It is a sad fact of our society today that sound bites make up most of what we know about people, places and events. Trinity United Church of Christ is a well respected church in Chicago, one of the largest and most active, with an impressive list of social programs. The few snippets of sermon the majority of America now associate with that church do not reflect the reality -- either of the central message of Mr. Wright's pastoral life, nor of the day to day life of the church and its members. But those three or four sound bites, out of decades of sermons, are now what the church stands for in the minds of many Americans.
It is also a sad fact of politics in America that any tactic seems acceptable to discredit political candidates, whether it be rumor and innuendo, hyperbole or guilt by association. Obama's comment, "My hope would be that any presidential candidate can go to a church and hear a sermon and even hear some controversial statements without those views being imputed to them," is spot on. Not just for presidential candidates, but for all human beings. I can attest to having listened to sermons at various mosques that made me cringe, even sermons delivered by people who I know to be good hearted, dedicated to interfaith and intercommunal harmony, to justice, kindness and compassion. To have those views imputed to me would be ridiculous, as are the attempts to tar and feather Barak Obama with a few isolated -- and unrepresentative -- comments from his pastor.
The combination of these two trends, along with the intense media scrutiny that interfered with people's ability to worship in peace, put Obama in a very difficult place. I admire his attempts to take the high road, his challenges to sound bit mentality, his insistence that Reverend Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ are not about divisiveness or anti-American sentiment, but about lifting people up and helping them overcomes challenges in their daily life, and his unwillingness to denounce either the church of the reverend. I admire his frank discussion on race, and his cutting through the assumptions some people are making to state obvious truths about the nature of friendship and the priesthood.
It is easy for us to say from the sidelines, he should have stuck to his high road and stayed with his church. Or conversely to nod in agreement that the media scrutiny was destructive to the church and consider Obama generous to leave so they might have some peace. Or, even, to sympathize with the political need to stem the bloodletting that his campaign was suffering as a result of various things said by preachers at that church. It is far less easy for us to say whether the choice was the right one. Indeed, as is all so often true, there is no one clear right choice, but rather a set of possible outcomes, each of which has positive and negative aspects to it. In the end, only Obama can make the choice that is right for him.
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