Hope or High Water

Hillary Clinton told the Pittsburgh Tribune that she would have left any church in which Rev. Wright was pastor almost week after Obama’s speech on the subject. The Pittsburgh Tribune is one of the most conservative newspapers in the country, the same newspaper that infamously asserted that Hillary Clinton had one of her staffers killed in the 1990s. As Keith Olbermann notes, Senator McCain and Gov. Mike Huckabee have both given their support to Barack Obama over the Rev. Wright issue, but Hillary Clinton has once again chosen to be a negative and divisive force in the Democratic party. Here’s the video with some commentary on the subject of why Clinton would choose to make these comments to such a conservative editorial board, including a quote by an anonymous elected official who said that in order to win Clinton would have to employ a “Tonya Harding” style smear campaign and “kneecap Senator Obama.”

The most surprising piece of news stemming from Clinton’s comments has to be the statement that the pastor of Clinton’s former church released. This statement by pastor Dean Snyder of the United Methodist Church doesn’t defend Barack Obama, it goes the extra mile by defending Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Here is the statement in full:

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times. He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. He has been a vocal critic of the racism, sexism and homophobia which still tarnish the American dream. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize. This is a critical time in America’s history as we seek to repent of our racism. No matter which candidates prevail, let us use this time to listen again to one another and not to distort one another’s truth.

Dean J. Snyder, Senior Minister
Foundry United Methodist Church
March 19, 2008

That Senator Clinton would ignore the common wisdom of both the religious leader of her former church and senior politicians on both sides of the aisle, is not a sign of moral integrity so much as a hint to how desperate she is to win.  That Clinton refuses to answer questions about her current religious institution tells us that she does not want to be open to the same scrutiny as Senator Obama.  That Clinton will not come clean about her her financial records or about her religious affiliation gives the impression that she has something to hide.

I have been waiting to post on this subject for a long while, hoping that the right words would suddenly come to me in my sleep. Unfortunately, the words I have been searching for have not yet come to me, and I can wait no longer.

The clips that have repeatedly played in the media depict Reverend Wright as a hate-mongering antipatriot, but this portrayal could not be further removed from the truth. All Americans owe it to themselves and to this now demonized man to watch the speeches in their entirety. Removed from their context, I find it understandable that people might find his remarks offensive, but Rev. Wright’s remarks aren’t nearly so inflammatory when placed back into the context of the larger speeches he was giving. The quote “Not God bless America. God damn America.” is simply wrong. The actual quote is expanded: “God damn America as long as America acts like she is God and she is supreme.” Even this quote is still out of context because the speech notes the comparative difference between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, noting that Bill Clinton was a largely positive force in an era of bad times, but that George W. Bush asserted America’s supremacy over God’s supremacy. Rev. Wright concludes that it is that assertion of America’s supremacy that is damnable.

The other statement that Rev. Wright has been often reported as saying is that America brought 9/11 on itself. Once again this statement was taken entirely out of context. He was actually quoting Ambassador Peck, a white man, who had appeared on Fox News to say “America’s chickens had come home to roost.” The Ambassador’s meaning was clear, he did not mean that America had brought 9/11 on itself, he simply meant that America should not have been surprised that there were people in the world who were angry with us, and that our actions in other part of the world have consequences. 9/11 was the reaction of a militant group to actions that we had taken. 9/11 was a vile act, but it did not happen in isolation. We cannot, and should not, avoid stepping on every toe in our diplomatic relationships across the globe, but we should have known that our actions have made numerous people across the globe angry at our country. This is what Rev. Wright was saying, and he goes on to urge us not to take our own anger out on innocent civilians, as we have so many times in the past.

When you watch these videos in full, it becomes apparent that the Reverend has been treated in a manner that is both unfair and unjust to who he is as a man and as an American. Rev. Wright had been in the Marines, he had fought for this nation. Now we will parse his speeches for a few painful seconds of material and turn our collective backs on this man?

I thought Obama’s speech on race was fantastic, but he did not go nearly far enough in exonerating his religious mentor. Obama remarked that the mistake that Rev. Wright made was not that he was angry about the past, but that he lacked an ability to see the capacity for the country to make positive changes. By making these remarks, Obama bought into the narrative that the media had manufactured about Rev. Wright. What Rev. Wright’s speeches actually portray is an America that can both progress and regress, a dynamic America whose citizens must rely on each other because the government is prone to corruption and abuse. For the sin of accepting a forced narrative rather than asserting an honest counter-narrative, Obama owes Rev. Wright an apology.