Jeremiah Wright

Jeremiah Wright: What (Else) Is Going On

Sara Robinson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:38:13 -0400

Jeremiah Wright is everywhere this week -- and the media doesn't quite know what to make of it. Mostly, they're stuck so hard in the election horse-race narrative that they only question they can think to ask is: Does having Wright out there hurt Obama, or help him?

Lost in the tortured pondering over this narrow question -- apparently the only one that matters, to hear them tell it -- is a lot of deeper context, without which none of Wright's current situation and status make a whole lot of sense.

Some of that context has to do with who Wright is, and what role he plays on the larger stage of American religion. Some of it of it is rooted in popular narratives about religion that the GOP has worked overtime to sell; and that the media (along with many Christians) have never questioned. Some of may have to do with the way our broader assumptions about the role religion can and should play in 21st-century American culture and politics could be changing. These three factors are driving a whole backstory that nobody's talking about; but which provides the deeper subtext we need to have if we're going to understand what Jeremiah Wright represents, and the role he plays not just for Obama, but for the country.

Since the corporate media isn't remotely up to the job of explaining all this -- and probably wouldn't if they could -- let me fill you in on what else is going on here.

Liberation Theology versus the Prosperity Gospel
The basic elements of this backstory are deftly laid out in Sarah Posner's thoughtful new book, God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters. The book takes a hard look at the explosive growth of the "prosperity gospel" evangelical subculture, which is frequently found in suburban megachurches -- and is supplanting Martin Luther King's liberation theology in some black churches around the country as well. Posner describes the essence of this consumerist "Word of Faith" gospel:

Word of Faith...emphasizes the power of the born-again believer in Jesus Christ to call things into existence, including the believer's own physical and mental health and, more important, the believer's financial prosperity. Because of its emphasis on the believer's divine right to physical well-being and financial riches, Word of Faith is often called the "prosperity gospel" or the "health and wealth gospel."

...Yet while it presents itself as a benign message of hope and purpose, critics of Word of Faith charge that it is a heresy that robs its followers of spiritual fulfillment, an affinity fraud that robs them of their money, and a distortion of the Scriptures, run by authoritarian preachers who rob their followers of their autonomy.

According to the "Word of Faith" panjandrums, whatever followers give to their preacher, God will return several times over. Forget the bank: if you need a thousand dollars, give the church a hundred, and wait for your supernatural return on investment. Forget the doctor: if you're sick or injured, a little extra in the bucket will incentivize God to restore your health. In an unapologetic return to the glory days before the Reformation, the system even allows people to buy indulgences: you can atone for your sins by helping the pastor buy that new Palm Springs golf retreat his ministry so badly needs!

Taking these mites from desperate and hopeful widows nets top prosperity gospel ministers millions of dollars a year: successful Word of Faith ministers own numerous homes, private jets and expensive cars. And these preachers' followers support their imperial lifestyles wholeheartedly. Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." According to this theology, you can tell the Elect, because they're the ones with the biggest bowl of fruit. It's a belief system tailor - made to justify the most rapacious consumer society in history.

(This divinely-ordained pyramid scheme has not gone unnoticed. Six months ago, Senator Charles Grassley -- R-IA and a staunch Baptist -- took an interest in the way these ministers are using their non-profit status to generate vast fortunes. He asked six of the richest ministers, including Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, to open their books and submit to investigation of their operations. Four have complied in whole or part; two, including Copeland, are refusing outright, howling that this is a breach of the church-state wall -- you know, that same one they've been working overtime for years to tear down.)

The movement also a strong conservative political undercurrent, which Posner makes explicit:

Politically, Word of Faith is essentially a conservative movement that benefits from conservative policies....The prosperity gospel doesn't need regulation or legislation. A believer doesn't need the government to regulate corporations. If you don't make enough money, it's your own fault for not believing enough, for not speaking the word, for not claiming what is divinely yours. A believer doesn't need a government safety net if things go wrong. As [Rod] Parsley says, "The best thing government can do to help the poor is get out of the way. If government reduced taxes, removed industrial restraints, eliminated wage controls, and abolished subsidies, tariff[s], and other constraints on free enterprise, the poor would be helped in a way that AFDC, Social Security, and unemployment could never match." ...His gospel is the ultimate laissez-faire capitalism, regulated only by the invisible hand of God.

Starting in the Reagan years -- and with considerable practical and moral support from the GOP, which Posner documents -- the prosperity gospel swept through the country's Pentecostal churches, both black and white. To give you some idea of how incestuously this movement is bedded down in GOP politics, consider the fact that John McCain claims Rod Parsley and John Hagee -- two of the nation's biggest purveyors of the prosperity gospel -- as his "spiritual advisors." (A lot of us wondered why he chose these two, who are regarded as nutcases even by many Evangelicals; but reading Posner, the political ends being served become obvious.)

Needless to say: not everybody welcomed this new gospel with open arms. Millions of devout Evangelicals who've read their Bibles and noted Jesus' contempt for greed, as well as those who hew to older and more rigorous theologies like the Social Gospel and King-style liberation theology, find the whole thing beyond offensive and verging on blasphemy. From the beginning, some of the country's leading ministers, both black and white, have taken public exception to the idea of reducing God to the status of a personal ATM machine -- and have pushed back hard against a movement that they feel is a not only an IRS-sanctioned form of fraud, but also a heresy against 2,000 years of Christian teaching.

And here's where Jeremiah Wright comes into the story. According to Posner, Wright has been a visible and articulate critic of the GOP's new pet theology over the years -- one of a noisy clutch of ministers who've made no bones about the mischief inherent in this new theology. He's also a respected and insightful proponent of black liberation theology, holding King's torch high in the face of unscrupulous preachers who think they're helping poor people by cajoling them to vote away their safety net and toss their government checks in the offering plate.

Beyond that: unlike the vast majority of these ministers, most of whom attended small Bible colleges of dubious accreditation (if they attended seminary at all), Wright has degrees from Howard University and the University of Chicago Theological Seminary. It's gotta go down hard that he's a black man who is far better-educated than they are, and can argue circles around them about the Bible or anything else. Take it as a whole picture, and it's not hard to see that Wright is very sharp thorn in these people's sides. As long as he and his friends out there, their 30-year investment in the whole Word of Life movement is at risk. Obama's candidacy put him in the spotlight, and thus magnified the threat. So now he has very powerful enemies on the religious and political right.

Furthermore, turning Wright into a national demon was a two-fer. They could not only tank the Democrats' front-runner; they'd also take down a serious and persuasive theologian who's been calling them out hard on one of their longest-running and most successful efforts to sell the conservative worldview to the very people who stand to be most harmed by it.

That's a big part of what's driving the animus against Wright. It's the issue he was addressing head-on at the National Press Club on Saturday, when he talked about how the storm of criticism surrounding his remarks was, in effect, criticism of the traditions of the black church. It also answers the burning question of why the GOP and the corporate media will not let this go. What's happening here is bigger than just Barack and Hillary and John. It's a struggle between two competing Protestant theologies, both of which claim tens of millions of adherents -- and a galvanizing figure who hasn't gotten the hint, and still keeps standing up for his flock against those bent on shearing them.

A Voice for The Silent Majority
There's another part to this backstory as well. It has to do with the media's dominant narratives about religion in general over the past three decades.

Ever since Reagan came to power, media stories having to do with religion have almost always reflected a basic duality. On one hand, you had urban secularists (including the media people themselves) who had no connection at all to religion, which they regarded as backward and the sign of an inferior mind -- a contempt that was reflected in their generally incomplete and inaccurate coverage of the subject.

On the other hand, you had far-right preachers with loud voices and red faces hollering ignorant and irrational rants about gays, feminists, and liberals. To the secularists, these preachers' histrionics came to represent the evils of all religion; and furthermore, they verified every bias they had against every form of religion. And the hostility was returned in full: to these preachers and their followers, the condescending media coverage nourished their already overfed inferiority and persecution complexes, driving them further and further out of the mainstream.

This polarization was a boon to the conservative movement, because it's exactly the kind of us-versus-them story that conservatism feeds on. It was a key split that created the space to define the preposterously unreal stereotypes of the coastal latte liberal versus the "real American" -- the heartland values voter. And it made those two positions the only acceptable ones in the political or religious dialogue. It forced people to take sides in a war that nobody but the right wing even wanted to fight.

And in drawing that false and forced line, it also rendered vast stretches of America's religious, cultural, and political landscape absolutely invisible. The vast majority of Americans -- educated and moderate believers of many faiths whose understanding of God informs their passionate belief in justice, compassion, equality, and democracy -- got cut out of the conversation entirely, because they lived in a far more nuanced place that didn't look like either side. You never saw their intelligent, well-modulated religious leaders on TV talk shows; you never read interviews with their thinkers and writers in the paper. There was simply no place for them in that artificial narrative -- and since they didn't fit, the vast majority of America's religious people simply ceased to exist as a public or political entity at all.

The conservative ascendancy depended on keeping these people completely cut out of the conversation; and the media, driven by their own biases, dutifully cooperated for years in accomplishing that goal. Without the balance these other voices could offer, the religious right was free to define "religion" (including civil religion) on their own terms, and claim full control of the country's discourse. The first thing they did, of course, was declare all the moderate and liberal people of faith to be apostates, which only silenced them further. They've been out there, quietly fuming and frustrated, ever since.

But Jeremiah Wright appears to be turning his current notoriety into a bully pulpit from which, at long last, that forced silence might finally be broken. Listening to his interview with Bill Moyers last Friday, I felt like I was hearing something strong and intelligent and real and wise -- the kind of nuanced spiritual voice most of us have never heard on TV in our lifetimes (though the fortunate among us have always heard them in our churches). It was the voice of that suppressed and silent majority, the people of faith whose concerns and insights have been so thoroughly stifled that they've been utterly absent from the discourse for three long decades. Wright gave us a sharp reminder of what liberal Christian voices can sound like at their best. I hope he also whetted an appetite for out-of-the-box moral thinking that will allow us to hear more -- not just from Christians, but from many traditions. The broader the perspectives and the more corners we hear from, the better our responses to the current challenges will be.

Wright's current media blitz is no doubt an effort to capitalize on his infamy -- and, perhaps, help Obama by leaning into the controversy rather than shying away from it. (Honestly: does he have any other choice?) He may be hoping that the more we see of him, the more people will understand who he is, and the harder it will be for the slanders to stick.

But whatever his motives, I wish him well. It's just so remarkable, after all these years of blackout and blacklisting, to hear a moral voice that's not bought and paid for by the religious right, and not out there selling more fraudulent scams in the Great Republican Con. In Wright, we've finally got strong voice out there who knows how to call them on their game.

Why Jeremiah Wright is justified in taking Barack Obama to task.

Michael Kwiatkowski — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:25:41 -0400

Last night MSNBC (including Keith Olbermann) was all over Jeremiah Wright for going on a book tour and — gasp! — daring to criticize Barack Obama. Reading today's hate-fueled rant on the web site, you'd think he had done something wrong. Why? Why shouldn't the man who was publicly tossed overboard by his former parishioner return the favor?

Reading Kevin Alexander Gray's assessment of the speech in which the Democratic candidate for president distanced himself from the man who presided over his marriage and baptized his children, I couldn't help but conclude that Wright had been thrown under the proverbial speeding bus by Obama — who apparently decided long ago to adopt Bill Cosby's out-of-touch, blame-the-victim rhetoric (an observation echoed by Adolph Reed, Jr., in the May issue of The Progressive).

"His political repertoire," writes Reed, "has always included the repugnant stratagem of using connection with Black audiences in exactly the same way Bill Clinton did — i.e., getting props for both emoting with the Black crowd and talking through them to affirm a victim-blaming, 'tough love' message that focuses on alleged behavioral pathologies in poor Black communities." Reed blasts Obama for going "beyond Clinton and rehears[ing] the scurrilous and ridiculous sort of narrative Bill Cosby has made famous."

Gray pointed out in his April 2, 2008 Progressive online column:

Until the controversy broke about his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama himself frequently played the race card — on black people.

Shortly before the Texas and Ohio primaries, Obama was speaking to a mostly black audience and said, “I know some of ya’ll, you got that cold Popeye’s out for breakfast. I know. That’s why ya’ll laughing. … You can’t do that. Children have to have proper nutrition.”

In South Carolina, he told the state Legislative Black Caucus that a good economic development plan in the black community would be “cleaning up the garbage.”

Now, if white politicians had said these things they would have been pummeled.

And even in his much-heralded speech, Obama went out of his way to criticize welfare, decry “the erosion of black families” and stress the need for black fathers to spend more time with their kids.

This Bill Cosby routine goes down well with white voters, but it further stigmatizes blacks.

Obama managed to weasel his way out of trouble a month ago by dissing his former pastor as a bitter relic of a bygone era. So who can blame Jeremiah Wright when he goes on the talk circuit to defend himself and retaliate against his betrayer? For truly, did Obama not merely use his former pastor's church as a means of establishing ties to a community whose political backing he wanted to strengthen his career (writers at Black Agenda Report and The New Republic certainly seem to think so)?

The point here is not to criticize Barack Obama so much as it is to defend Jeremiah Wright as he gives back what he received. The danger of dismissing him as an angry, bitter old man whose message is equally ignorable lies in continuing the cycle of racism in this country, and the suppression of very real issues pertaining to U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

The fact is that not only was Wright betrayed, so too was the whole of the Black community, and the legitimate criticisms of imperialist policy that have wrought suffering and devastation upon others. We may disagree with the reverend's delivery, but we cannot deny that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were a direct consequence of our country's meddling in Middle Eastern affairs that resulted in mass death and political oppression in the region. Nor can we deny that our nation was built on the backs of African slaves, and the genocide of the aboriginal peoples of this continent. The indignation over Jeremiah Wright's fiery rhetoric clouds the truths contained in his diatribes.

So let's cut the man some slack. He may not be the sort of person we'd prefer to point out these truths, his method of delivery far too blunt for our comfort. But sometimes we need that in order to face up to unpleasant facts about ourselves and our nation's history. We should consider that Mr. Wright may be justified in going public with his side of the story, with his criticisms.

If that happens to hurt Barack Obama's presidential campaign, whose fault is that?

Is Wright Right About Racism?

David Sirota — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:06:42 -0400

Is Jeremiah Wright right about racism? There, I asked the question - a question that should be at the center of the "controversy" surrounding Barack Obama's former pastor, but which has been completely ignored. Somewhere deep down, I am guessing Wright feels some shred of vindication, because the entire "controversy" surrounding him now answers that question resoundingly. As I discuss in my newspaper column out today, Wright has become the latest target of the media lynch mob - and in becoming that target, he has proven his very assertions about the persistence of racism in our culture.

There are some things Wright has said that I strongly disagree with, and I certainly may disagree with more of his statements that come to light in the future. However, as the column shows, the specific statements at the center of the Wright "controversy" today are rooted in undeniable fact. Yes, there is a black community in America - and acknowledging that does not make one a "black separatist." Yes, terrorist attacks are often the product of what our own government calls "blowback" - even if that "blowback" is undeserved, criminal and immoral. And yes, bigotry is still a powerful force in American culture - and our society would do well to understand that bigotry makes African-Americans unhappy. As archconservative Mike Huckabee (R) said, "I grew up in a very segregated South and I think that you have to cut some slack...we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names."

But the intolerance the media lynch mob has shown toward Wright - and the tolerance the same media has shown toward the real extremists around John McCain and Hillary Clinton - is a telling double standard proving Wright's fundamental thesis correct. While Wright has dominated the news, anti-Catholic pastor John Hagee and anti-Semitic Reverend Billy Graham have received scant attention for their close relationships with McCain and Clinton, respectively. The Serious Media have followed modern day Bull Connors like Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan and Charles Krauthammer into the ugliest gutter - the gutter of racial politics. And these three racist lynch mob leaders will undoubtedly retain their perches on cable networks and on the op-ed pages of Serious Newspapers. They will continue championing what one expert calls "colorblind racism" - the kind of racism that hides itself in platitudes against racism and extremism itself.

Clinton, of course, has fueled the fire. Just this week, she granted an interview to the fringe right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune Review - the tiny newspaper owned by the same Richard Mellon Scaife who financed Republicans' anti-Clinton infrastructure in the 1990s. Clinton used the interview to specifically stoke the Wright "controversy" ahead of Pennsylvania's primary. Her much-vaunted political "firewall" that she says will stop Obama has very clearly become a "race wall" (more on this in a new In These Times article set for release on Monday).

This was a very difficult column to write. It took a long time to craft, because racial and foreign policy taboos (especially those that question American exceptionalism) are such sensitive topics - and I've gotten some hate email already this morning. But I'm glad I wrote this. With so much of the well-heeled, white Establishment simultaneously preening around like they oppose racism while pushing this story in a fundamentally racist way, I felt it was important to make the basic point that started out this post. And that is, again: This whole "controversy" has confirmed Wright's fundamental assertion that our culture is still deeply afflicted by bigotry. If the media is a mirror reflecting what we as a society consider acceptable and unacceptable, then that mirror is right now telling us just how powerful racism still is in American life.

You can listen to my discussion about the column on Colorado radio this morning here. Or, read the whole column at Creators, Credo Action, The Denver Post, The Vail Daily, The Ft. Collins Coloradoan, In These Times, TruthDig or Alternet. The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.