Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the "Real" Black Church in America

I remember it was the first time I'd ever heard real "keening" (the falsetto, high pitched wail sometimes used to describe the mythical sound of Irish banshees on the prowl). I was a member of a stunned and numbed congregation in a Catholic Church, in the South some 35 years ago. We were packed tightly into the too-small building on a warm, early summer day, attending the funeral of husband/wife parishioners, friends: parents of 12 children, ages between, perhaps, eight and 25. They were the victims of a double homicide. Several years earlier I had attended the funeral of John F. Kennedy. The expressions of grief in those November days in 1963, couldn't begin to compare with the depth of sorrow given voice and tears and swooning that was expressed here in this place as those assembled tried to give comfort to each other, all devastated by this dreadful event.

This congregation was nearly filled with African-American families and friends who had gathered to try to give each other some consolation in such an inconsolable circumstance.

People were wailing, falling feint, calling out, and spontaneously lifting up their voices in songs and desperate prayers. Women dressed in nursing attire moved about the congregation ministering to those who were struck down by all that grief.

I have never, before or since, felt that sad, so moved and so connected to a congregation ... while, at the same time, so out of place.

Since that day I have been privileged to be present for many, many gatherings with African-American (as well as with black Africans in Africa), both friends and associates, for social events, meetings, and worship. On several of those occasions I have had at least some flashback of that long ago feeling of being both connected and "alien" to the gathering.

Because of my position as president of Faith & Values Media and what I have done for most of my adult life, I have had, much more than most white males, many experiences of what Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been calling "the black church." It is probably true that most black Americans have had far more experience with the white church (and the white world for that matter) than the reverse. So, Rev. Wright speaks somewhat correctly when he observes that white people are generally quite ignorant of what the "black church experience" actually is.

But, at least implied in Rev. Wright's most recent pronouncements is that criticism of his most caustic statements damning the American government (and by extension the majority of Americans who either elect or tolerate that government) are an assault on the "black church in America."

The fact seems more likely to be that most white Americans (and certainly the media in general) have an appalling lack of understanding about life in black America in general, and, in particular, about life in the black church which sustains, comforts, and, for many, helps to define the character of many African-Americans.

I was once an executive producer of a Sunday show called "America At Worship, "where Rev. Wright's Trinity UCC church in Chicago was one of the featured sources for preaching in that show. His sermons were carried by us on a monthly basis for many years. I know Rev. Wright's approach, both in form and in content, quite well. He did, on regular occasions, give us some very nervous moments (our standards and practices strictly forbade maligning or ridiculing others on our "air"). His social/political critique was biting, not infrequently with ample reason; his delivery style was engaging -- he danced and occasionally sang and even crooned; he was as good with one-liners and zingers as David Letterman and he could be described by some as vulgar. He was outrageous enough on occasion to force us to edit out some material. In short, he is a talented and, perhaps, inspired preacher. He is in the tradition of the classic preacher-prophet who cannot pass up an opportunity to yank on the king's beard as often as possible.

If all that white America knows about the American black church is what they have gleaned from listening to clips of Rev. Wright recently, they only know a little corner of that American black church. Rev. Wright's present public argument tries, by a strange circuitous logic, to convince white America that what we know of him, from those sound bites and continuously looped video clips, expresses what actually goes on all over the nation in black churches, all the time. His principal error, in my thinking, is this equating by him of his style and content with that of the American black church in general. His preaching impact, while often touching on scholarly, is achieved using a kind of hyper-critique, delivered with ample doses of ridicule, bombast, and comic side glances. It is not synonymous with "the black church in America" experience.

First and foremost, the church in black America does not conform to the Rev. Wright's model of worship and preaching. His paternalistic comportment and demeanor, while not unheard of elsewhere, is not the sole model of black pastoral leadership. (The man who is replacing him at Trinity, Rev. Otis Moss, is proof of that). There are many kinds of Black Christian churches in the U.S. Some are more Baptist in tone. theology and tradition. Some are predominantly Caribbean. Some are more culturally African. Some are, believe it or not, Roman Catholic.( Rev.Wright referenced the pastor of one of these at the National Press Club gathering). There are other giants in the pulpit as well,. Rev. Otis Moss, Jr. (mentioned above) may be one of them. Another is Rev. James Forbes recently retired from Riverside Church (New York). Certainly Rev. Calvin Butts at Abyssinian Baptist (New York), as well as Rev. Creflo Dollar and Bishop T.D. Jakes ,who draw huge audiences on cable, are others.

But the "real" black church in America is even more often found struggling, day to day, in a storefront or in a building the members have to sacrifice to support. It's those communities who don't only preach about injustice and violence, they don't only render service and political education; rather they stand by each other when pain and misery visit in often hideous measure and hold each other up, pray and sing with each other into a time when "grief shall be no more." In my experience, even when I have felt alien to much of what was going on, the primary model for the Black church is not the political podium and not even the soup kitchen or the homeless shelter -- the primordial model of the black Church in America, and the source of its strength and endurance, is the family -- laughing, loving, mourning, faithfully encouraging, helping, listening, cajoling and even correcting. By claiming that his style, his approach, his church is the "black Church in America", Jeremiah Wright has masked the truth and done not only a disservice to the Senator from Illinois but to all of us -- both black and white -- as well.

Edward J. Murray is President and CEO of Faith & Values Media, the nation's largest coalition Christian, Jewish and Islamic faith groups dedicated to media production, distribution and promotion.

Comments

[Charles TW]

Your essay reflects an ignorance of "real black church" that is nothing more than condescending. You arrogantly presume that we chould perceive our experiences only as they conform to mainstream white America's for them to receive its stamp of validation. We are expected to be "good sports" about having been subjected to all manner of social oppressions and degradations until the system find self-exonerating means to properly dispose of them. Any other recourses our part should be condemned as unpatriotic, anti-American and even treasonous.
I've worshipped with congregations that range from advocating killing every white American on sight to those who sincerely believed that white America can do no wrong. Reverend Wright and others who know the "real black church" know that its true purpose is not to contend and judge those with conflicting views about how to deal and cope with those abominations visited upon us by white America, nor to provide aid and comfort to white America's pursuit of its self serving, self righteous, political, economic, and social agendas.
The '"real black church" provides guidance as to how blacks can best serve the will of God through Jesus Christ while navigating a society dominated by those driven by military power and control over the conduits of information that it arrogantly believe is beyond condemnation, even by God, Himself. Reverend Wright merely brought to the table inconvenient truths that your ignorance of the "real black church" refuses to acknowledge.

[Mojane]

Thank you. You have articulated precisely what I have been thinking these many weeks since the endless loops of sound bites were first aired, and unfortunately are still being stewed and spewed over. You speak with the authority that would behoove the MSM to heed. Unfortunately, the truth is often ignored in favor of the sensation that negativity harbors.

[prittfumes]

Trying to rehabilitate Rev. Wright in anticipation of an upcoming Barack v. McCain contest? It won't work.

[ssg13565]

Some of these responses show that maybe some of you have actually seen the entire videos of Wright's sermons and appearances.

If more of you had seen the entire presentations, you might be more able to "walk in another man's shoes". Once you gain this ability, I am hoping that you will join me in trying to fight the propaganda war that the MSM has been waging against Rev. Wright.

In particular, you might watch the Q and A session at the end of his National Press Club appearance.

The MC who read the questions to him ended up looking like a fool. As he answered the negative line of questions brilliantly, the more she persisted, the more foolish the press looked. No wonder they do not want this event to be covered in a representative fashion.

When choosing sound bites to represent an event for a news story, shouldn't a responsible journalist pick something that gives the listener a good idea of what the even was all about?

If you manage to pick a sound bite that will garner the most attention, but that gives a very false impression of the event, then you have failed as a journalist.

See my web site if you want to do your own investigation of what really happened. Then join me in the fight against propaganda.

http://ssgreenberg.name/PoliticsBlog/?p=82

[S1m0n]

The family is the primary model of all churches, not merely black ones: the kernal of this essay is a truism.

[tcagle]

Religion exists to comfort people in situations in which they have little control or influence. Ideally, it makes them feel better without hurting the lives of others. Science just works a hell of a lot better.

[sueno]

Excellent article-

[bentenrai]

In a church, some people are there for the preacher's sermon, others go there to connect with the congregation and have a relationship with God.
The people who say they'd have left the church are the former. Lukewarm or forced faith in God.
The people who say they stayed because the church is not and was never about the preacher are the latter. Real faith in God.

[Geminess]

If I grew up at a time when police were conducting Coin-tel operations against Blacks, or at a time when the government was experimenting with Black Men (many soldiers who served this country) with a syphillis study that basically let those men die of the disease; or if I was born at a time when Blacks were treated worse than animals in a dejure and de facto apartheid system here in the United Stets of America; or if I was around at a time when Black women were being sterilized so they wouldn't give birth to MORE Black boys and girls (no profit motive after slavery); or had I been around when soldiers who served in WW1 and II were LYNCHED WITHEIR UNIFORMS ON (just for being black or "uppity'); or if there was a slave market that drove me away from my village and family and placed me on a ship filled to capacity with shackled slaves like me, men women and babies, I, tioo would have some issues with MY country.

Black men have fought in EVERY war this country ever had. Yet, though we were brought over here via the middle passage around colonial times (or earlier by some records), we were not fully recognized as being EQUAL CITIZENS UNDER THE LAW until the the 14th Amendment.

This Jeremiah Wright situation should have had the same amount of coverage as the press gave McCain's religious zealots who support him. Zilch, nil, nada.

[nerakami]

Geminess:

Yours was a wonderful ability to "walk in another man's shoes". If more of us were able to do this, then we would have so much more understanding and compassion for how others feel in this world. It doesn't make us have to agree with their beliefs, but it certainly helps us to at least understand.

[Independent voter]

Let me be the first to point out that many other groups of people have suffered in the past as well.

The ethnic cleansing of Native Americans is one example. Did you know that African Americans got the right to vote before Native Americans? The death of over one million peasants in the Irish potato famine or the mistreatment of Chinese 'coolies' in America are others

I would also point out that inhumanity to blacks is not limited to defective members of the white race. Black Africans have killed, tortured, raped and starved millions more Black Africans than the white race (Uganda, Rwanda, Darfur as a few examples).

But living in the bitter turmoil of the past does nothing to promote healing or a unified future for America. We Americans - of any race- have more in common than we have apart. We all want peace, prosperity, safety and security. I don't mean to say that we should ignore history, but let's spend a little more time looking forward and a little less time living in the past - especially a past in which we were not alive.

[steamboat]

Good comments..­.....Also, the famed 'Buffalo Soldiers', like their white counterparts, also received $5 a head for every mormon man, woman, and child they shot, as the mormons were fleeing west after getting run out of Nauvoo, Illinois.

And we know about the apartheid govt. of South Africa. Yet, where are all the Black politicians, entertainers, and clergy, when the Rwanda genocide was occurring? Where are they now when it comes to the hellhole known as Zimbabwe and Mugabe? Where the life expectency is the lowest of anywhere now.

[OtayPanky]

OK...here'­s the bad news and the good news.

The bad news is: most folks don't really gives a damn about anybody else's private religous life - or lack of it - just like most folks don't really give a damn about anybody else's private sex life. I mean, really: who cares (for example) about what goes on in the local mosque, as long as they're not planning the next 9/11 there.

You want to be an orthodox Jew, or a Hindu, or the grand poobah down at the Masonic lodge, or leader of the local athiest society - go for it. That's the good news.

ON THE OTHER HAND - if you want to put on your ministerial robes, go into the public square, and preach a "prophetic sermon" about your God damning the rest of us because of gays in New Orleans, or the nasty business done by some segment of a government I didn't vote for - then frankly no one's listening - except for Eric Hoffer's True Believers.

Is all this religious "stuff" interesting? As cultural anthropology, maybe - if you're into that sort of thing.

Do the rest of us need to care? No.

Memo to the religious: cast your arguements and societal suggestions/demands in the lingua franca of civil discourse, and you'll get more attention.

[Nommo]

Wrong. Nothing sells like sex and religion. If they can get it in the same story, that's advertising bonus. You think entirely too much of common humanity, give it or yourself a rest.

[Nommo]

Well, we've been saying all along that Black people are in no ways monolithic. There are Protestants of all degrees, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and whatever else one can name. Is there some difficulty in getting that concept? It applies politically as well. But since, as the author points out, not much at all is known about the lives that Black people live, a slew of bizarre assumptions are going to be drawn from that ignorance. And that is but a reflection of the ignorance that whites have of their own lives and thus of the bizarre pronouncements that issue regularly from some of the most well known white "religious leaders". Is it unreasonable to assume that the Hagees, Robertsons and that ilk speak for all whites?

From the pulpit to the Congress are all whites child molesters or such other kinds of deviants that find their way into the halls of power? Are all those as the DeLays, Cunninghams, Vitters, and that type typical of all whites?

[1will]

Had Rev Wright merely stuck to the truth I doubt there would be any story. Wright is a very intelligent man and a great showman. When he lies to his congregation about the US government creating AIDS to kill black people and intentionaly infecting blacks with Syphillis it's more than a simple mistake. It's a lie to those that look to him for guidance and spiritual enlightenment.

[IslandGyal]

1will,
Rev. Wright was CORRECT about the U.S. government experimenting on Black men with syphilis. It's called the Tuskegee Experiment. Please note, if you experiment with Black men, that includes Black women and by default the Black children they produce. Has a study been done to determine what the full effect of the government experiment was?

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html

"For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,”1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.” Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals"

[1will]

The government did not infect these black men with syphillis as Rev Wright said. This experiment took black men infected with syphillis in 1932, long before there was a cure, and studied the long term effects of this disease. Even when antibiotics were developed there was no proof lthey would cure someone with a decade of syphillis or undue the ravages of this disease. The doctors should have tried treating the men with antibiotics even if their effect on a long time sufferer was unknown.
When a cure was developed in the 1940's these men should have been treated and it's criminal that they were not. These men, however were not infected by the government­..
Rev. Wright's statement was a lie. The Rev is a very intelligent man and undoubtably knew he was spinning the story to make it fit his audience's mood.
More should be expected of a leader, especially a spiritual leader.

[1will]

Now tell me how the government spread AIDS in the black community.

[steamboat]

Hey, you want National Healthcare, there's an example of it. It was FDR's administration who oversaw this garbage experiment. Fact is, it was really over in 1947...Rea­son: the experiment ran out of funding. Oh yeah, Truman was president and democrats controlled both houses. Not the boogeyman rightwingers.

[paganmist]

I think the problem is that people feel like Rev. Wright was teaching blacks something new, and that something new was a lie.

Many blacks have already heard the AIDS theory. Most blacks probably. Rev. Wright wasn't "teaching" them anything. He was sounding out what they already believe. That is the difference.

[1will]

Perhaps instead of reenforcing a lie, a myth or and excuse for AIDS in the Black Community the Rev could have used his position as a spiritual leader and a community leader to preach the truth.
I know, that's just crazy talk. Tell the uneducated or paranoid exactly what they want to hear. That's what keeps the collection plate full.
At least you called the AIDS in the black community belief a "Theory." That's more than Rev Wright did.

[robXdion]

People don't want to hear this, they are too stuck "Rev. Wright is a racist!!!" because Fox News said so. They missed the point by in large because Rev. Wright failed to present it correctly without the spectacle and foolishness. So they throw the baby out with the bath water.