UU Society of Cleveland

April 27,2008

God of the Oppressed

by Rev. Colin Bossen

This morning I want to talk about race and religion in America. My sermon was motivated by the controversy that has erupted around selected comments by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. Wright's comments have been aired on You Tube and throughout the television media. Wright was the minister of Trinity United Church of Christ for 34 years. Trinity is the church that Barack Obama attends. As such many news outlets and commentators have sought to link Wright's statements with Obama's personal opinions. The reasoning of these commentators seems to be that if Obama's pastor said something Obama must at least be open to the opinions expressed and probably even shares them.

Before I continue let me offer two important caveats to my sermon and a general observation. My first caveat is that I approach the topic of race and religion in America as a university educated white Unitarian Universalist middle income male whose personal politics fall on the left edge of the spectrum. Each one of those factors has shaped how I understand race and religion in our society. My cultural location as well my experiences may cause me to have different opinions on race and religion in America than some of you do. That is OK. I have a free pulpit. I am free to say what I want to say and you are free to agree with me or not.

My second caveat is that nothing I say this morning should be taken as an endorsement of a particular Presidential candidate. It is not my role, or the role of any religious organization, to tell you who you should or should not vote for.

As for my observation, Obama is not alone among the candidates in keeping company that some might find objectionable. Both Clinton and McCain have ties, however tenuous, to organizations or individuals whose opinions could be viewed as hateful or racist. It is reasonable to ask why Obama has been singled out for criticism. The organizations or individuals that Clinton and McCain have been linked to are white while Wright is black. Is this a coincidence, is something deeper going on or are Clinton and McCain's ties simply less substantive than Obama's? Since the mainstream media seems to be playing the game of guilt by association I think it is fair to ask these questions when analyzing the Jeremiah Wright episode.

Journalists David Love and Peter Gamble recently penned an article about Bill Clinton's praise of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a human rights organization dedicated to tracking hate groups, has characterized the United Daughters of the Confederacy as a "neo-Confederate" group whose publications occasionally contain white supremacist writings and whose leaders sometimes share the platform with known white supremacists. On at least two occasions Bill Clinton wrote public letters praising the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Love and Gamble want to know if Hilary Clinton shares her husband’s thoughts about such a group.

John McCain has embraced the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee. Hagee is the founder of Christians United for Israel and is the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. According to the radio program Democracy Now "Hagee has come under criticism for his views on homosexuality, Islam, the Catholic Church and even the victims of Hurricane Katrina." In the past Hagee has made statements like: "Islam, in general, those who live by the Koran, have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews." He has also said: "All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are—were recipients of the judgment of God for that." Instead of distancing himself from Hagee McCain has praised him: "...Pastor John Hagee, who has supported and endorsed my candidacy, supports what I stand for and believe in...I am very proud of Pastor John Hagee’s spiritual leadership to thousands of people."

Of course, in the same statement McCain also said: "That does not mean I support or endorse or agree with some of the things that Pastor John Hagee may have said nor positions that he may have taken on other issues." If you read the words taken out of context you probably would not know that.

McCain's position on Hagee is essentially the same position that Obama has taken with Wright. Obama thinks Wright is an important spiritual leader but he does not agree with everything that Wright says. Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and former Republican hopeful for President, made a useful observation about all of this in an on-line article from cnn.com Friday. The three paragraph article reads, in part:

Mike Huckabee…said it would be 'a little bit presumptuous to ever assume' that a congregant agrees with everything a pastor says.

'Influential? Sure. Transferable? Usually not,' Huckabee told a reporter...

How many of you agree with everything I say from this pulpit? I would bet that not many of you do. There are a diversity of opinions and theological beliefs in our congregation. I think it is a little odd to pretend that a minister's opinions, even a minister who has a close relationship with a congregant, represent the congregant's viewpoint.

I fear that our country's political debate has fallen into a giant game of gotcha. I see tones of the McCarthy era when criticizing the government can get one labeled unpatriotic. I see shadows of racism when the controversial remarks of a black religious leader make the television news while the remarks of a white religious leader do not. It might be that I am comparing apples to oranges. Obama has a much stronger connection to Wright than either McCain has with Hagee or Clinton has with the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Or it might be that something deeper is going on. That the fuss over Wright and his relationship with Obama is indicative of the gap between white and black culture. That it suggests that our country still has a long way to go to heal its racial wounds. And that we remain a largely segregated society where often whites and blacks do not quite understand what the other is saying, thinking or feeling.

Whatever the reason, I believe, that the game of guilt by association that is being played serves as nothing more than a distraction from the important policy discussions our country needs as it prepares to select the next President. I care more about what McCain, Clinton and Obama personally believe about U.S. foreign policy than what any of their spiritual leaders or mentors believe. It is they and not John Hagee or Jeremiah Wright who will ultimately make the decisions about what the United States does in the world.

The comic Candorville has a strip that captures my opinion of the whole episode. In the strip a black man and a white man who is wearing a t-shirt labeled "mainstream media" sit next to each other on a bench. In the first two panels the white man is yelling very loudly "Obama's Crazy Preacher! Scary Black Man. Scary Scary Black Man." In the third panel the white man, the media, whispers "18,000 will die this year for lack of health care. More than 4,000 U.S. dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions may lose their homes." In the last panel the black man turns to the white man and says "Wait. What?" The white man resumes screaming "Scary Scary Black Scary Black Man!"

With that observation made let me begin to place Wright in context. Before criticizing snippets of the man's sermons I think it behooves us to understand something about who he is and what perspective he is coming from. Doing so might also help us to understand why someone like Barrack Obama might be a member of Wright's church and why the mainstream media might be inclined to demonize him. It will also teach us a little about race and religion in this country.

Jeremiah Wright is a minister and a black liberation theologian. He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and Navy. While in the Navy he served as a medical technician and at one point was part of an operating team that worked on President Lyndon Johnson. After his military service Wright earned a bachelors and a masters degree from Howard University and a masters degree from the University of Chicago. Later in his career he also earned a doctorate of ministry from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton.

In 1972 Wright was called to be the minister of Trinity United Church of Christ. At the time Trinity had 87 members. Under Wright's leadership it has grown to be the largest congregation in its denomination with a membership of around 8,000. Trinity describes itself as an Africentric church and one of its' slogans is "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." Trinity's membership contains a high proportion of the black intellectual and professional leadership of Chicago. According to an article in the Christian Century "Oprah Winfrey and hip-hop artist Common" are members.

The black theology that Wright and Trinity practice originated as an academic discipline in the late 1960s with James Cone and J. Deotis Roberts. It was a response to the black power movement, the black nationalism of the Nation of Islam and the rage many African Americans felt as a response to generations of oppression and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X and others. To some extent it can be viewed as an attempt by black Christians to stem the influence of the black nationalism of the Nation of Islam on their community. Trinity’s slogan certainly reflects this intent.

In his 1970 classic, "A Black Theology of Liberation," Cone spells out why a black theology is necessary. It is necessary because what people have usually referred to as theology has in fact been white theology. As Cone writes:

American white theology has not been involved in the struggle for black liberation. It has basically been a theology of the white oppressor, giving religious sanction to the genocide of Amerindians and the enslavement of Africans. From the very beginning to the present day, American white theological thought has been 'patriotic,' either by defining the theological task independently of black suffering...or by defining Christianity as compatible with white racism.

Cone lays out a different task for black theology. It "is to analyze the nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the light of oppressed black so they will see the gospel as inseparable from their humiliated condition, and as bestowing on them the necessary power to break the chains of oppression....it is a theology of and for the black community, seeking to interpret the religious dimensions of the forces of liberation in that community."

Or, as Wright put it in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, "It assumes Africans speaking for themselves as subjects in history, not objects in history."

Black theology emerged from a specific context. That context is the black experience in America. It is a theology of liberation because in America blacks, as a social group, have been oppressed for over 400 years. Africans were first brought to North America as slaves in 1526 and slavery for African Americans persisted on this continent for another 339 years. After slavery was ended blacks continued to suffer under Jim Crow in the South for another hundred years. Today legalized discrimination against and segregation of African Americans has been ended. However, in many communities, particularly working class and poor ones, blacks continue to suffer from institutionalized racism. African Americans on average have less wealth and education than whites, shorter lifespans and far higher incarceration rates. Unemployment is dramatically higher in African American communities as is the rate of HIV infection and amount of intraracial violence.

Black theology developed because Cone, Wright, Roberts and their contemporaries realized that the end of legal segregation did not mark the end of racism in America. Black liberation theology is the idea that God and religion should stand on the side of the oppressed. If God does not stand on the side of the oppressed then God does not matter. If religious communities do not stand upon the side of the oppressed than they are part of society's problems and must change or be abandoned.

Black theologians argue that God has called us to end racism. One of the ways it has sought to cure racism is to end the culture of self-destruction. In this sense it is a somewhat conservative theology. It places emphasis on individual responsibility. That is where the black family value system and Trinity's Africentrism come from. These things are not about black supremacy. They are about trying to instill people in need of self-confidence and self-love with a little pride in their heritage. Wright is someone who is trying to spread what he sees as an inclusive liberating gospel from a particular cultural perspective. In this way he is not that different from the priest of Catholic church who is proud of his community's Irish heritage. The church might celebrate Irish culture but that does not mean it is not open to people of other cultures. And in Trinity’s pews you will find people of all races.

One way that black theology celebrates black culture is by flipping the language of black and white around. In our culture white is often equated with good and black with bad. In "A Black Theology of Liberation" Cone argues that "Blackness...stands for all victims of oppression who realize that the survival of their humanity is bound up with liberation from whiteness." Conversely whiteness "characterizes the activity of deranged individuals intrigued by their own image of themselves, and thus unable to see that they are what is wrong with the world." Using this framework there can be black people, that is oppressed people, who happen to have light skin and dark skinned people who are white, that is oppressors. Some of you might see a parallel with the efforts of the gay and lesbian community to recast words like queer that have been used as epithets in a positive light. Whether you agree with the use of such a framework or understand the need for one might depend upon your own social location. As an outsider it might all seem confusing or offensive. This is because, in part, majority groups in a society do not need to understand the language, the culture or the issues facing a minority group to survive. If you are confused or offended by the black theology of people like Cone and Wright try imaging yourself in a cultural or social location similar to the one they found themselves in when laying the foundations for their work.

The work of Wright has been to serve his community. The reason why Trinity has blossomed under his leadership is that it has tried to meet the needs of the black community on the South Side of Chicago. Trinity has enough social justice and social service ministries to make your head spin. They run prison ministries, HIV prevention programs, job training programs and much more. As a minister Wright has tried to open the doors of his congregation wide enough to include gays and lesbians within it. This is a fairly radical move within the African American religious community. In a sermon entitled "Good News for Homosexuals" from his "Good New! Sermons of Hope for Today's Families" sermon series Wright said:

Theology says the same thing to gay folks and lesbian folks that it says to black folks and brown folks. God doesn't make junk. And God doesn't make mistakes. The way God made you is the way God loves you.

This is a liberal message that many Unitarian Universalists would agree with. The language might be slightly different but the intention is the same. The difference is largely cultural.

And this is ultimately the point about Wright. Forty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday morning continues to be the most segregated time of the week. People from different cultures, be they white, black, Hispanic or Asian, native or foreign born, worship and experience religion in different ways. They do not necessarily understand the religious cultures of the other social, ethnic and racial groups that are worshiping at the same time but in other places.

With that in mind let me now return to the incidents that sparked the media storm around Obama's former minister and Obama's relationship with him. In a sermon shortly after September 11, 2001 Wright said:

We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye....We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africa and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas is brought back into our own front yard.

Americas chickens are coming home, to roost.

In a sermon entitled "Confusing God and Government" and dated April 13, 2003 Wright said:

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing "God Bless America." No, no, no. Not "God Bless America"; God Damn America! That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizens as less than human.

I am sure most of you have heard these statements. These sermon snippets have aired almost endlessly on television for the last few months.

The sermon in the wake of September 11th has been quoted significantly out of context. Rarely do the commentators note that Wright was referencing an interview on Fox News with former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Edward Peck. In an interview shortly after September 11th Peck argued that U.S. foreign policy was largely responsible for the attacks. Wright was quoting and paraphrasing Peck to illustrate how one person, a former government official, was engaging in self-reflection. By referring to Peck Wright was trying to prod his congregation to think more deeply about why the U.S. had been attacked. Elsewhere in the sermon Wright calls the terrorist acts "unthinkable." The sermon is call for national and personal self-reflection in the wake of the terrorist attacks. In the light of our government's response to the attacks I think it is unfortunate that calls like Wright's were not listened to by more people.

"Confusing God and Government" is a sermon about the transcendent justice that God is supposed to represent. The main thrust is that people should look to God for justice rather than to governments. To paraphrase Wright: Governments change. Governments have supported slavery. Governments often only serve the interests of an elite. Governments lie to their people. God, however, does none of these things. God stands for justice and as is frequently written in the Bible God condemns governments that do not treat all of their citizens well.

Whether you agree with it or not it is actually fairly standard black Christian fare. If you read Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermons you can find him making similar statements. One can be found in his sermon "The Drum Major Instinct" from which one of readings came this morning. In another sermon "Standing by the Best in An Evil Time" King said "The judgment of God is on America now." Later in the sermon King said "America is going to hell too, if she fails to bridge the gulf." The gulf is that which separates blacks from whites and the developed world from the developing one.

Now I do not agree with everything that Wright has said--his claims that HIV is a government plot are nothing short of disturbing--but I do believe we need to understand him in the context of race and religion in America. And the context of race and religion in America is that we continue to live in a grossly unequal society. The income gap between the rich and the poor is increasing. Real wages are static. Life in the ghettos has not changed for the better in many years. There is hate, fear and bitterness to be found among many people and in many communities. Often people of different races and social classes interact so infrequently that what is acceptable in one community is shocking in another. Raising these issues was how Obama chose to respond to the Wright controversy.

After distancing himself from Wright's remarks he goes onto explain "the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding between the races." He also remarks that "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community."

As a society we must address this anger to move forward. Without doing so it is doubtful that we will be able to unite to tackle the serious issues that face our country. Working on the problems that face our country and the world will occasional require strong language. It will challenge to listen to each other and to go out of our way to try and understand those who are different from ourselves. And it will mean that each of us will have to ask the questions: In what ways am I oppressed? In what ways am I an oppressor?

I will let James Cone have the last word:

I do not expect all persons to agree with what...I say about justice and blackness in America. I only hope that they will recognize that our proclamations for and against America are in fact expressions of our love for humanity. Unless America recognizes the rights of human beings, its future is doomed. I write because I believe in human beings. 'We shall overcome!'

To that I say Amen and Blessed Be.