A Man Was Lynched Yesterday

Lynchings of black people in the US were common occurrences following Emancipation and throughout the first half of the 20th century. The NAACP would hang a banner from its offices in New York City the day after these horrible events to alert people of the city to what had happened.

Today, we hang this banner for Jesus of Nazareth, who was lynched on yesterday.

VCF

 

Beyond the Soundbytes: The Truth About Trinity

Pastor Otis Moss III, Trinity UCC on Palm Sunday 2008

It’s been brought to my attention that members of Trinity United Church of Christ have started a blog to help buffer some of the misrepresentation of the church and of Pastor Emeritus Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I’ll add their site to the sidebar on this blog so that we can stay up to date on the corrections to their record in ministry. Here’s a direct link: The Truth About Trinity.

Now, since we live in the age of prooftexting and few have the patience to research and listen to entire sermons, if you’re looking for “soundbytes” that offer a more representational rendering of Dr. Wright’s preaching, check out this collection of sermon clips: Trinity UCC Youtube Channel.

VCF

 

What’s Right with Jeremiah Wright?

From the beginning, when major news outlets reported on Barack Obama’s “controversial” membership in Trinity United Church of Christ and his relationship with its (now) retired senior pastor Dr. Jeremiah Wright they never were interested in contextualizing the story. Wright appeared on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes over a year ago to help “contextualize” TUCC’s mission and message, but Sean Hannity wanted no part of it.

The most recent flap about Obama’s relationship with Wright has been reported with similar incompetence by white media in both “liberal” and “conservative” outlets.

To help add necessary context to Dr. Wright’s sermons, why not seek the expertise of those who could help explain why Wright would have the audacity to exhort that God Damn America? Why not seek to understand how someone could say Jesus was a poor black man who lived in a country run by rich white people? Most are so aghast that Wright made such claims from the pulpit, that wrestling with what he said hasn’t been the order of the day. I’ve heard a lot of “he shouldn’t have made those statements,” but not much of “his statements are erroneous because…” Maybe its because (for the most part) Wright is right, but it’s a truth that most citizens of the U.S. don’t want to hear.

Below, two scholars help to put Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons in context by taking African-American experience seriously and recalling the prophetic protest tradition within the Black Church. They offer necessary context for those who don’t seem to get it. But it really makes me wonder. If we don’t “get it” now, will we ever?

VCF

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What’s Right with Jeremiah Wright?
The Daily Voice
Randall C. Bailey, Andrew Mellon Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center

The current turmoil regarding Dr. Wright’s sermons reminds me of the reactions to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1967 sermon against the Vietnam War delivered at Riverside Church in New York. In that sermon he charged the U.S. with crimes against the Vietnamese people and challenged the military industrial complex and the economic destruction of this nation due to that war. King saw the interrelationship between racist actions in the U.S. and in Vietnam and connected the dots. He did this in the finest tradition of Black preaching. King was castigated for speaking about issues other than civil rights and for criticizing the nation and government. We should not be surprised that more than 40 years later people still decry the marked difference in the ways in which many Black clergy approach the tasks of theologically calling the nation to judgment.

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Our Jeremiah
TheRoot.com
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies at Princeton University

A black orator stood before a rapt audience, his voice rising to a crescendo as he made this fiery statement: “Statesmen of America beware what you do! The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow.

The dreadful calamities of the past few years came not by accident, nor unbidden, from the ground. You shudder today at the harvest of blood sown in the springtime of the Republic by your patriot fathers.”

Sound familiar?

These are not the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the embattled minister of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. These words were uttered by Frederick Douglass in his appeal to the U.S. Congress for African-American voting rights.

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Sir Charles Speaks

When I saw this a couple of weeks ago on CNN I jumped out of my seat. Charles Barkley puts it down. I know he published a book titled Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man?, but by calling the religious right “fake Christians,”openly advocating women’s right to choose, and taking an affirmative stance on gay marriage, Sir Charles may be on his way to being born again as a New Black Man.

VCF

 

Redemption Along the High Road

I’ve been following Melissa Harris-Lacewell’s work ever since I heard her debate Gloria Steinem on Democracy Now a couple of months ago on race, gender, and Presidential politics. I’ve since purchased and started reading her book Barbershops, Bibles, & BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought and encourage anyone else to do the same.

An Obama supporter/campaigner, the following is an article by Harris-Lacewell about how Obama should manage the mounting attacks that the Clinton campaign has levied against him.

VCF

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Redemption Along the High Road by Melissa Harris-Lacewell
TheRoot.com
March 5, 2008

The high road is a hard road.

Barack Obama is often compared to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. because of his soaring rhetoric and charismatic grace. But on Tuesday I night I realized that Obama is more like King in another way: He is leading a 21^st Century non-violent, political campaign.

Over the past week the kitchen sink came flying at Obama, the political equivalent of Selma tear gas and vicious Birmingham dogs. The Clinton campaign tried painting Obama with the “scary Muslim” label by releasing a photo of him in Somali dress. Hillary whined that she was being treated unfairly during the debates, even as she piled on in a ruthless and unwarranted exchange that floated the suggestion that Barack was an anti-Semite.

She ignored her decades of political entanglements with dozens of indicted and convicted felons while charging Obama with having secret negotiations with Canada to assuage fears about his stance on NAFTA. She declared that because she was a woman, her presidency would represent change, even though her current fighting tactics and those she would resort to in a battle against McCain are recycled tricks from her eight years of living in the White House.

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