Wright Contextually

When I watched the Wright statements via sound bite form, like most people, I was taken aback by the G-D America and the ‘chickens come home to roost,’ statement. The first sounded, obviously, like a “I hate America,” statement ( and was vulgar), and the second made it sound like 9/11 was something we totally deserved, which, honestly, on context, might not have changed a great deal.

In context here is what I heard. The G-D America sermon was contextually a Torah sermon about blessings of God and curses of God. Something devoid in the Torah was the concept of grace and blessings were earned, and were not gifts from God. Wright was talking, rightly at this juncture, that governments fail and God does not. He made the move that governments (and people) ought not expect the blessings of God when they choose unrighteous paths. His overall point seemed to be that we have no right to expect the blessings of God when we deserve the curses of God for our behavior. My sense was that he observing that blind nationalism was not something people should put their faith into. Big picture I would agree with him on this.

Does this mean that I was with him on everything in this? No, not at all. For one, I didn’t appreciate the vulgarity. I don’t want to get caught up in that, but it was hard to miss, obviously.

That is what I saw in context. Issues I would have with Wright on this also stand out.

First, I think that his focus seems to be on the United States as a whole not noting or acknowledging that as a society we are a mixture of good and bad, of righteous and unrighteous. I believe that his focus is more on what he perceives the Bush Administration to be and to be about and not acknowledging that there is more to the country than this.

Secondly, I’m not a particular espouser of Liberation Theology. It’s roots are very Latin American and came to fruition at a time when oppression was the order of the day in the regions where it grew. Not unlike Wright’s sermon, it is very Old Testament in its approach and seems to lose sight of redemption as a greater good. I found him making some distinctions between black America and white America that I found disquieting.

The other sermon was interesting. I have always found Psalm 137 to be a remarkable Psalm. Its words were made quite famous in ‘Godspell” with that haunting beautiful song, “On the Willows.” (In the play it’s the crucifixion song and is used in an amazing out of context form!!!)

In any case, the Jews are captives of the Babylonians and they are being mocked by their captors. “Sing is one of the songs of Zion.” One can picture the captors on the sideline mocking them. Their response is “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.” The psalm ends dreadfully when the captives are longing for the day when they can rise up and defeat the captives and even crush the heads of the babies against the rocks. It is pretty dreadful.

Wright’s sermon was that when people are angry, really angry, that in their response they can and will resort to violence and kill everything, even the innocent. Even the children. It was a horrible image and he presented it as such.

I believe that his point was something of a question as to why are we surprised that someone has done this to us? He did make an indictment that our hands (American hands) are not without blood in our history and we have done likewise.

The big question I have on this one is wondering if he was justifying the attack in 9/11 or not. I find great ambiguity of this as he seems to be leaning in this direction and that makes me incredibly uncomfortable, if not angry.

I don’t want to belabor this, but this is where I’m coming from. Here are my final thoughts.

First, I found more to Wright and his comments in context than out of context. Does this make Wright right? (I couldn’t resist that.) It does not make him correct and his words are not comforting or assuring by any stretch of the imagination. Frankly, they are way too Old Testament for me and, frankly, seem to segregate responsibility from one portion of America to another----without making many distinctions on “America.’ I honestly think that he made some good points but went over the top on these. Was this hyperbole on his part of his genuine thoughts? That I cannot answer.

Secondly, my starting premise in this was that I was and am angry at the news media for not doing much of a story about this. It is interesting to note that they are doing the same thing to John Hagee about the Roman Catholic Church and not looking at the larger point he was making in his book. Again, whether you like Hagee or not, he is entitled to be taken in context of his entire thought. I don’t think that we have a liberal or conservative news media in our country, but we have a lazy news media that enjoys playing ‘gotcha!’ more than doing good research.

Thirdly, I’m not sure any of this makes much of a difference. People’s opinions about Wright are pretty much set already. People who wanted to like Wright enjoyed the Moyers’ interview and people who don’t like Wright didn’t enjoy it. I’m not sure it changed much on the landscape.