A Curse or a Warning?
The Question: Jeremiah Wright's sermons continue to be an issue in the presidential campaign. Why? What do you think of his preaching style? What do you wish you understood better about it?
What's made the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into America's most famous preacher is a single, short phrase, "God damn America," uttered during a sermon and repeated endlessly on various media loops. Yes, it's shocking, even when taken within its larger, sermonic context. And it's completely unsurprising that a great many people find it baffling and even enraging. The latest news media short-hand for the phrase is to call it "unpatriotic."
Is it really?
I went back and looked--courtesy of the ever-helpful YouTube --at a longer clip from Wright's sermon, which the now-infamous phrase climaxes. Here's what Wright says, in essence: Governments change, God doesn't. It's a pretty solidly biblical argument. To illustrate the first half of his point, he mentions the Roman Empire, the British Empire and the United States. He castigates official American treatment of Native Americans, African slaves and Japanese immigrants (during World War II). Then he says that God "damns" America when America mistreats its citizens, because (he says) such arrogance is evidence of an overweening pride, by which America would substitute itself in its own eyes for God. That's how I hear it.
Harsh talk, vastly beyond what most Americans--certainly white Americans--hear from the pulpit. Is there a way to say it? Probably, but it's best done with great humility, not to say fear and trembling. Of course, it's going to upset people.
Wright didn't clear the bar. But that's a moot point, given how the vast majority of Americans now simply know him by the briefest of sound-bites. Problem with that phrase is it sounds as if he's calling down a curse on the United States. Or did he mean it as a warning, in the style of an Old Testament prophet--God is angered by evidence of gross injustice, so watch out?
If that was the point, we might remember that it's been said before publicly in American history. Never better than by Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address. By then, Americans had practiced slavery for a quarter of a millenium, Lincoln noted. He said it was possible that slave-holding was so offensive to God's sense of justice that "if God wills that it [the Civil War] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"
Lincoln's thoughts about the possibility of our national wealth being "sunk" bear a haunting resonance today. The nation is caught in a long war, one that is costing us very dearly in terms of dollars and irreplaceable, young human lives. Amidst this, our leaders appear less than satisfying. (To borrow a phrase: "Where there is no vision, the people perish...") These are exceptionally daunting times. And one might even argue that their challenge bears more attention than all that being meted out to a single, intemperate phrase from a Chicago minister.
By
Gustav Niebuhr
|
April 30, 2008; 7:34 AM ET
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Posted by: Thomas Baum | May 3, 2008 11:02 AM
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Thomas Baum: -- There's good news!!
Folks is being beamed all over the world right now!!! Haiti, Africa, southeast Asia and sporadically in the middle east -- you know, bomb here, bomb there in the middle east.
You still here Thomas? Not beamed up yet?
Here's the plan guaranteed to get you beamed in two easy steps:
1. Do as Jesus advised, "sell all your earthly possessions and distribute the proceeds to the poor" except for one sheet, (white and no peep holes). Can't find any poor people? Give the money to the Billy Graham ministry and they'll see to it the poor people get it.
2. Wrap yourself in the sheet and climb Mt Shasta. Stand at the pinnacle and shout as loud as you can, "beam me up Jesus" or, "Jesus, I did what you said. Beam me up." One fails then do the other.
Patience, as I'm sure you know is required. For sure you've been waiting a long time already to get beamed up.
As you stand there at the top of the mountain gazing out at the promised land take heart in the fact that your wait will be less than 30 days and as short as a few hours. Either you will freeze to death or die of starvation in less than a month.
Isn't it exciting to just think about how sure fire this plan is compared to what you're going through waiting and waiting and waiting... You are still here aren't you?
Posted by: BGone | May 1, 2008 11:33 AM
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According to Anonymous, the rapture coming!! No time to spell check...
Posted by: Skeptical Monkey | April 30, 2008 11:49 PM
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Image this.......the end,....
..your games of munipulation have run its course........good-bye is in order.
Posted by: Anonymous | April 30, 2008 11:19 PM
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Image this.......the end,....
..your games of munipulation have run its course........good-bye is in order.
Posted by: Anonymous | April 30, 2008 11:18 PM
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BEGONE
There is enough food to go around, it just doesn't.
Take care, be ready.
Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
Posted by: Thomas Baum | April 30, 2008 5:39 PM
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I read the whole transcript of the post-9/11 sermon that Wright is often being quoted from. After reading it I was aghast. It was unpatriotic, because it accuses the US of a large laundry list of terrible sins - most of which exist primarily in the mind of Reverend Wright.
For example, he talks about bombing a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan (true - done by President Clinton) and killing hundreds of people (false - one guard was killed Many of these false "examples" are attributed to former Ambassador Edward Peck whom Wright had seen on CNN a few days earlier. However, the transcripts from CNN show that while Peck was indeed critical of the US, he gave none of the examples quoted by Reverend Wright.
Similarly, in another sermon, he wrote about the Tuskegee Experiment, "They purposely infected African American men with syphilis." This is an example of another untruth which has been promulgated in the African American community. The Tuskegee Institute (not the US government), failed to tell people who had already been infected with syphilis that they had the disease. They were not "given" the disease. This blood libel is then used to leverage the whole AIDs created infect minorities myth.
When you use a series of lies to manufacture additional lies about the US how can it be seen as anything less than unpatriotic. And by telling these lies to his own community, he hurts them more than he hurts the nation.
Posted by: Read The Sermon | April 30, 2008 5:17 PM
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Thomas Baum: -- and good luck.
Philosophers cried wolf for centuries but the wolf never came. The wolf they were talking about is world population versus the ability of this finite planet to feed everyone.
In the past wealth has not been the problem. The problem until now has been the distribution of wealth. Now there isn't enough food to go around -- just like the philosophers warned. Those would be atheist philosophers opposed to the church's ban on birth control and a little more.
The government now decides who to let starve and who to save. Haitians are on the list to not save. Is Jesus beaming them up yet?
The final solution to famine found throughout history is too distasteful to mention. The word begins with the letter c. Horrors!!
Thomas, you will be in the majority crying, "beam me up Jesus." Again I say to you good luck. You can hedge your bet by reviewing Exodus, realize Jesus was the son of the being in the burning bush and try putting two and two together. Can you do that or are you too far gone? It won't put bread in the stores so why bother.
Posted by: BGone | April 30, 2008 2:57 PM
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It's not about a single phrase.
There's all that other stuff he's said: that the U.S. government created AIDS to kill brown people, that the U.S. government supplies narcotics to destroy minorities. You know, things like that.
To state that it's all about a single phrase is a delibrate falsehood. It's also a falsehood to say it was "intemperate." He says things like that a lot, and it's on purpose. You are a shill, Niebuhr, and not a good one.
Posted by: Steve | April 30, 2008 2:49 PM
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Why single out the US? Sure we have problems, but what about Africa? Or China? You think colonial Americans treated Africans badly, look what the Africans are doing to their own.
Is 'God' going to send one country through revelations? Or better yet, will humankind kill itself off without divine intervention at all?
Doesn't sound like the reverend thought this sermon all the way through...
Posted by: Skeptical Monkey | April 30, 2008 1:42 PM
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Some seem to think that America is going down the tubes, so to speak, no need to worry, it is the whole world that is going down the tubes. It is all written down, exactly how I do not know.
Jesus did tell us to look within and He also told us that the ruler of this world has been judged, did He not?
Take care, be ready.
Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.
Posted by: Thomas Baum | April 30, 2008 11:52 AM
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I'm sure you heard it the way it was said. What it means is up for grabs. So you like everyone else puts your own meaning on it. Can't we simply say it comes from a man of God, thus it is absolutely so and take it as a warning.
Warning? God? Which God would that be? The country is going to hell here and now according to your essay and you are far from alone. What is the source of the country's leadership? Who is leading the country to hell? But of course, men of God. Better reread Exodus for the God that damns America is the one in the burning bush -- same one that fathered Jesus -- out of wedlock.
Religion defines sin. Sin defines religion. Only those who are without religion are without sin. Obama is now without religion. See, theres always a silver lining.
We need leadership that does not come from men of God to divert us from this course that leads to hell -- the kingdom of the supernatural being in the ball of fire just like the fire of hell. Now we at least have a chance of getting it since at least one of the three candidates is without religion. Maybe the other two will follow suit?
Posted by: BGone | April 30, 2008 11:08 AM
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Give it a rest Niebur there were several phrases 2/3 of them out right lies.
Posted by: Garyd | April 29, 2008 10:35 PM
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..both twins being evil, of course.
Posted by: Aquarius | April 29, 2008 9:36 PM
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No, it's projecting and perpetuating self-wrongness (self-righteousness's evil twin).
Posted by: Aquarius | April 29, 2008 9:26 PM
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BGONE
You wrote, " You are still here aren't you?"
Yes I am and don't worry, you will know when I am not here.
Take care, be ready.
Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.