Trinity Strikes Back

Trinity United Church of Christ, former employer of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has issued a press release defending its long-time pastor:

Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe.

Not exactly. Wright is being taken apart in public for being a race-baiting, America-hating, conspiracy-mongering moonbat. In that respect, he’s not exactly like Dr. King. And no one is attacking him for the good stuff he does, either, to the extent that it actually is good.

“Dr. Wright has preached 207,792 minutes on Sunday for the past 36 years at Trinity United Church of Christ. This does not include weekday worship services, revivals and preaching engagements across America and around the globe, to ecumenical and interfaith communities. It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite,” said the Reverend Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ.

Normally I would certainly agree with this, but in this case the problem is that the stuff that has been publicized is so outlandish, so bizarre, and so offensive, that to respond this way is to completely miss the point. Think about the public figures who have been captured on film or tape using the “n” word about African-Americans, or the “f” word about gays, or telling racially-tinged or sexually explicit jokes who have lost their jobs as a result. Barack Obama’s closest foreign olicy advisor recently lost her job with his campaign for the sake of one mis-begotten word about Hillary Clinton. To blow off Wright’s lunatic remarks about 9/11 or government conspiracies to infect black people with AIDS because it’s only a small portion of his total work can only be done by creating a double standard just for him.

Moss added, “The African American Church was born out of the crucible of slavery and the legacy of prophetic African American preachers since slavery has been and continues to heal broken marginalized victims of social and economic injustices. This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world.”

This playing of the race card should be expected from Wright’s hand-picked successor. Wright’s vicious inability to recognize any good in America, and his swallowing whole of some of the most off-the-wall conspiracy theories, has nothing whatever to do with the history of the African-American church. And to suggest that taking Wright to task for his craziness is “an attack on the legacy of the African American Church” is an insult to tens of thousands of hard-working pastors and millions of laypeople who manage to carry out God’s mission daily without resort to hateful language and far, far-left lunacy.