Author: mopress

Toleration and the American Pulpit

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / OpEdNews

What happened to Rev. Wright’s religious freedom? Sen. Barack Obama’s ‘race speech’ continued to presume that Rev. Jeremiah Wright deserves no special consideration on grounds of religious freedom. On Easter Sunday, perhaps, Americans will want to consider whether the pulpit at church deserves any special respect.

A cable newscaster on Good Friday asked in a tone of voice that expressed her wide-eyed naivety: “What is liberation theology?” Having covered the news for many years, and having covered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright thunderstorm for two weeks, it was still a question that she had not bothered to research. And frankly, I don’t want to experience that learning curve as part of my continuing coverage of the Presidential campaign.

I doubt that the summer of ’08 will be the time to provide a sufficient, good-faith answer to the question of liberation theology or how the black social gospel is spiritual grandfather to these momentous American movements. Such an attempt at national education played out upon our contemporary media landscape would likely morph into witch-hunt.

Sen. Barack Obama appears to agree with this assessment. The Senator’s public review of Rev. Wright’s oratory during Tuesday’s ‘race speech’ did not mention either keyword, neither liberation nor theology. And yet, Rev. Wright has asked that these be the key words applied to any serious assessment of his work.

Because it would likely be a poisonous time and place for the adult discussion that liberation theology requires, I think Obama’s judgment call is valid as he tries to move public discussion around the issue of liberation theology rather than through it.

However, I think there is a stronger argument than Obama’s for going around Rev. Wright’s oratory as a campaign issue. The stronger argument is that the American unity that Obama claims to want will require some faith in the principle of religious toleration.

Since it is liberation theology that is required to understand Rev. Wright, and since theological agreement is precisely the kind of thing that should not be required in the context of public policy debates, then it is time to agree that when Rev. Wright speaks from a pulpit in a church, it is better that a tolerant society back off of his comments as a Presidential issue.

There is some sophistication in the careful wording of Sen. Obama’s speech, which hints that he knows the difference between theology and policy discourse, even as he confines Rev. Wright’s oratory upon a two-dimensional plane of public policy. The clues are in the repeated uses of the phrase ‘as if’: “he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country . . . is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.”

Sen. Obama has three times denied the truth of his own pastor with the phrase ‘as if.’ But is not the theological function of prophetic speech to talk precisely ‘as if’? Public policy may spend long hours concerning the need to ‘store up’ resources for long-term planning. But does that dismiss the value of the prophet who walks up and says: “You fools, not tomorrow, but today, your souls are required of you!” As if there is no time.

Although it is unlikely that the cable news cyclists would respect calls for religious toleration in behalf of Rev. Wright, I think that toleration is the better argument for moving on.

The argument from toleration has the benefit of refusing to flatten theological oratory onto the plane of policy-speak. And if we achieve this act of toleration for Rev. Wright, then we will strengthen the three-dimensional life of spiritual language for all theologies (or anti-theologies), and maintain a more healthy distance between church and state as a precious resource for everyone’s freedom of worship in a robust democracy.

Not only do the continued houndings of Rev. Wright exemplify racialized ignorance, as Sen. Obama argues, but they also tighten the bands of religious intolerance that have too broadly constricted our national character for at least the past seven years. On this issue, perhaps, another great speech needs to be written that would restore Rev. Wright to the dignity that any theologian deserves when his name is dragged through the galleries of public-policy clamor.

NOTE: Article revised for OpEdNews (Easter Sunday, 2008)

From today’s Austin American Statesman:

Charles Laws, a water company executive whom local officials are calling on to resign, on Friday defended his decision to characterize a proposed detention facility for illegal immigrants as a “holding pen for w*tbacks.”

Laws said “w*tback” is widely acknowledged to mean immigrants who swim the Rio Grande and enter the United States illegally, not American citizens. Laws said the term is not racial, an assertion that others dispute. He said he wishes he had not used the word in an agenda item for the Creedmoor-Maha Water Supply Corp.’s board of directors but will not resign over it.

From yesterday’s KLBJ News:

According to Laws and other Mustang Ridge city officials, the proposal is to build a 1,000 bed facility that would employ approximately 200 people. Laws says the firm is interested in being within 30 miles of the Austin Bergstrom Airport, so that the detainees could be flown back to their countries of origin.

City officials tell us the proposal is to build a family detention center, much like the T Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, which is run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). That facility is run by the private jail firm to house immigrants and their children who have been detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officers.

According to attorneys who represent people held in T Don Hutto, some of the detainees say they are in the U.S. seeking asylum from persecution. The large majority of the immigrants are not from Mexico or South America. Many are from South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Canada. The roughly 400 adults and children are held in the facility until their on-going immigration hearings are complete. Williamson County is named as the administrator of that contract, and receives a fee per inmate per day.

In December of 2007, Emerald made a proposal to the Caldwell County Commissioners Court to build a facility in north-east Caldwell County, between Lytton Springs and Dale.

Two quick responses from the CounterPunch audience. Both stand clearly on the side of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The first one is short and sharp:

is the rev. wright not a truth sayer? are not his arguments entirely valid here? politically they may be a disaster for obama, proof that all his talk about hope and cooperation is spurious in a racist society.

The second reply opens with a question: was I likening Sen. Obama to Saint Peter when I said that he denied Rev. Wright three times with the phrase ‘as if’? Well, I was thinking about the three denials that are recalled during the Christian holy week. Then the reader turns to liberation theology:

The mostly secular mainstream didn’t want to hear about liberation theology when Latin American Christian base communities were being slaughtered with weapons and training provided by Uncle Sam, and most won’t want to hear about it now. Nevertheless, when it comes to Truth, there is always and everywhere no time like the present.

Thank you for pointing out the parallels between Liberation Theology and the theology of certain African American pastors. And now in the Spirit of the Season, some food for thought from an Arab Christian:

‘Persecution does not make the just man to suffer, nor does oppression destroy him if he is on the right side of Truth. Socrates smiled as he took poison, and Stephen smiled as he was stoned. What truly hurts is our conscience that aches when we oppose it, and dies when we betray it.’ — Kahlil Gibran

To both readers, thank you. Without contradicting anything you have said, I offer an experiment in hope, that an ethic of toleration might be applied toward a more respectful treatment of Rev. Wright than the one we have thus far witnessed from too many parties and players in the Great American Presidential Election Game–gm

But is it not the theological function of prophetic speech to talk precisely ‘as if’? (“Tolerance and the American Pulpit,” Mar. 22, 2008)

One of the major functions of prophetic speech is to castigate society for its failures to follow divine precepts. One of the great precepts of both Judaism and Christianity is the responsibility of those who have to care for those who have not. Examples of this are the Old-Testament duty of farmers to leave behind some food in the fields for the poor to glean so that they may eat, and the fact that Jesus is so frequently shown caring for the poor (to the extent of washing the feet of beggars) — he didn’t serve the military and the politicians, he served the downtrodden and the cast-off. I’d suggest that this is really about all one needs to know about liberation theology. Both Judaism and Christianity are rooted in the idea of social justice.

The great majority of Americans are misled to think that the function of the prophet is to tell the future. The job of the prophet is to call upon society to adhere to the principles of social justice. This was as true for Jeremiah Wright and Martin Luther King,, Jr., (especially after he was enlightened about the relationship between racism and American imperialism and militarism — much like the revelation that Malcolm X experienced on his Hajj) as it was for Amos and Jeremiah.

Jesus and Malcolm and Martin Luther King, Jr. were all killed because the “good people” — those who benefit from our injustice towards society’s victims — couldn’t bear the criticism. And that’s why the hue and cry after Jeremiah Wright. How dare he tell his congregation (and the rest of us, now) that this nation’s actions in Iraq, etc., are just as damnable as they were in Viet Nam, etc.? His repetition of “God Damn America” was using the prophetic voice as a contrast to the obscenity of the imperialist-militarist repetition of “God Bless America”.

Best wishes,
Joel Shimberg
Quaker old-time fiddler
Tennesseee

NOTE: “The Rev. Jeremiah Wright got a raucous standing ovation when he entered Saint Sabina church on the city’s South Side on Friday night . . . He also sang “Happy Birthday” to [Maya] Angelou, whose birthday is April 4. . . . He recently scrapped plans to receive an award in Texas, and to speak at churches in Houston and Tampa, Fla.” (AP, March 29, 2008).