Jeremiah, Jesus and Doing Justice: Obama's Church, Challenge and Campaign

Summary

---

The cold calculated attacks on Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ must be understood then, not simply as assaults on Barak Obama thru Dr. Wright but also on our right and responsibility as a people to worship in our own self-determined way. Certainly, the primary motivation is to weaken and fatally wound Obama's winning campaign. But it is also a racist and arrogant attempt to direct how we as a people relate to God and each other, interpret our sacred texts, read and respond to the signs of the time and engage our ancient and ongoing ethical obligation to heal, repair and transform ourselves and the world in the image and interest of the Highest Good. These critics and their media allies give a racial pass to John McCain's and Hillary Clinton's supporters whose religious and racial rants were quickly reported and dismissed. But they have focused on Dr. Wright with extended ferocity and declared Obama guilty by unapproved association with his minister and mentor.

As Martin Luther King taught, within this Black Christian tradition and understanding which Rev. Wright embraces, Christians "are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemies, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers." Thus, when Dr. Wright speaks for the poor and less powerful, the voiceless, the victims of U.S. domestic and international policies, for the Palestinians, Iraqis and others whom the U.S. government calls our enemies, he is not being inflammatory, unpatriotic or divisive. Instead, he is working within a social justice tradition whose moral vision and vocabulary and righteous struggle expanded the realm of freedom in this country and offers an important model for oppressed and struggling peoples of the world. Assuming a similar moral obligation of his biblical namesake, he accepts the divine assignment "to root out, pull down, destroy and throw down" evil, injustice and oppression, build up the people in rightful ways and plant the seeds of truth, justice and good works in the world (Jeremiah, 1:10).

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Jeremiah, Jesus and Doing Justice: Obama's Church, Challenge and Campaign

Has it actually come to this, Black people, that White folks now dare to choose our church, approve and disapprove our pastor and dictate the spiritual and social content of our sermons without blinking, blushing or showing even a modicum of shame? Are we now to abandon our self-conception and historical identity as a moral...

See the full content of this document

---