Jon Pahl on Jeremiah Wright

The Lynching of Jeremiah Wright
Jon Pahl, Ph.D.

Barack Obama has already issued his important, eloquent, and historic speech on race here in Philadelphia. In it, he carefully and clearly defends Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. from the unfair treatment his former pastor has received in recent days. At the same time, Obama beautifully stakes out a higher road than Rev. Wright's admittedly inflammatory rhetoric.

But it would be a mistake to overlook the dynamics that led to the focus on Rev. Wright in the first place. After all, it's Holy Week. Lynching time. And the recent treatment of Rev. Wright demonstrates to a perfect "T" the scapegoating, exaggeration, and violence Christians remember in this sacred season. It would be ironic if it weren't so tragic.

The right wing press first "broke" the story of Rev. Wright's supposed "anti-Americanism" and "anti-Semitism." Sean Hannity started the mob moving. But the mainstream press, without any apparent critical thinking or additional homework, simply accepted the Willie Horton film-clips. Even a little research might have suggested that Rev. Wright was a slightly more complex figure than the sound bites suggested.

I first learned of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. through research for my book Youth Ministry in Modern America. What I discovered is that the program for young people at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (then led by Rev. Wright) was extraordinarily creative and comprehensive. Youth at Rev. Wright's church were not treated as some sort of idealized "future," segregated off into some separate sphere. They were fully woven into the fabric of the congregation. They participated in the church through teaching, preaching, rites of passage, and the whole range of being a Christian and a citizen. If you want to understand Barack Obama's extraordinary appeal to young people, it wouldn't hurt to start with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

A great strength of the Black Church since its inception has been the ability of congregations to link sacred with secular concerns. This linkage was necessary to protect African Americans from a brutally oppressive society. And anyone who thinks this oppression is over has not looked at economic or prison statistics lately--as Obama's speech makes patently clear. For all of the success of the Civil Rights Movement, racial inequality that exacts real suffering in the lives of African Americans continues to be a fundamental problem in American society.

Consequently, Rev. Wright has been a tireless advocate for social justice. The list of "ministries" on the web site for Trinity United Church of Christ runs to five pages. Active Seniors and Friends Ministry, Drug and Alcohol Recovery Ministry, HIV/AIDS Ministry, Legal Counseling, Prison Ministry--and much more constitute what's really going on at Trinity United Church of Christ. Anyone can see with a little research that these ministries serve "the least among us," and thereby serve the entire society. They are faith-based activism at its best. And as Obama's speech clarifies, that's why such a church was attractive to him, not because of some supposed anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism of the pastor with which he is now being "associated."

Rev. Wright's comments about state-sponsored terrorism, 9/11, and the violence of U.S. policies toward Palestinians are hardly unique to him. Noam Chomsky has said the same thing. "The current U.S. leadership is . . . quite frankly and openly committed to the use of violence to control the world," Chomsky said in a May 21, 2002 interview. And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in his famous Riverside Church speech against the Vietnam War, lamented that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government."

To assert, then, with the Rev. Wright that America has a violent history is not a radical or anti-American "perspective." It's a fact. The violence that built this nation is evident to anyone without a blinkered nationalist view of history--from the Native American removals, through slavery, to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction, to Iraq.

As many commentators have pointed out, Rev. Wright's passionate remarks fit well into the long history of Judeo-Christian prophetic preaching. After all, the rabbi Jesus was not a nationalist. Any Christian who tries to make him into a pro-American patriot misses the rather significant detail that the Roman Empire found it expedient to put him to death. Jeremiah Wright has incarnated the prophetic tradition that calls nations to be accountable to God. In that context, even his statement "God-damn America" makes sense. Prophets say such things. God is beyond any nation. And when a nation doesn't treat its people justly, then prophets resort to the rhetoric of divine damnation to try to change the people of a nation.

So, in the end, Rev. Wright is neither anti-American nor anti-Semitic. He does tell the truth about American violence--out of love for the nation's best ideals. He is unapologetically a Christian. He is unashamedly Black.

Those are features to admire, not condemn. Such loyalties to one's particularity, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has argued in The Dignity of Difference, can uplift us all and strengthen the social fabric. The proof of that is in the hope inspired by the Obama campaign. Such hope is founded in the faith, integrity, and courage--despite human flaws, of a man like the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

That such faith-based hope would inspire fear on the part of some in our society is no surprise. What is surprising is that the mainstream press so uncritically joined the mob.

Jon Pahl is Professor of the History of Christianity in North America at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. He is Visiting Professor of Religion at Princeton University.