I shouldn’t be so surprised to see so many who wish to graft the opinions of Rev Wright onto most famous member of his congregation. After all, there has been so little opportunity for scandal throughout the Obama campaign. But the accusations of associative racism (or worse, sedition) are manifestly ignorant, not to mention more than a little hypocritical.
I’ve written about growing up Methodist many times, almost always in a positive light. One constant with the United Methodist Church is the cyclical re-appointment of ministers. This can be traced back to the early Methodists, the iconic circuit-riding preacher who would make his rounds from parish to parish, Sunday to Sunday. Rather than being responsible for a single church, these founding pastors had handfuls of church families to nurture and serve. In much the same way, the modern United Methodist Church places ministers according to the needs of various congregations and will reappoint a minister should a greater need arise elsewhere, replacing that minister with another just as capable.
In other words, I’ve known a lot of preachers by the way they each manned the same pulpit. Overall, I’d say most were respectable, that they each served our home church well enough. But if pressed to choose from among them, if asked to say who delivered the better sermon, who had a better grasp on theology, who was a better confident and advisor, who understood how to embrace a church family as his own, I can’t say that any one of their number was every “who” in that list. Each had their gifts. None were perfect. All were human. And that’s okay. A congregation that expects their pastor to be infallible is a congregation asking too much.
Furthermore, misguided is the outside observer who assumes a pastor to be wholly representative of any individual member of that pastor’s congregation. From my own history, I can cite several examples of ministers who successfully led my home church while simultaneously maintaining opinions contrary not only to my own, but to several others in our congregation. There is no better example of this than the pastor who held the post through my latter years in high school, my initial years in college. He was (and possibly still is) an unapologetic Ditto Head, a daily listener to Rush Limbaugh. But while Limbaugh is an anathema to just about every political opinion I hold, that pastor’s appreciation for Right-Wing talk radio had no bearing what-so-ever on his ability to minister to our church, to visit our sick, to be a part of our family and to be one of the best friends I had.
A side note … It was during his time as pastor that our youth adult Sunday School class took on the task of providing holiday dinner to several of the more needy children and their families in our community, a dinner that concluded with a visit from Santa Claus bearing toys that each child had placed on their Christmas List. There is nothing quite as humbling as seeing the look on a child’s face when their wishes come true. And if your heart didn’t crack at the kids who squealed happilly once their gift was unwrapped, then it surely would at the quieter children who just clutched their unopened gift tightly. “Don’t you want to open your present?” “No,” they said. Because they wanted to save it, to have something under the tree on Christmas day.
Did my association with that minister have an effect on my life? Most definitely. A very positive effect that informs my understanding of not only Christianity in general, Methodism in particular, but in the Earth-moving power of community and compassion that need never be confined behind the walls of any church.
Did I replace my politics with his, or forsake my own ability to reason and render an opinion to take up his? Not in the least. If anything, I learned from that pastor that two people with diametrically opposed political viewpoints can maintain not only a healthy respect for each another’s opinions and hold a civil conversation about those views, but also remain friends throughout.
So when I read that Barack Obama has condemned the incendiary speech of Rev Jeremiah Wright, but cannot disown him, I get it. I really do.
As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
Notice that the list of lessons does not include, “He taught me how to govern.” And look at the important word in that first sentence. “Family.” Can any of us say truly that we’d be comfortable with anyone assuming that our own opinions are exact duplicates of the opinions held by any random member of our extended family? I wouldn’t be, certainly.
Beyond the immediate Wright controversy, Obama’s speech was brave, as it confronted quite honestly the spectres of history that still haunt our society. Some of these appear as outright racism, but still more pervade our society in the form of inequality, injustice and misunderstanding. I’ve no idea how the Clinton camp is going to respond, but I doubt sincerely that they will approach a State of our Union so honest as the latter half of today’s speech, even from a distance.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own …
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news …
Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
Of course, if our general electorate insists on turning this election into a giant game of “Lookit, Racisms!” (for a very disheartening slice of vox populi ignorantia, simply scan the comments left on the related AJC blog entry), then we’re just going to continue as we are. Our leaders will do nothing to inspire or uplift. The stalemate will persist.
And then, I fear, the old truism will prevail. We’ll get the politicians we deserve.
