Quote:
Originally Posted by EE-BO
This is my feeling.
Anyone- like me and many of us here- who has ever spent a significant period of time affiliated with a church knows full well that you become intimately familiar with the preacher's general position and tone.
NOT the African-American community at large since I still believe most African-Americans are just as appalled at Wright as I am
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Just quickly chiming in on the two points above...
#1 As a Chicago native who is very familiar with Trinity United Church of Christ (this church has been a pillar in the community for many many years), I am positive that the general position and tone of Pastor Wright are not what people have assumed them to be based upon these few clips. Sunday services focus on spiritual issues and spiritual issues alone for what I would say is nearly 95% of the time. People have assumed that nearly every other sermon are fire and brimstone race lectures, which is simply not the case. For the most part the pastor does a wonderful job of educating his members on how to walk in the footsteps of Christ. I think that it is very possible for someone to attend his church and still feel that it is the best place to make your spiritual home, even if you were turned off by a political sermon that is given once a year (and I would say that is a high number). I have visited the church several times over the 25 years that I have lived in the city, and I have never heard him talk politics from the pulpit.
#2 What people tend to forget is that all of the racial wounds, which mar our country's history are not that long ago. There are people alive today who knew slaves ( I just recently had a conversation with an elderly gentleman who's grandmother was a slave). There are people alive today who grew up in the Jim Crow south, struggled for equal rights, fought for integration, and have seen the many injustices that our nation tend to want to believe were oh so long ago. I'm saying that b/c many ppl in the black community (Rev. Wright included) have heard these individuals stories (or lived them), and still feel all of the pain and emotion that you can imagine must be attached. Many of us see the effects of these injustices, which we are still living with today. That's not to say that Rev. Wright's comments weren't inappropriate (esp. in the Pulpit), but to say that he was expressing a frustration and inner turmoil that many African American's feel. I don't know that many of us were, in fact, appalled, but rather eager for 'the other half' to acknowledge these deep wounds so that we can finally discuss ways to make things better. Instead ppl seem to prefer living in a world where no one truly talks about these hurts, but rather continue to ignore and pretend that everyone has moved along.
What is mostly interesting to me is that ppl do not realize just how different Obama is from many members of the African American community. He didn't grow up in a Black household, and he wasn't really raised with much of that deep hurt (and general awareness of race issues) with which many Blacks were raised. If there is anyone who I could believe disagrees w/Rev. Wright's comment, then it would be him b/c his upbringing and experiences are very different.