A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on March 16th, 2008 in Campaign News

Yeah, that’s what Rev. Jeremiah Wright said. And it wouldn’t matter except one of his parishoners is running for President. And of all the possible issues, this seems the one most likely to do in Barack Obama. It seems that this is the sort of jackassery that was long feared in the Obama campaign.

David Kuo says that church-hopping is to blame. If only everyone stayed in churches they hated; then churches would be forced to change. I have to wonder exactly how many Catholics would have to protest the Pope’s stance on abortion for it to be changed. Also, I wonder if Kuo follows the Catholic belief in the inherent evilness of in vitro fertilization – and if so, does he believe that families who use in vitro should sit in church and be condemned for their children’s lives?

Church-hopping isn’t the problem, but it is a symptom of the problem. Or, to be more precise, it is half the problem – if we are to believe Pew’s numbers, then half of those who begin church-hopping never land in another church. There are a multitude of reasons for leaving a church – some of them are even good reasons. I haven’t seen actual numbers to indicate which reasons are the leading ones, but I’d hazzard a guess that one of the top reasons is that people just don’t believe their church is relevant – or they believe it is wrong.

The problem isn’t that people are looking for a church where they feel comfortable – the problem is that too many people are simply spiritually illiterate. That’s why some number of people have been circulating emails to raise the alarm over Barack Obama’s status as a Muslim. They have no idea what it means to be a Muslim, but it sounds bad – and some of the people who have attacked our people have been Muslim – so even more so. Now, suddenly he is a Christian – but a bad one. Crackers.

The proper response for charges of convicting Obama for something said in a Christian Church should be met with the same scorn and the same response that protests over his being Muslim were – “So what?” The laws of this country are bound by a Constitution that forbids religious tests. During the American Revolution, pastors of the Church of England were bound to defend the Crown from the pulpit. In the day, in this time, in this country, pastors can say, “GOD DAMN AMERICA!!!!” in the pulpit and damn well mean it and there is not a blessed thing a single person can – or should be able to – do about it.

I believe the Rev. Wright was speaking in a prophetic tone – the one that Jim Wallis likes to claim he uses. Like the one that Isaiah used when he said:

Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!…If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.”

Not so different, when you look at it. Rev. Wright was reading a list of our national sins – from slavery to Jim Crow to the ongoing Hell that is inner-city slums. He was surely wrong about the origin of HIV/AIDS – though he isn’t wrong that the government withheld funding for battling that scourge for far too long because it was thought “safely confined” to gay men and drug users. If writing off entire segments of the population for a sure, painful, and slow death isn’t worthy of being damned; then we have lost all sense of what it means to seek God’s will.

There is much that is great about this country. There are many ways in which we continue to fall short of that greatness. The strength of this country has always been that some rabble-rouser would stand and hold up a mirror to our weaknesses and, when we refused to look, to describe it to us in such horrible detail that, ultimately, we had to admit our complicity in allowing evil to prosper. Once that is done, action has never been far behind – though usually it has been far enough behind to be reprehensible.

Let us not whitewash our sins. If there is a time to open a discussion on how to reconcile race in this country; then it is now – for “now” is always the right time to do the right thing. If Rev. Wright’s voice is the one that kicks open that door; then so be it. If not; then we need someone else to step forward and do it.

Technorati Tags: Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, David Kuo

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