The cynic in me wonders how much of this is orchestrated... But for what it is worth...
When the story of Jeremiah Wright first broke and Obama gave that incredible speech on race in America. I stood up in front of my TV and cheered for him much in the way I stood up in my living room when Senator Mark O Hatfield stood up before the Senate proclaiming, "I will not vote for war now, nor will I vote for war later..." and was the solitary vote against the first Gulf war... Obama's gutsy move in that speech had the same effect for me.
From the first clips of Wright saying, "God damn America..." I couldn't figure out what the issue was. After all he was giving voice to the African American experience of this nation.
While the pilgrims were trying to create, "a city on a hill," or "a new Jerusalem," Africans were being imported as slaves to build our pyramids. An African American theological image is not of a city on the hill but of the Exodus and God calling the people out of bondage and slavery. An African American pastor as prophet and preacher needs to call the evils of the enslaving society into the open Wright did that.
I don't agree with Wright about Aids or Farrakan, But I don't despise him either and wouldn't repudiate his words as Obama has done -- at least not publicly.
Is what Wright said so much different from what Falwell and Robertson said about God's judgment and 9-11? He is giving voice to a minority opinion. Lets not crucify him for it. Instead lets try to heal the wounds which caused him to say it in the first place.
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