Statement on Jeremiah Wright

A statement made during morning worship at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago on Sunday, March 30, 2008:

I want to take a moment and think together about the continuing controversy surrounding Trinity United Church of Christ; its former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, a friend of mine; and its new pastor, Otis Moss III, also a friend and a new board member of the Christian Century.

Trinity Church has been in the news every day for the past two weeks because one of its members is Senator Barack Obama. Jeremiah Wright was pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side for thirty-six years. During his ministry, the congregation grew to 8,000 members, the largest in the United Church of Christ. More importantly, the church, under Wright's leadership, reached out to the community with mission programs, education, social services, AIDS education and treatment, and health care.

Trinity Church shares with us a worldview and commitment to mission in the world. When you drive north on Stony Island Avenue, from the South Side toward downtown, you pass by a large community health center sponsored by Trinity United Church of Christ. One way to evaluate and measure a ministry is by the mission it generates and the organization that supports and enables it. Among Chicago churches and Chicago clergy of all denominations, Jeremiah Wright's ministry is widely admired as a model of what a public church can and ought to be, and he, himself, is widely respected.

I wish he had made his point without saying “God damn America,” but not for a moment do I wish he had been less prophetic. In fact, the great biblical prophets did and said outrageous, controversial things, which consistently got them in trouble and occasionally in jail. One thinks of Jeremiah, for instance, or Amos and the Amaziah affair. I wish Jeremiah Wright had not said “The chickens are coming home to roost” about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, even though he was referring to a speech made by Edward Peck, former Ambassador to Iraq and President Reagan's Terrorism Task Force Deputy Director. Wright was paraphrasing Ambassador Peck, who went on to list America's domestic and foreign policy decisions that had put the nation in peril. I wish he hadn't suggested that the government were responsible for AIDS. But then again, the government never infected numbers of my race with a deadly syphilis virus as an experiment not so very long ago.

Senator Obama's critics wonder how the senator could have remained in Wright's congregation and under his leadership for twenty years. The answer is that Wright didn't say “God damn America” every Sunday. In fact, Wright's sermons were biblically based, relevant, literate, and eloquent, week after week. When the preachers of the land decide whose sermons and lectures or preaching they want to hear, Jeremiah Wright's are near the top of the list.

I'm distressed that the Chicago Tribune continues to regard Jeremiah Wright's sermons as front-page news and led us yesterday to, of all things, a report on his retirement home.

I'm distressed by white people, out of a very different religious, cultural, racial, theological/ecclesiastical experience, presuming to judge African American faith practices and religious expression and preaching.

Most of all I deplore CNN's and other networks' decisions to play a few seconds out of thirty-six years of preaching, several-sentences-long sound bytes over and over again. It's no wonder people who don't know a thing about Trinity Church or Jeremiah Wright come to wrong conclusions. I'm not the only preacher in the land who knows how vulnerable any one of us is should ill-chosen words lifted out of a sermon be played and replayed, over and over again as Wright's were.

So let's all settle down and put the whole matter of Jeremiah Wright and Trinity Church and Barack Obama's membership into the context of the 365-days-a-year life of an extraordinary and faithful Christian congregation.

Katharine Moon, a professor of political science at Wellesley, a Korean American, in a March 25, 2008, Chicago Tribune editorial remembered the church in which she was nurtured:

Churches, synagogues, mosques, prayer meetings are . . . communities of mutual help, support, and practical guidance. As social scientists know, they are instrumental to building and maintaining social capital. For new immigrants, as well as racial and ethnic minorities, they serve a particular purpose. Often, the immigrant or ethnic church is the one public place where a common language, food, and humor particular to one's cultural heritage can be shared. . . . It is through the congregation that we ask for help-to look after our children or elderly parents. . . . Often it is the people in the worship hall who . . . help us paint our houses and visit us in hospitals. . . . A house of worship is much more than a pastor.

Sensible, valuable words about pastors and congregations, one of which happens to count among its members a candidate for president and his family.

And I ask you to join me in reaching out in friendship to our brothers and sisters at Trinity United Church of Christ and to pray for them, their former pastor, and their new pastor:

Lord of the church in all its magnificent expression, the body of Christ in all the world, we pray for our neighbors, our brothers and sisters of the Trinity United Church of Christ, with whom we share a passion for justice and for mission and reconciliation across all the barriers that divide.

Continue to bless them by your own Spirit.

We pray for their newly retired pastor, their pastor for thirty-six years, Jeremiah Wright. We thank you for his strong and faithful ministry, his outspoken advocacy for justice, his passion for your kingdom. Bless him and keep him in these difficult days.

And we pray for Trinity's new pastor, Otis Moss III. Bless and keep him and his family. Give him the gifts he needs to serve you and his people with love and commitment, patience and good humor.

And bless us, O God, as we seek to be your faithful church here in this place.

Startle us again with the news of a risen Lord, of hope and love, not defeated by death, but alive and vigorous among us.

Amen.

John M. Buchanan is pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. He is editor and publisher of The Christian Century magazine.

By John M. Buchanan |  April 3, 2008; 8:32 AM ET
Share: Email a Friend | Technorati | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
Previous: Anti-Muslim Film Boorish and Boring | Next: The Word of the Lord Was Upon Him

Posted by: thishowiseeit | April 3, 2008 7:29 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Posted by: Angela | April 3, 2008 12:52 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Posted by: Religion is Big Business & Corrupts Politicians Minds! | April 3, 2008 9:45 AM
Report Offensive Comment

The comments to this entry are closed.