When all the stuff from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright started hitting the fan a couple of days ago, I decided I would only comment if the United Church of Christ stepped in. I don’t deal with partisan politics here, but the ecclesiastical angle is another story. Well, I didn’t have to wait long:
In the wake of misleading attacks on its mission and ministry, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ is being lauded by United Church of Christ leaders across the nation for the integrity of its worship, the breadth of its community involvement and the depth of its commitment to social justice.
That may well be true of Trinity Church, but the church isn’t the issue, except to the extent that it agreed with and appreciated the bizarre, racist, conspiracy-mongering and trash-talking of its senior pastor.
“Trinity United Church of Christ is a great gift to our wider church family and to its own community in Chicago,” says UCC General Minister and President John H. Thomas. “At a time when it is being subjected to caricature and attack in the media, it is critical that all of us express our gratitude and support to this remarkable congregation, to Jeremiah A. Wright for his leadership over 36 years, and to Pastor Otis Moss III, as he assumes leadership at Trinity.
“Caricature”? I’m not sure that’s the right word for someone who thinks that the U.S. invented AIDS and sells drugs to destroy black people, thinks that New York and Washington got what they deserved on 9/11, who echoes Fred Phelps in calling on God to damn America, who honors Louis Farrakhan as a man who “truly epitomized greatness, etc. Having seen the video and read the transcripts, I think a lot of folks have Jeremiah Wright pegged just right.
“These attacks, many of them motivated by their own partisan agenda, cannot go unchallenged,” Thomas emphasizes. “It’s time for all of us to say ‘No’ to these attacks and to declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends.”
Thankfully, there is no ideological agenda at work, either in Wright’s anti-American, anti-white, conspiracy-mongering screeds or in Thomas’ defense of him. Just pure gospel honesty. Fortunately, the latter’s defense is based on personal experience, Thomas having worshiped at Trinity on several occasions:
“While the worship is always inspiring, the welcome extravagant, and the preaching biblically based and prophetically challenging, I have been especially moved by the way Trinity ministers to its young people, nurturing them to claim their Christian faith, to celebrate their African-American heritage, and to pursue higher education to prepare themselves for leadership in church and society,” Thomas says.
“Biblically based and prophetically challenging” preaching–yeah, that’s the ticket. Check out an example of it here. Or here. Please notice that at no point does Thomas deal with the substance of what Wright is on videotape saying. Wright’s conference minister, the Rev. Steve Gray, is also an enthusiastic supporter:
The Rev. Steve Gray, the UCC’s Indiana-Kentucky Conference Minister, describes Trinity UCC as a “jewel.”
“It’s everything a Christian community is supposed to be,” says Gray, who has been working with Trinity UCC for the past three years to develop a new UCC congregation in Gary, Ind. “Trinity has given well over $100,000 in support of its partnership with us, and in 15 months of regular meetings with Jeremiah Wright, we always found him to be a man of gracious hospitality, humor, generosity, who paid attention to detail but also a man who does not call attention to himself.”
Gray also said this with regard to the Trinity congregation, just to give you an idea of how lots of leaders in the UCC think:
“When you’re Euro-American, the people [at Trinity UCC] are so exceedingly gracious, warm and welcoming. They hug you and say, ‘Welcome to our church!’”
Isn’t that extra special? But given what we’ve been hearing about their senior pastor’s preaching, maybe it’s kind of surprising, after all.
UPDATE: I wonder if Rev. Gray would feel quite so welcome–as a Euro-American, I mean–if he wanted to take the new members class at Trinity. From the March 9 bulletin:
BLACK AND CHRISTIAN NEW MEMBER CLASS
Have you given your heart to Christ, walked the aisle and given your hand to the preacher? So that you may become a full-fledged member of Trinity United Church of Christ, you MUST complete your new member class!
I know Trinity has some non-black members, but I can’t imagine this is the best way to bring them in.
(Hat tip: anonymous commenter at UCC Truths.)
March 15, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I have just finished reading through the text of Wright’s famous “Hope” sermon, the one that is said to be the basis of Obama’s campaign. It is laced with Biblical references, and much of it is based on a re-telling of a sermon Wright heard previously by a Dr. Samson. There is no way to tell how much is in the original sermon by Dr. Samson, and how much is Wright speaking. In that previous sermon, Dr. Samson analyzed a painting called “Hope” in which a very obviously injured woman, playing a wrecked harp, sits on top of the world. He finds a great contradiction between the picture and the title and elaborates at length on this.
Wright picks up this theme of contradiction with the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1, the barren wife. She is miserable, but she has hope. He recites a story from his own past wherein his mother and father often sang a simple song of praise to Jesus when times were hard or he was in trouble as a child; they had hope. He closes by encouraging his congregation to hope.
The principal problems with this sermon seem to be in:
(1) the hope is simply hope in God alone, not in God through Christ who is only mentioned in passing in the brief story from his own childhood. Otherwise, this is a strictly OT hope;
(2) all of the problems of the world seem to be related to race, to poverty, to lack of material well being;
(3) there are references to “our black heritage”, etc. which unnecessarily excludes some;
(4) there is a deliberate verbal distortion of the imagery of the picture as compared to the actual painting itself. The preacher is in effect lying to suit his own purposes. He begins by protraying the woman as powerful, “sitting on top of the world,” etc. when looking at the painting (not something the congregation could do), it is immediately evident that this is an injured and dejected woman;
(5) the congregation is exhorted to hope, but to hope for that new home or the material benefit. This is not a Christian hope at all, but a very materialistic hope, a Joel Osteen type hope.
This is an example of a sermon that while thoroughly Biblical, it is not Christian.
March 17, 2008 at 10:39 am
Thanks for that analysis, Dr.D! I had never heard of the ‘famous’ sermon itself. Sad.
April 6, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Well folks, this is not rocket science. Words is and words says. What Jeremiah Wright said is what it means. He is ungrateful for America’s blessing onhim or anyone who is a citizen of this great land which was blessed by god. Wright preaches but cannot build an educational institution, offer jobs,provide programs for the black community to take a look at how they damage their own neighbourhoods and then move to other neighbourhoods to do the same by not stopping and saying why do we allow our youth to commit crime,populate prisons,do drugs,make music and videos glorifying the opposite of what Jesus is about. Yet he can damn everyone else. Interesting when America was visually made aware of the sermons that god decided to show a sign and a tornado went through downtown Atlanta. This is to signal Atlanta which is the city with a large black community to show that God’s land will not be damned or tolerated by Almighty god. There will be more signs from god.