Perspectives on Barack Obama’s Minister
October 7, 2008
Hard edit underway. The link below takes you to an article titled: Reformation: Medieval Roman Catholic Doctrinal Background. It explores church teaching and rules associated with admission into heaven, taxation and much more. Be careful. The details could send ice cold chills down your spine. The people of the time accepted these principles as natural and normal. Given that he medieval church brought safety, security and sanity to Europe, the church’s strict, punitive and abusive policies were in fact a reasonable and fair trade-off for security and protection. Regional and tribal conflicts came slowly into submission and Western Europe was born. Strict Medieval Catholicism pulled Europe through an age of chaos and assimilated the wisdom & knowledge of older civilizations. A harsh, judgmental and terribly corrupt church set in motion a culture of empires that evolved steadily into what we now know as “The West.” America itself was fashioned out of the forests of North America by Christians of a more patient, more kind nature than that of the Medieval Church. These founders were, nonetheless, descendents of a brutal crusading Catholic empire. At the time of our countries founding the crusades were over and the church had entered a long state of denial. Many early American Christian leaders no doubt took pride in the distance they had come from those horrible, murderous years of war, pillage and murder. Islam, Arabia and Persia, (the Middle East) no longer suffered under the wrath of the Catholic Empire during the Spanish (Catholic) Inquisition and the American Salem Witch Trials.
African American slaves were not yet so lucky. Their age of slavery was well under way when America broke free England which had long before broken free from the Catholic Church.
Each of the three paragraphs above describes a time and place that, in 2008, are abhorrent to the American-Christian sensibility. During each of these three periods, though, millions of “good” Christians found nothing at all wrong with the teachings and actions of their church, it’s leaders and members. We can have little doubt that many churchgoers of each era described above were pained by the abuses that surrounded them. Many became courageous visionaries and brought about the reforms that led to our present world order.
As you weigh the stories you hear about Sen. Obama’s former minister, please brothers, consider the slow process of change and liberation that is at this very moment in time gradually lifting the emotional burdens of the African American experience. Slavery ended but about 70 years before the birth of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. From this perspective, from the perspective of church history, from the perspective of Medieval Christians whose church sold admission to heaven, from the perspective of Christians of the Inquisition who burned accused witches at the stake, from the perspective Jeremiah Wright’s grandfather who undoubtedly lived his entire live in the dark and overwhelming cloud of slavery, from the many other real and valid perspectives, is Jeremiah Wright an American traitor, or is he a great American struggling to overcome the culture of his forefathers.
From the perspectives of history and time, is Sen. Obama a strong, courageous believer who wants nothing more than to pull his fellow believers into a new age that is free of the temperament of the times that created Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Yes, I believe he is. Did Sen. Obama understand over the years that change comes about from within? Did Sen. Obama show remarkable courage in his decision to stay with a church in need of reform? Yes, I believe he did. Is Sen. Obama the traitor that McCain, Palin and Limbaugh want us to believe he is? Or is he in the end a great American who has shown the courage we now need in the White House? Yes, he is. Obama is a great American.
The character attacks we are now seeing from “the republicans” points directly to the republican ticket’s own lack of vision and competence.
