Obama’s Speech
I didn’t catch Barack Obama’s speech concerning race and his pastor, but I did skim the transcript. In fairness, he does make some good points, but this one jumped out at me:
I can no more disown [Rev. Jeremiah Wright] than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
This is all true. Most of us have relatives who hold some, let us say, archaic views, especially when it comes to race. But we don’t choose our relatives. We do choose our ministers. It’s also worth pointing out that Obama’s grandmother, by his own admission, “confessed” that she feared black men. Presumably, the fact that she made a “confession” instead of a “statement” indicates that she knew, at least logically, that this was the wrong thing to believe, but that she just couldn’t overcome the racial ideologies that were considered “common sense” in her youth. What does that make her? Well, wrong to be sure, but her sin is one more of weakness than hate.
It would have been perfectly understandable if Rev. Wright had simply “confessed” that he sometimes had trouble trusting white people or that he feared racism. But the tone he used, and the hate he seemed to project (not to mention the language) is truly disturbing. It seems to be a sin of hate, pure and simple, not a sin of weakness or fear.
Cross posted at Appalachian Scribe
Well Obama said a lot of things. He said he was not there when his Pastor made the bad statements, now in his speech he says he was there. Perhaps we can’t believe anything he says. After all, he is a liar.
But we don’t choose our relatives. We do choose our ministers.
Really? We do? Most religious people I know aren’t in the habit of frequently changing churches. Maybe the people you know are less committed to their faith, I guess…
We do choose our ministers.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
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tgirsch,
“less committed to their faith” indeed, when you don’t give a crap what your pastor says week in and week out from the pulpit. Sounds like your friends are committed to a person (and, interestingly, not to spiritual integrity) more than “their faith.”
JP,
Wright’s views are “good”?
nedwilliams:
Allow me to remind you that the stuff we’re seeing on the Internet is cherry-picked from over the last six-plus years. Without ever having sat through a sermon of his, you’re eager to judge these examples as typical, and assume that these are the types of things he was saying “week in and week out.” How very Christian of you.
Psst! Hey, buddy! You’ve got a speck in your eye!
tgirsch, you didn’t set in the church every week either so you know know that he didn’t spew it out every week.
Wright’s views are “good”?
Some are; some aren’t… like most humans.
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Mickey:
You’re right about that. But I do still believe in the American ideal of presumed innocent until proven guilty. Couple that presumption with the fact that the excerpts being circulated right now are short, and from years apart, and my conclusion would seem pretty sound.
[…] John Norris Brown: It would have been perfectly understandable if Rev. Wright had simply “confessed” that he sometimes had trouble trusting white people or that he feared racism. But the tone he used, and the hate he seemed to project (not to mention the language) is truly disturbing. It seems to be a sin of hate, pure and simple, not a sin of weakness or fear. […]