RSSIs Obama Wright or Wrong?
The DRC has been silent on the controversy surrounding Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and his spiritual mentor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Like most Americans I have been extremely interested to learn of Wright’s homiletical follies, his race baiting, his white bashing, his America denouncing, and his conspiracy theories. I am shocked to find such militancy masquerading as the gospel.
Still, I think there are complicated issues involved. Here are my thoughts so far.
1. Whatever Wright is preaching in these hate filled tirades it is not the gospel. It is identity politics baptized. Of course, it is hard to get a grasp of someone’s overall message simply by hearing snippets of a man’s most controversial declarations. At best Obama’s spirituality is a spirituality rooted in earthly liberation and the progressive do-good-er-ism of the social gospel. Sure there are huge differences but at its covenant of works roots, I wonder if we can say any more about Reagan’s spirituality than Obama’s?
2. We should be just as upset when white preachers trade the gospel for social gospel politics whether on the right or the left.
3. This morning at NRO, commentator Victor Davis Hanson suggests that Obama should have said:
“But any good that now might come by remaining steadfast to Rev. Wright in consideration of our long past friendship is outweighed by the damage that would accrue from the sanction of his extremism that my continued attendance at his church might convey.
“I have loyalty aplenty, but it is to the truth, my country, and universal tolerance, not to any one friend — however long and close our association.”
I am confounded that Hanson, writing in a Conservative environment, would argue that Obama should place his loyalty in abstractions and while dropping his allegiance to those who have been like family to him. Is that really the conservative, Christian thing to do? Shouldn’t we be suspicious of politicians who will toss old friends off the bus when it is political expedient. Wasn’t Obama more thoughtfully conservative when he distanced himself from the Wright’s crazy abstractions but showed loyalty to his old friend? Isn’t the essence of Toryism loyalty to persons over abstractions?
4. Obama’s speech “A More Perfect Union” dealt with this potentially devastating situation in a way that was, to say th least, impressive. This was possibly the most important political discussion of the race question in our lifetime. I was certainly the best speech I have heard in American politics since Reagan (and I know Reagan’s speeches- I used to have them on a set of tapes).
5. Obama’s call for fathers and families to instill a sense of self-help reliance should have been pure joy for conservatives.
6. Obama’s call to rise above cynicism and to believe that change is possible was balanced by a recognition that change must come within the trajectory of the American tradition. Isn’t this the heart of Burke who declares, “A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation”?
7. Having listened carefully, I fully understand Peggy Noonan’s praise for a Thinking Man’s speech and although I am not there, I can still understand the Conservative case for Obama.
8. Finally, Obama should continue to love his friend Wright and find an authentic confessional church to help him understand the gospel of Christ, the distinction between the two kingdoms, while rooting his thought in a less earthly more balanced eschatology. I would suggest fine Chicago churches like Westminter RPC (Pastored by our own Rev. Charles Brown) or Bethel OPC (Pastored by Craig Troxel)
Is Obama Wright or Wrong? « Heidelblog
March 27th, 2008 at 10:23 am
[...] March 27, 2008 in Two kingdoms Bill Chellis weighs in helpfully. [...]
pilgrim
March 28th, 2008 at 1:38 am
I think it’s pretty clear that Obama is wrong. Call me cynical, but I’m with those who say he joined the church because, as an outsider in more ways than one, it gave him credibility locally whether he believed what Wright preached or not. (And the idea that he wasn’t aware of Wright’s rantings stretches credulity at best.) He knew that Wright was too hot to handle in a national campaign, which is why they decided not to have Wright appear with him when he announced his candidacy last year. I believe that on more than one occasion over the past year or so Wright himself was quoted saying that Obama would probably have to distance himself from him if he became a viable candidate.
I think the biggest damage this episode does to Obama, besides possibly energizing people to vote against him that otherwise may have stayed home, is that, his attempts to be seen as being above politics and business as usual aside, it shows him to be just another calculating, pandering and quite possibly mendacious politician.
Is it possible that you missed Hanson’s point, which was that Obama should leave the church? Or maybe your argument is that Hanson wants him to do so for the wrong reasons since in point 8 you call for him to leave the church as well. I don’t read the NRO site regularly enough to know whether Hanson is appealing to a vague civil religion here but I think it would be a bit unrealistic to expect Obama to announce he was leaving Trinity UCC for one that preaches the gospel and that he is now “rooting his thought in a less earthly more balanced eschatology.”
I cannot understand any conservative case for Obama at all unless a conservative in this case is defined as being a single issue war voter as it appears the author of the linked piece is. Even if we think that most in the GOP simply keep the abortion issue alive as a wedge issue, I cannot conceive voting for a man who is apparently more pro-abortion than NARAL. I could see staying home or voting third party, but a vote for Obama thinking that he’s the best choice for conservatives is too clever by half.
Wasn’t Burke a Whig and not a Tory? Anyway, what hath Toryism to do with Christianity? Did Paul show more loyalty to an abstraction rather than to a person when he opposed Peter to his face when Peter was led astray by the Judiazers?
Speaking of “chickens coming home to roost”, James Cone, the principal architect of black liberation theology, is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary.