The latest tempest surrounding the content of some of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons has inspired yet another round of Obama-serving logic and weak analogy at this site and elsewhere. Personally, I'm very wary of the intermix of politics (governance) and religion (faith). I already bring a healthy dose of skepticism in assessing the agenda of the overtly religious in the public sphere. (Which is not to say that I am a doubter of the genuine capacity of so many people of faith, because of their faith. Just the opposite. It is thieir example that makes me so defensive.)
In this instance, though, I take Obama at his word that the statements (and the sentiment reflected therein) of Reverend Wright are reprehensible (and so I don't feel the need to defend or decry them substantively, independently -- it's what he thinks about them that matters here). And unlike many of you, I'm not sure that the mere vehement disagreement with or strong condemnation of those statements now is a sufficient mea culpa. His failure to do more, or act differently, then may suggest a larger, more telling, mea deficio.
For Obama, becoming a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ was an act of volition. As he writes, he affirmatively "joined" this faith community 20 years ago. What does that mean? Here's one take, based on an interview with Barack Obama in Rolling Stone:
Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator "affirmed" his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a "sounding board" to "make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla." Both the title of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright's sermons. "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from," says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, "just look at Jeremiah Wright."
Obama wasn't born into Wright's world. His parents were atheists, an African bureaucrat and a white grad student, Jerry Falwell's nightmare vision of secular liberals come to life. Obama could have picked any church — the spare, spiritual places in Hyde Park, the awesome pomp and procession of the cathedrals downtown. He could have picked a mosque, for that matter, or even a synagogue. Obama chose Trinity United. He picked Jeremiah Wright. Obama writes in his autobiography that on the day he chose this church, he felt the spirit of black memory and history moving through Wright, and "felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."
Some have used the unfortunate analogy (to rationalize) of the congregant who attends a church where the Catholic priest has been sexually molesting boys. The analogy is inapt for two reasons. First, typically the church member is not aware of the sexual abuse. If he is, and stays, that's another story (as we'll see). Second, the doctrinal relationship between its adherents and the Catholic Church is fundamentally different. In Protestantism, the individual receives truth from God directly, without intercession. So, if one were to disagree with the priest, in the Catholic faith, one disagrees with the Church. If one were gay, say, it is not so easy as simply moving from one church to another to find one with a different view -- they are all doctrinally the same. If you disagree fundamentally with the doctrine, you must give up your faith. (I think Andrew Sullivan has written thoughtfully about the complexity of this profound choice.) In a church like Trinity United Church of Christ, there is "covenantal polity" and individual autonomy (in relation to God). The idea of church is community.
Thus, there is certainly individual responsibility (and, so, culpability) in joining a particular Protestant faith community. You surely would think so if someone open-eyed joined the church of Bob Jones or Louis Farrakhan. Or if someone knowingly joins a club that excludes blacks or women. Or became a member of Christian Identity. Or became a Jehovah's Witness. That says something quite relevant (good or bad) about the person. There is also some responsibility in choosing to remain where the leader is speaking antithetically to one's own beliefs. The appropriate course? Try to change (the individual speaker, through redemption or, if that fails, the faith community, through education or conversion). (So far as I know, there is no indication that Obama tried to instill change in either Wright or Trinity UCC by speaking out.) If these fail, and one vehemently disagrees and strongly condemns the message, shouldn't one leave (at least on pure principle anyway)? People of courage or conviction do it every day.
It all seems a bit too expedient (he's retiring soon anyway), without any challenge to the objectionable speech until it becomes politically consequential to his effort to secure the nomination. What does that mean? Maybe he really believes what Wright preaches, and Obama is not post-racial after all (not that a black man should be, but he might need to be in White-majority America). After all, it is hardly a secret. One can read about it here. (Given the required separation of church and state, one has to wonder about a church website that has what amounts to a video defense of a political candidate by one of its ministers (Jane Hoffman) on its "About Us" page.)
I know so many of you see something different in Obama than the "politics as usual" of Clinton or McCain. I'd like to think you're right, but then I read this:
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.
That's an answer with precision worthy of Bill Clinton. I can hear it now: "Well, as you can clearly see, I was not sitting in a pew. I was standing." Reverend Wright is no small figure in the African-American community in Chicago. His views are well known. He is on the radio. He speaks often in public. Their relationship was deeply personal. Wright was Obama's spiritual advisor (that's about as meaningful as it gets for a person of true faith). Trinity UCC is no minor church. It is incomprehensible that Obama was oblivious to this viewpoint (which he finds so antithetical to his own beliefs).
And maybe that's the rub: this lingering sense that Obama is a man of expediency: in joining Trinity UCC, in staying, in waiting for Wright to retire, in voting "present," in giving an anti-war speech in 2002 versus his actions in 2005 as a US Senator, in running for President. A little too much convenience.
I hope this all does go away because I think that Obama is very likely to be the Democratic nominee. It is SO important not to have John McCain be the next President. It probably will in the Democratic primaries. But I think we're fooling ourselves if we think this won't have legs in the general election among the whispering crowd that is so influential. The Trinity UCC website is Karl Rove's dream, with a picture of Africa (only) on its introductory page and language like this most prominent:
We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain "true to our native land," the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.
Be as hopeful and as idealistic as you want, but please don't whistle past the graveyard.
We aren't always responsible, or to blame, for the people that surround us (the drunken father, the Republican brother-in-law, the piggish co-worker, the neighbor, the autonomous attendee). But sometimes, by our own choices, we are the company we keep. In fact, sometimes those choices are the measure of a man.