For the likes of Sean Hannity and Michael Medved, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright will be known forever as the man who preached “God damn America.”For us thinking individuals, more context is desired... and more information required.
On my Vox blog, I’m streaming a 10-minute excerpt from Rev. Wright’s 1990 sermon “The Audacity to Hope” (which inspired the title of Barack Obama’s 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope”).
Click here to listen.
I have removed the minister’s exegesis of the story of Hannah (I Samuel 1:1-18). But you can stream the entire 18-minute sermon – or purchase it as an MP3 download – by following this link to PreachingToday.com (which is a mainstream Christian website... not a black-nationalist hornet’s nest).
The image above – “Hope,” by the Victorian painter George Frederic Watts – is an element of the sermon.
17 comments:
Barack mentions that sermon in Dreams from my Father, too. It's such a beautiful phrase and a radical idea. Shame it's being robbed of its poetry.
Wow. Audacity of Hope was taken from a sermon? Does Barack have ANY ideas of his own, or are they "JUST WORDS"?
^ IllHillGuy, you're just rattling my chain, right? Everybody knows Obama got that phrase from his pastor.
You think Hillary invented the phrase "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child"?
Leave those Clinton talking points alone, guy!
The mic goes to P6 for handling verbose squeals of terror most adroitly;
I'll be honest...I understand why what is being presented of Rev. Wright scares a lot of white folks. That bothers me, but not for the reason you'd like it to. I invite the people who are disturbed or frightened by those fractional sermons to compare Rev. Wright's teaching to any other putatively racist teachings. I particularly invite comparison to white supremacists.
You know who they are, stop fronting.
All the really problematic folks say, get rid of the Others, they are less than you, they corrupt and destroy. Rev. Wright teaches, "Look at what they think of you...prove them wrong ." And he musters a lot of physical facts that people don't want attached to our national self-image to show what they think of us."
"But we've made progress, P6! You have to admit that!."
I am sooooo glad you said that.
When Chris Rock asked, "Do you know how much better Seabiscuit's life was than my grandfathers?" he put an amusing face on an ugly truth. And yes, my lot is considerably better than Seabiscuit's now. But you know we still have to fight the uneven playing field. Fight to have access as free as the children of those who benefitted from that which our parents were explicitly denied. And I don't want to go on about it for too long, but a lot of us...a WHOLE lot of us...measure progress by whether or not we are under attack by racial means or for racial reasons.
Even using white folks' measure of progress in this arena, doesn't denial of the rest of the problem count as backsliding? What's the net of the two?
Look at this society. All you have to do is suggest a Black person bears racial animus and he or she must prove they have no hostility to white people. Suggest a white person has racial animus...hell, catch evidence of it coming out of his own mouth on his national radio show...and it's all about second chances, and understanding, and why did Black people make me do it?
Can you find a single piece of civil rights legislation in the history of the country that wasn't fought tooth-and-nail, compromised and...if it became law...diluted into uselessness?
No, it is very reasonable to take the position that hostility to Black Americans is still too formidable a force to ignore. I understand why it's not a position you want the majority of Black folks to hold. But we kind of do already, and we kind of will continue to until America brings more evidence to the contrary than mere protestations.
Not gonna work.
This is just excuse making and special pleading.
I hate to see Hillary waltz in to the White House, but evil beats stupid every day of the week.
Context? Thinking? I don't remember anyone in a rush to provide either when it came to candidates appearing at Bob Jones University, or when the subject is Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. Or Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks.
No, in those cases "racist" and "bigot" is all we're supposed to think.
Superficial simplicity is a bad standard, to be sure, but at least the Rev. is being held to the same standard as everyone else.
No spinning, no matter how eloquent or impassioned, can alter the facts that (i) Wright spewed anti-white and anti-American hate and conspiratorial nonsense from the pulpit repeatedly and (ii) the Obamas stayed to lap it up for 20 years. No one who accepts, or tolerates (let alone embraces) such behavior should be allowed to participate in our national government.
This ridiculous controversy is why we currently have the worst president in American history running the country. Politics has become the art of raising phony bullshit to confuse the 75% of the electorate who never look at the issues or who might actually have the best ideas to be president.
I don't give a shit what Wright, or Ferraro, or Hagee think or say...when they run for president, maybe I will. Until then I want the brightest guy (or woman) with the best plan for the country.
To me, that's Obama.
Wright spewed anti-white and anti-American hate and conspiratorial nonsense from the pulpit repeatedly...
Uhhh... what was the "anti-white" part, drzinc? Is it "anti-white" to say that rich white people run the country?
Here's something different. A black pastor trashing Obama. Hilarious but very mean.
Superficial simplicity is a bad standard, to be sure, but at least the Rev. is being held to the same standard as everyone else.
Broaden it beyond ministers, Mark. Maybe this is a sort of "coming home to roost" of the leftist and/or black-partisan language policing that brought life-altering consequences down on Al Campanis, Jimmy the Greek, Don Imus, etc. ... because of their "shocking" pronouncements.
Hmmmmm.
@ kellybelle
"Barack mentions that sermon in Dreams from my Father, too. It's such a beautiful phrase and a radical idea. Shame it's being robbed of its poetry."
Yep. That's going around the rightwing blogs.
The problem for Barack is that it pretty much proves that Barack did in fact attend at least one of those offensive diatribes by pastor Wright and this proves he is a liar.
Hmmmm.
@ UBM
"Uhhh... what was the "anti-white" part, drzinc? Is it "anti-white" to say that rich white people run the country?"
1. Rich white people run America.
2. America deliberately created HIV to kill off black people
3. Therefore rich white people created HIV to kill off black people.
...
That's pretty anti-white.
^ Utter horseshit, memo.
Your tendon-stretching syllogism would seem to indicate that Wright's blatant anti-America rhetoric is not bad enough unto itself. (Perhaps because a black man of Wright's generation might have some reason to begrudge the U.S.A.)
So you have to make it "anti-white" because it's more efficiently destructive to label him a "racist" than a "radical."
How many White members does Trinity have?
THOUGHT
SO,
R
Check it out Dave, the plot just thickened....,
Hmmm.
@ UBM
If I started a church where I was screaming about how the black man was the root of all evil. You'd be calling me a racist.
So why can't you see the reverse then?
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