Today, Barack Obama finally spoke out about the Pastor Wright scandal. His speech deserves a response.
My fellow Americans, today Senator/Presidential Candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech that was eloquent in tone but empty in new or convincing substance. In fact, his speech went a long way to confirm the very worst suspicions that many are beginning to come to about who he is and what he truly believes.
The Senator devoted the first several paragraphs to a civics lesson and still more to his personal history growing up and his wife's lineage to slaves and slave owners. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but not what we came to hear today.
14-15 paragraphs deep, you stop qualifying and addressed the meat of the issue.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
Nonsense. For, if I strongly disagreed with the views of my Pastor, he would no longer be my Pastor. It isn't as if these were peripheral issues. They were issues central to who Christ is and your Pastor's view of the world. You condemned his words with your lips but you validated them with your feet. For, those feet led you, for twenty years, to a Pastor well known for speaking the rhetoric he is now being excoriated for. One goes to church to learn who God is. Jeremiah knows a god who hates white people and who curses America. I do not know that god, Senator, nor do I wish to. You, however, worshiped that god on every Christian Sabbath, by being in the flock of it's pastor.
My God, is a different God, Senator Obama. He suffered and died, not for the black race, not for the white race, but for the human race. If my pastor said any different, I'd be quickly finding another Church. You pay lip-service to the God who died for all mankind while your children are baptised to a god who died only for men who looked like him. My God measures men by the level of love in their hearts, not the level of melanin in their flesh.
You sum up what is wrong, not only with Pastor Wright, but with you, in the following...
Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
While your church embodies the black community, mine embodies the Christian community. For, my Lord told me to aid the poor, not the black poor. My Lord told me to gather together and pray and to fellowship with believers, not white believers. During mass, I do not greet only the parishioners who look like me. I don't see Whites and Blacks and Hispanics and Asians in my church. I see sinners in my church. Sin is no respecter of skin color. Neither is joy and neither is brokenness.
This may come as news to you Senator, but the White widow grieves just as much as the Black one. They both turn blue with sadness and green with envy and they both bleed red.
I reject your view of Christianity and I reject your view of America. Your view is the wrong view. Your view sees America in slices- the White Community, The Black Community...... I see the American people. You celebrate diversity. I celebrate unity. I see one Country in which we live and one flag that unites us all. You see Villains and Victims.
You say that you cannot disown Pastor Wright because he is part of who you are. So, part of who you are believes this is the U.S. of KKKA?
I reject that view, so does America. That is why you will never be our President.
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My fellow Americans, today Senator/Presidential Candidate Barack Obama delivered a speech that was eloquent in tone but empty in new or convincing substance. In fact, his speech went a long way to confirm the very worst suspicions that many are beginning to come to about who he is and what he truly believes.
The Senator devoted the first several paragraphs to a civics lesson and still more to his personal history growing up and his wife's lineage to slaves and slave owners. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but not what we came to hear today.
14-15 paragraphs deep, you stop qualifying and addressed the meat of the issue.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
Nonsense. For, if I strongly disagreed with the views of my Pastor, he would no longer be my Pastor. It isn't as if these were peripheral issues. They were issues central to who Christ is and your Pastor's view of the world. You condemned his words with your lips but you validated them with your feet. For, those feet led you, for twenty years, to a Pastor well known for speaking the rhetoric he is now being excoriated for. One goes to church to learn who God is. Jeremiah knows a god who hates white people and who curses America. I do not know that god, Senator, nor do I wish to. You, however, worshiped that god on every Christian Sabbath, by being in the flock of it's pastor.
My God, is a different God, Senator Obama. He suffered and died, not for the black race, not for the white race, but for the human race. If my pastor said any different, I'd be quickly finding another Church. You pay lip-service to the God who died for all mankind while your children are baptised to a god who died only for men who looked like him. My God measures men by the level of love in their hearts, not the level of melanin in their flesh.
You sum up what is wrong, not only with Pastor Wright, but with you, in the following...
Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
While your church embodies the black community, mine embodies the Christian community. For, my Lord told me to aid the poor, not the black poor. My Lord told me to gather together and pray and to fellowship with believers, not white believers. During mass, I do not greet only the parishioners who look like me. I don't see Whites and Blacks and Hispanics and Asians in my church. I see sinners in my church. Sin is no respecter of skin color. Neither is joy and neither is brokenness.
This may come as news to you Senator, but the White widow grieves just as much as the Black one. They both turn blue with sadness and green with envy and they both bleed red.
I reject your view of Christianity and I reject your view of America. Your view is the wrong view. Your view sees America in slices- the White Community, The Black Community...... I see the American people. You celebrate diversity. I celebrate unity. I see one Country in which we live and one flag that unites us all. You see Villains and Victims.
You say that you cannot disown Pastor Wright because he is part of who you are. So, part of who you are believes this is the U.S. of KKKA?
I reject that view, so does America. That is why you will never be our President.