Flashback: Wright's Letter To NYT About Obama

To Rev. Wright, the AIDs thing was a bit of a stretch, my father and his three brothers, all volunteered to serve in WWII. Word is the two eldest who were sexually active, and one that wasn't yet - had syphillis. All that volunteered, were given pennicillin. The rest were an experiment. I can find no untruths in anything else you said. And I defer to your elder knowledge on the rest. And I pray that this indictment on your Church, and you - causes no restless nights. "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and sucess achieved." Helen Keller - Blind of eyes leading the blind of heart -

If these things were not in Jodi kantor's story. Then Richard W. Stevenson, your letter is totally worthless, and so is your honesty.

1. It was a spiritual biography.
2.Obama is a most principled individual.
3 Genuine human being.
4. How Idealistic he was.
5 He's incredible and lives his faith.
6. I TOLD THIS WOMAN I DID NOT SHAPE HIM OR FORM HIM.
7. I DID NOT MENTOR HIM.
8 Did Jodi Kantor's story include the true reason why Rev Wright was
not involved in the start of Senator Obama's Campaign.

Could it be, if you included especially #6 & #7 , The smearing of Obama wouldn't work?

I wouldn't talk to anyone involved with the MSM. They have been in a bent over position with george bush behind them, for over 8 years

middle piece went missing. This needs to be added to make sense of the other two. Regards Cone's fine-print qualifications:

Throughout the book, Cone was careful to explain that a black-centered Church need not be a black-separatist Church. And even the simplest phrases""black people," for instance"turned out to be slippery. It wasn"t about being "physically black," he wrote. "To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are." In his view, blackness was as radically inclusive as Christianity itself, and just as demanding."

Full article in the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/07/080407fa_fact_sanneh

Sounds radical at first what with that scary word "black" everywhere, but the core of this school of teaching redefines blackness to mean basically altruism, coupled with empathy for the sufferer.

This may seem like glib Clintonian parsing, until you consider the New Yorker is quoting something written down in 1969.

This was basically a response to mainstream church apathy towards racism. A criticism also levelled by Frederick Douglas and Martin Luthor King Junior.

Please read the last 3 posts of mine in chronological order to get some sense out of them :)

A church that only spoke to the divine could not survive in the marketplace of ideas surrounding churches like trinity. The flock was pretty desparate and needed real solutions to real and pressing problems. NOI for example, provided A solution. Not, imo a very good one. But a bad solution is better than no solution. Trinity United is basically a Christian alternative solution that differs in core aspects (see above).

They needed concrete solutions to concrete problems.

If you read further, you will also see what drove this.

This is also apparent in the work that most of the churches in this neighbourhood does: they provide institutions for community people (the poor) to advance themselves in terms of getting off drugs, going to school, learning trades, etc.

Note also that the Catholic curch in its local manifestation has also adapted to this added need. Witness Michael Pflege (and somtimes guest preacher) a white Catholic and his "African-American Catholic church."

You could think of guys like Wright and Pflege as the thin dashiki/cassock-clad/ line stopping NOI from taking over the black religious niche. Although I have read Wright has actually managed to mellow Farrakhan who now dialogues with local Jewish orgs, and the three of them actually coordinate their efforts to clean up the community.

Why does "black" as a cultural descriptor worry some people so?

Besides the people who's job it is to make other people worried, I mean.

Throughout the book, Cone was careful to explain that a black-centered Church need not be a black-separatist Church. And even the simplest phrases""black people," for instance"turned out to be slippery. It wasn"t about being "physically black," he wrote. "To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are." In his view, blackness was as radically inclusive as Christianity itself, and just as demanding."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/07/080407fa_fact_sanneh

Sounds radical at first with that scary word "black" everywhere, but "black" is redefined to mean basically altruism, coupled with empathy for the sufferer.

This may seem like glib Clintonian parsing, until you consider the New Yorker is quoting something written down in 1969.

I'm sure many people who don't read too carefully would say "Whites have empathy too damnit!"
Of course Cone says that up front. But the problem is that many white dominated churches in the US have not gotten that involved in civil rights, and have a poor track record on getting ivolved in Abolition or speaking out against lynching. This was a criticism first levied by Frederick Douglas. Black Liberation Theology was essentially a means of branding a more activist christianity that was less passive about social injustice than the mainstream. The quasi-black nationalist trappings were mostly in place to compete with the NOI for parishioners, because for poor black people simply speaking about the divine was insufficient.

New Yorker article on Trinity pretty much puts this to bed.

Just because Trinity use the word "black" in their material and stated raison d'etre does not mean they are racist. This of black here as referring to an American subculture and an attitude, not a race.

From the New Yorker article today:

""Christianity is the white man"s religion." That was Malcolm X"s verdict, and though he meant it to be final, a generation of black Christian leaders decided to treat it as provisional. In 1969, a thirty-one-year-old theologian named James H. Cone published "Black Theology & Black Power," a short, astringent book that Wright would use as a blueprint for Trinity. Cone proposed a reciprocal arrangement: just as the Black Power movement could find redemption in the Church, so the Church"dominated and distorted by generations of white men"could find redemption in the Black Power movement. He wrote that there was "a need for a theology whose sole purpose is to emancipate the gospel from its "whiteness" so that blacks may be capable of making an honest self-affirmation through Jesus Christ." And he argued that, since African-American suffering was such a powerful metaphor for the suffering of Christ, color-blind Christianity was a contradiction in terms. "To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen," he wrote. "God has chosen black people!"

Like many brash-sounding manifestos of the era, this one came with fine-print qualifications.

Obama has the WRIGHT stuff!! The Republicans will beat Obama easily. How sad for the Dem party that they started out with several good candidates and they're ending up with the worst of the lot. McCain '08.

The reverend is neither speaking the truth nor is he speaking to power.

What the reverend tried to do here is express his outrage, because the NY Times didn't just regurgitate the 2 hours of back story he gave to them.
That's not how any newspaper works, nor does his claim that the reporter was doing a "Spiritual Biography" of Obama hold much credence. That's evidenced by his failure to follow-up with her and by some of his own commentary!

There are so many problems with this letter; tone, scholarship, spelling, thinking, belligerence, non sequitors, irrelevance, anti-Semitism, hyperbole and still more unpleasantness, that anyone who reads this with an objective, unbiased critical eye, can only come away wondering just what's wrong with the reverend.

Well, we already know that answer, because the man he mentored [Obama], sacked him from his campaign, and has said were this same reverend still leading his church, he [Obama] would have to quit said church as a result of his outrageous views on several issues. That's all in the public record now, people.

Is ANY of this sinking into the heads of at least one of you Obama fans?

In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability. Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing that they were "doing their duty." They loved each other and did not know that this was "love of neighbor." They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were "men to be trusted." They were reliable and did not know that this was "good faith." They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.
-Chuang Tzu


I feel this to be better than what we have now. Too many are driven by legacy and ambition causing them to distort and to disregard truth (Kantor, Judith Miller, FOX, Limbaugh, Bush, Rove, Cheney). Our leaders are not showing themselves as high branches, but lowly dirt under the tree.

Reverend Wright speaks truth to power.

So few among our political leaders [no, they are not the ones wielding the power] have the guts to do that.

This letter does not paint a pretty picture of the individual who wrote it. He was so sarcastic, rambled, clearly angry in a tone which was less than what one would expect of a minister, and simply drenched in what one could take as his veiled assertion that he should never have trusted her because she is Jewish.

So much for the great spirituality of the Rev. Wright.

"Since Mr. Obama"s decision to disinvite Mr. Wright was clearly news " and because word of it was beginning to get around " we decided to publish a news story about it right away."

The NYT's 'response' seems to consist of a non-denial denial: they confirm Wright's version of events, they just don't think there's anything wrong with it.

Who is this guy Barrak?

Wow! That dude sounds really angry and self-absorbed to be a 'minister'.
I will not vote for BO after all I've heard by now about this,also the slum-lord weird land deal he was into,and unAmerican comments and actions by him and his millionaire Oprah-wannabe wife.
Oh yeah he SUCKS at bowling too! Bowls like a 7 year old GIRL! LOL
He really should just drop outa the race now.