Segregation Sunday’s, Rev Wright, The Black Church, Racial Rhetoric Profiteering
As far as I’m concerned, churches are nothing more than clubs, fraternities or sororities; a religiously sanctioned excuse to congregate with “your own kind.” And everyone who regularly attends a church does it.
People of different races may work together, play together, eat together, etc., and have no problem. But, sharing the gospel under the same roof is totally unacceptable to the vast majority of individuals who practice their faith.
Because we are blinded to the possibilities of other realities and points of view is exactly why we have more religious denominations than people to populate them.
Far too many people live their daily lives bogged down by religious and spiritual dogma. They relegate themselves to what I would call spiritual and intellectual jail cells.
It could be something as silly as barring themselves from eating certain foods or engaging in what they might call “secular” no-nos because they have convinced themselves that God Almighty actually gives a shit whether or not you celebrate a birthday, or light a candle on a certain day or whether or not you are able to recite a church or a denominationally sanctioned prayer.
Individuals become spiritually and emotionally handicapped by human dogma emotionally hogtied to specific religious convictions that restrict God given emotional and spiritual growth. God must do a lot of laughing, or crying, at how human beings have screwed up everything, including and especially worshiping their creator!
I have attended a fair number of worship services from Mormon to Methodist from Seventh Day Adventist to Catholic. I have always been amazed at the number of creative ways each have decided to craft their ceremonies and rituals and even how each decides how to decorate their house or worship. Even the rules surrounding how individuals should conduct themselves outside the church walls varies from denomination to denomination.
I could be wrong on this, but I have always believed that all of these “rules” are specifically designed to present an air of individuality to that specific congregation. A lot of people badly want or need to feel “special.” The goal not to simply honor God or religious symbol of choice but to present a feeling of isolation or separation from those who are not members of that specific club. Being part of your specific congregation is somehow “special” or “superior” ‘to those heathens who attend that rival church down the block.
Rev Jeremiah Wright, who is now on his personal money making and legacy crusade, is using this self induced racial religious isolation to his own personal advantage. Using the “mystery” of the black church experience in order to charge that the reason white folks around the nation misinterpreted his remarks is because no white person could understand the distinct disadvantages faced by black Americans and the black church. Oh, and he is uniquely qualified in educating black folks (and now white America) to the realities of American injustice. He says that this is a constant message preached in black churches around the country. If you are White, or Black and not attending church regularly, how the hell would you know otherwise?
A small percentage of white people might want to venture to a black church to see first hand what actually goes on. But most are too occupied with healing their own spiritual wounds from the previous week to go out looking to be further abused. Most people don’t go looking for abuse while attending a church service.
This Wright controversy serves as a stark reminder that the problem of the color line still divides the U.S. and its churches. Rev. Wright is simply taking advantage of that ignorance and taking it upon himself to be the misunderstood voice of the black church and black people.
I have read a number of Negro apologists say that this debate “obscures the rich and necessary prophetic role of the black church,” as one writer puts it.
Rev. Otis Moss III, the new Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, has said “that we do a grave disservice by boiling down over 207,000 minutes of Dr. Wright’s preaching into a handful of 30-second sound bites,” (and in his mind) “most taken out of context.” However you don’t need to have a self-promotion tour to explain yourself when you are speaking the word of God to your congregation. Of course white people could never understand the context of Rev Wright’s words because supposedly black folks process the truth differently than white folks. We do? You mean the truth is not the truth universally?
All of this nonsense further promotes the racial divisions that had been slowly eroded over the years, not to mention the perceived acceptance of white Americans to Obama’s presidential bid.
Again although I’m not a regular church attendee I have no beef with those who use the church forum to speak out about the health of our democracy. Or to call their flock, or the world over, on the carpet for not leading better lives. Prophetic speech is characterized by an overwhelming sense of an encounter with God and a message of moral and political judgment that a prophet feels divinely compelled to proclaim. I don’t believe that biblical prophets, preachers, pastors, priests should mince words or shy away from controversy and I understand that many prophets and preachers are often misunderstood. Years ago many were persecuted, and sometimes even killed for their words.
However, “religious” leaders who pretend to foretell the future in the name of God, who attack the humanity of others, or who set up manmade rules and pretend they are from God do not speak out against injustice while calling folks back to God’s word and his kingdom. They are people who want to merely make a buck (or millions), get attention, have power over others, or simply be big wheels in some fish pond.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself pronounced judgment against America for the sin of racism and the cancer of Jim Crow segregation. King called on America to become the “beloved community, ensuring that God’s demands for dignity and justice and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution were afforded to all Americans.”
Remember King also described his issues with the war in Vietnam when he said
“America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.”
In his Beyond Vietnam speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 a year to the day before he was murdered King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”
So yes, it is possible to speak up against the actions of your country and still be a person of Faith. Because of white guilt America likes to romanticize the Dr. King of Montgomery and Selma, but often ignores the “King of Memphis” that demanded a living wage, or the King of Riverside Church who declared silence around the Vietnam War as betrayal.
I’m certain that Rev Wright and other pretenders to the “black throne” see themselves as King disciples. However I don’t see sincerity in the rhetoric Wright spews.
Wright is not interested in healing America nor the reconciliation he spoke about this morning.
Negros like Wright are only interested in seizing the monetary gains that Anti-American rhetoric provides. Wright is not likely to be gunned down by some angry gunman. Rather, it is more likely that some very liberal (is there any other kind?) university will pay him a handsome salary to rant about the ills of America to a bunch of young white skulls of mush while sipping red wine in his soon to be finished $10 million home in an all white community. Dr. King I doubt saw a lucrative future in speaking out about American injustices. In fact, Dr. King gave away the money he won when given the Nobel Peace Prize, and insisted that his family live where they always had – with the common people. Rev. Wright is not likely to ever do that.
I’ve been watching the news all day and the legions of political commentators appear on TV trying to explain Rev Wright when it is so clear to me that why he is on this speaking tour, the almighty EVIL American dollar.
While some pastors truly devote themselves to bringing people to God, Wright as I have said sees a cash cow. Why it is so hard for others in the media to see this is mind-boggling to me.
Meanwhile, if you personally want to end racism, how about crossing the most important race barrier still in existence. The church line is alive and well, and living it up in America!
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