Minister's Message

MINISTER'S MESSAGE

“What's Right About the Rev.Wright”

Much has been spun about the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barrack Obama's former pastor at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. The Senator has done an admirable job distancing himself for the so-called "scandalous" musings of his former pastor. Understandably perhaps, Mr. Obama, had no choice but to disavow the Rev. Wright's condemnation of our society as two-tiered into poor and rich, black and white. The good Reverend's prophetic remark that God should "damn" us as a nation was ready fodder for the right wing pundits who are looking for a chink in the Obama's candidacy; expressing outrage that America could be anything more the right and blessed in its mission to save the world for democracy while millions go uncared for and are shut out of a shrinking middle class.

Barrack Obama did use this furor to speak eloquently on the complicated problem of race in our nation. Sadly, most news outlet's mis-understood not only the context of the Rev. Wright's comments in an African American church on Chicago's South Side, but the prophetic tradition from which African American preachers and especially Congregationalist pastors speak. As the Rev. Wright tried to explain, to "damn" is to condemn the status quo as so many prophets have done for millennia. It is meant to shock the powers into shame and action.

Leaving aside the fiery rhetoric of the Rev. Wright, there is another story the news has completely failed to notice: Jeremiah Wright was called by his faith to speak the "truth in love" as he saw it. The United Church of Christ, just like Unitarian Universalists share in the great tradition of the "free pulpit" as inheritors of the Congregational heritage of New England. I, like my colleagues (including the Rev. Wright) are called in our ordination to preach the truth as we see it. In fact, it was the Puritans, our common Congregationalist ancestors, who first left England to freely preach and worship the truth as they saw it.

We may each disagree with the vindictive of the Rev. Wright's comments but we, of all religions, should understand his right both as a minister and citizen to speak those "truths". I only hope none of you are running for political office any time soon.

With Grace and Grit,

Rev. John

Rev. John is also a regular contributor to Discover UU: Searching for truth