative Jewish congregation for 25 years. I love the rabbi but not his sermons on Israel and the Palestinians. He is a total Israel hawk. To put it mildly, I am not. I am all about the two-state solution (the so-called Clinton plan).
Even worse, the congregation has become the favorite of Washington’s neocons including the worst warmonger of all: Douglas Feith. The idea of communing with God together with a thug like Feith is sickening to me. Then there is Charles Krauthammer who, in 2001, disrupted Yom Kippur services by bellowing at the rabbi for expressing, in the most general terms, the desire for Middle East peace. The worst moment I’ve ever had at my congregation was when a visiting rabbi from Europe (he comes every year for the High Holy Days) devoted an entire sermon to the value of hate. "To everything there is a season. This is a season for hate." He was talking about the Palestinians. I almost puked.
And yet I am a member of this congregation and will remain one. Why? As I said, I like the rabbi (the regular one, not the annual visitor) despite disagreeing strongly with many of his views. More important, this is the congregation that my kids grew up in. This is where their Bar Mitzvahs took place. The people there (not the war criminals though) are kind of like family. It’s home. Probably how Obama feels about his church.
Obama’s faith has been a concern for American voters from day one. Now more scrutiny will be directed towards him and his church; Obama’s words and thoughts, as well as those of his former pastor will be parsed for the whiff of treachery. But have the media paid attention to Hillary Clinton’s faith to which she gives credit for providing her with the anchor of moral guidance and strength during turbulent times? What do we know about Hillary’s religious background except that she was raised a Methodist, was active in her church as a youth and continues to seek solace from her spiritual guide in adulthood? Little has been said of the fact that Clinton also belongs to a secretive Bible study group populated mostly by right wing Republicans whose bipartisan religious politics teach among other things that the political elite is chosen by God to fight spiritual wars and lead the world.
Clinton’s prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship’s only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.
Sounds familiar? We currently have a president in the White House who has not made a secret of the fact that his politics and world view are shaped by his devout faith. Hardly any alarm bells sounded in the minds of voters who elected him a second time so he could carry on his disastrous policies. But Obama must now answer for his pastor even when he has made it clear that he doesn’t share the same political views. What is the word from the Clintonites on this "scandal?" I haven’t heard much but can safely assume that they must be delighted. As Shaeffer says in his article:
Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton’s] are, indeed, now part of the ‘vast right wing conspiracy.’ (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html )
Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama’s preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama’s minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.
Accidental Blogger 
3 responses to “Sermons in Black and White”
Ahem! From your mouth to god’s Ear, Ruchira. Well done!
My mother was a liberal Episcopalian who attended a church that the Rector had made safe for fascism. Yes, this was Texas. The drill was to not pay too much attention when the Rector “went off” on gays, politic, Catholics, and a few other rather big subjects. I’d be the first to say I did not understand “spiritual guidance.” Or why you could use it from someone whose politics and condemnation of broad-brushed groups you didn’t agree with. Or why you would want spiritual guidance from a person so ready to condemn others. But I have seen that deeply religious people have a sense of their spirit as distinct from their character, personality, intellect, life history, etc., and that their spiritual lives are not tied to these ephemera.
Would be interested to hear if readers (and bloggers) at this site agree with Andrew Sullivan’s contention that this whole subject could benefit from a dialogue — for video — between BO and the Rev. Wright. My sense is that many White Americans are letting themselves get stupid about this aspect of the Obama candidacy. I wonder if some of the higher-minded of them see it’s plenty racist to have this spuriously naive reaction to the Black Church. Such a good way to “other” the transcendance candidate.
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Elatia Harris said: “Would be interested to hear if readers (and bloggers) at this site agree with Andrew Sullivan’s contention that this whole subject could benefit from a dialogue — for video — between BO and the Rev. Wright. My sense is that many White Americans are letting themselves get stupid about this aspect of the Obama candidacy.”
I completely agree. On the question of Sullivan’s blogging on the Wright fracas and the question of dialogue between Obama and Wright, I have also been impressed, generally, with the degree to which Sullivan gets the larger point of not excusing prejudice but understanding context. As he articulates it in his most recent post:
“[I]n trying to understand [Wright’s rhetoric] in its totality, I do try to think about the racial context and history of America. And so there is a difference, pace Jonah, between a white charlatan like Robertson who chooses to demonize minorities in the name of Jesus and a pastor like Wright who vents rage against a majority that has, in the not-so-distant past, given African-Americans every reason to be angry. And there is a difference between a white politician (like Bush) who seeks to enjoy the support of a Robertson without ever challenging his ugly dimensions and a black politician who, while remaining in a congregation like Wright’s, nonetheless has written and spoken as movingly as anyone in my lifetime about the need for racial reconciliation and understanding.”
When I first hit a link to some of Wright’s controversial comments, I expected something along the lines of the unprintable cant that I used to hear from Black Israelite and Black Muslim preachers on street corners in Manhattan. Instead, Wright’s comments struck me as wholly within the ordinary range of bitter comments occasionally made by some people–especially older people, and more especially those from the South– I work with (as clients, colleagues, community contacts) in the African American community. I otherwise respect many of the people I’ve heard speak bitterly in that way, though I think they’re just as wrong to lambast white people qua white people, reserving “good whites” from judgment, as I think people are who lambast people who are not white as such, reserving from judgment “good”-fill in the blank. I also have older relatives I admire tremendously, whom I cite as examples of stellar behavior in certain respects, who have made remarks that probably should keep me from getting elected to office (were I so inclined) were it thought that I agreed with those comments. And while I have affirmatively opted, as an adult, not to attend any synagogue that caters to anti-islamic bigots– an option more easily exercised because I live away from family in a city where my choice of synagogue is arbitrary– I find it hard to point my finger at people like Rosenberg whose family and community connections cause them to continue to frequent synagogues where there are such people among the members and even leaders.
It seems to me that asking Obama to both represent a “bridge” to the African American community, and to disassociate himself from a community that expresses any resentment at the racial politics of our nation is not only unfair but counter-productive, if not impossible. It reminds me of the double standard by which many Americans will listen to only those activists for Palestinian rights who express no resentment at Israel and at having been ousted from their homeland fifty years ago– witness the hostilty, with which I grew up but overcame, toward the late Prof. Edward Said. It also reminds me, for that matter, of my disappointment at the Democratic Party when Howard Dean was flogged for saying that the Democrats’ needed to regain disaffected Southern voters by speaking to the “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.” The communities with a lot lost rather than to lose who are most likely to be disillusioned, resentful, to scapegoat, are part of our country, too, with a historically important role among progressives (because they know injustice firsthand and want to change it, even if the prescriptions don’t always live up to the descriptions) and in the Democratic Party, in which, if anyone remembers, we’re still in the primary. We get nowhere starting from the premise that anyone from one of those communities (as Obama is by marriage, and by complicated choice as a person who looks like an African American in a one-drop country) has to completely sever ties to the community as a pre-condition for creating unity.
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Gee, Anna — this is good stuff. I think maybe one has to have struggled with these or similar issues in a personal sense to see beyond the seeming contradictions — or even want to do that. All Americans struggle with race issues, of course — but some of us know we struggle. The political and social thought, as found in their private utterances, of most people I’m related to would sink my bid for elected office, too — at least in my adopted city of Cambridge, MA. Especially when it was discovered that I liked these people, and loved them, and was sticking with them while disagreeing with them on every major policy issue under the sun. I’m going to search AB for posts you’ve written on Edward Said.
I feel like Andrew Sullivan has really come through for those of us who aren’t interested in a knee-jerk take on the Wright controversy — he too lives in many worlds, and is mainly interested in the way forward. He’s got a great link today, to a remarkable young blogger —
http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-conservatives-in-large-and-small.html
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