Obama, his pastor and their Detractors

Here is a guest blog on the matter; not my words by those of an acquaintance that have considerable merit.



Imagine this:

One week before the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama takes the stage at Temple University in Philadelphia, the most diverse university in the nation as ranked by the Princeton Review. In the audience, sits native Philadelphian Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And everybody's waiting to see what goes down here.

The crowd, like all Obama crowds, is as diverse as America. But it's a crowd with new expectations of the senator. It's a crowd with its enthusiasm tempered by concern. There's something strange in the air for an Obama crowd: doubt.

Obama begins with an acknowledgment of the necessity of this speech. It is not unreasonable for people to have questions. Pastor Wright has had an influence on Obama, and Wright is a provocative figure.

And how necessary, he reminds us, is provocation. How needful are we of prodding. How little progress is made in silence. How challenging it is to defend your own views against someone shouting from a stage. And how necessary it is, too.

And with all of Wright's faults, what are the points the Reverend's groping at? What is there to learn from? Do any of us really believe that our nation is so perfect as to be above criticism? Do we not have a history of intolerance and prejudice? What about the man who may be the greatest American thinker, Thomas Jefferson, who said:

"I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."

No one would suggest that the entirety of Jefferson's thought should be discounted because of his disgusting views on race.

Or John Adams, in a letter to Mordecai Manuel Noah, speaking of the need for the 'flawed' and 'peculiar' Jews to be converted to Christianity:

"I believe [that] . . . once restored to an independent government & no longer persecuted they [the Jews] would soon wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities of their character & possibly in time become liberal Unitarian christians for your Jehovah is our Jehovah & your God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is our God."

There's no use in denying that these types of sentiments have, since our nation's birth, been part of the national conversation. They are wrong, obviously, but they are real.

And this is part of the reason behind the rise of the black church. The black church has long been a counterforce against the ingrained and institutionalized prejudice that has persisted so stubbornly in our culture. And this is part of what moved Obama into the pews of Trinity United in the first place. There is so much good being done there, just as there is so much good being done all over this flawed and imperfect nation.

And then Obama looks to his old pastor in the audience. And Obama reads from Wright's remarks on Louis Farrakhan:

"His integrity and honesty have secured him a place in history as one of the nation's most powerful critics."

And Obama, to Reverend Wright, "Dr. Wright, I'm afraid I must respectfully disagree. While it is true that Minister Farrakhan is one of the nation's most powerful critics, his legacy is not one of honesty and integrity, but of division and obfuscation. His is a legacy that we as a nation have to move beyond."

And Obama concludes with an expression of gratitude to the thinkers who have challenged him through the years, from Jefferson and Adams through Wright. He's thankful to have had the opportunity to wrestle with the misguided opinions of even great men in a nation where the freedom of the marketplace of ideas ensures that some ideas will be cut-rate. Hell, Obama taught at the University of Chicago, Antonin Scalia's old haunt. He's never been concerned with surrounding himself exclusively with like minds. That's the challenge of America. Here, in a country that is first and foremost an idea, a man also is his ideas. And ideas can be instruments that grow far too blunt if not routinely honed against the provocations of people worth listening to, even when those people are wrong.

America, and Americans, shouldn't be judged by the most misguided pronouncements of Founders who otherwise gave us a great start as a nation, and Obama shouldn't be judged by the most misguided statements of a pastor who otherwise started him in a faith community that has sustained and nurtured him, and informed his love of his country.