Jeremy Wright and Philly

[ProSense]

Wright was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Jeremiah Wright, Sr, was a Baptist minister. In 1959, Wright entered Virginia Union University, a historically black seminary, but became disenchanted and left in 1961 to join the US Navy. Wright then enrolled at Howard University where he received a bachelor's degree in 1968 and a Master’s degree in English in 1969. In 1975, Wright earned an additional Master’s degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He received a Doctor of Ministry Degree from United Theological Seminary in 1990 (where he studied under Samuel DeWitt Proctor). Wright also has seven honorary doctorate degrees. He has lectured at many seminaries and universities in the nation. [2> <3>

Leading black clergy group backing Obama

]By DAVE DAVIES
Philadelphia Daily News

U.S. SEN. Barack Obama is expected to get the endorsement of the leading organization of local African-American ministers tomorrow, when the United Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity meets to consider a presidential endorsement.

The organization's president, the Rev. Ellis Washington of the St. Matthew AME Church in West Philadelphia, declined to predict an outcome, but several members of the organization and other observers have said that Obama will prevail.

The excitement for Obama apparently trumps a history of affection and support among Philadelphia African-Americans for President Bill Clinton, whose wife, Hillary, is Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination.

<...>

White said that Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama's church, is the son of a former pastor of the Grace Baptist Church in Germantown.

Q: Barack Obama calls you his spiritual mentor and role model.

Photo Of Wright A: He's kind in his use and choice of language. Someone just asked me … about mentoring Barack and I said, you know, Barrack came here like he is now. I can't take credit for that. Barack has always been someone committed to grassroots organization, committed to the poor, committed to all people, committed to trying to find common ground. In fact, when I met him I called him the dreamer, and I'm laughing because the night he was elected he asked me to deliver the opening prayer. And before I led his supporters in prayer I said I just want to say to you publicly -- your dream has come true. And I said that because when I met him he came into my office with all these wonderful ideas. He was a community organizer ... He was the organizer of all the churches in Chicago and got us all working together across the denominational lines. And I listened to him and I said, "Do you know what Joseph's brothers said to him when they saw him coming across the field?' He said, "No." I said, "They said behold the dreamer. You're dreamin'. This ain't going to happen." Well, the night he was elected I said your dream has come true, because he had pulled off bringing together disparate people, ethnicities, interests, from down-state -- I've been in Chicago since '69, and it's always been Chicago versus the rest of the state. He's been down-state and gotten miners, farmers, people in Cairo, Illinois, people who wouldn't even think about Chicago much less a black person voting for them, because he'd shone an interest in them, because six years in the state legislature have show he really cares about people, that he's not waving any banners or flags about my way or the doorway, you know, black power -- no, people power. That we can -- black, white, Hispanic, Asian -- we've got kids to raise, we've got neighborhoods to keep safe, we've got women and children to be concerned . We all have common interests. Well, that kind -- he was like that, he was like that. And, you know, I'd like to take credit and say yes, I made him who he is. No, I didn't. He was like that when I met him. He's been like that 23 years now. And right after he was elected I was at the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ. And they said what word of advice would you give to Senator Barack Obama now that he's United States senator? That you please stay the same now that you're in the United States Senate as you've been across the years, because that's very important.

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Wright's sermon: "Audacity to Hope"

Today the ludicrous talking point calls for Obama to cut ties with his "radical' church:

Trinity United Church of Christ is a megachurch, the largest congregation of the United Church of Christ, with 10,000 members.<1> It is also one of the largest African-American churches in Chicago, Illinois. Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois and candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, is the most notable congregant, and a member since 1988.<1><2><3><4> The pastor has most recently been the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.<5><6><7> Wright announced his retirement to Senior Pastor status in early 2008, and he is being replaced by the Rev. Otis Moss III.<8>

The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination principally in the United States, generally considered within the Reformed tradition, and formed in 1957 by the union of two denominations, the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches.

According to the 2007 yearbook, the United Church of Christ has approximately 1.2 million members and is composed of approximately 5,518 local congregations.

Although similar in name, the UCC denomination is theologically and, for the most part, historically distinct from the Churches of Christ, a loose affiliation of conservative congregations<1> that arose primarily from the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement in the 19th century.

Maybe the spinners can demand that the UCC cut its ties with Obama's church!

Here are comment by some attendees of Obama's "radical" church:

Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

The Thing with Feathers

Emily Dickinson called hope “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul”. For those impatient of poetry and who demand pose as the condition of political discourse, I’ll spell it out for you. What Dickinson meant is that hope is the spirit moving among and through us, lifting us up.

Hope is the profoundly religious cord that Obama has struck in the minds and hearts of Americans. Religion is the search for ultimate meaning and purpose in life. So many of us had become so stricken with despair in the last years; Americans were cowering in fear and living down to their worst selves, instead of aspiring to be our best selves. Parts of the Christian faith were even co-opted and dragged down to be a “wedge” to drive us apart and to fear one another.

The support for Obama is support for this message; the thirst for meaning even in the seeming desert of politics. Obama seems to have captured that longing. I don't believe it is a "brand" or "talking point" for him. I think it is part of his religious heritage.

The spiritual roots of hope are what I have learned more than anything else from African American spirituality. Here are people who were kidnapped, brutalized, treated as sub-human and held against their will in the most degraded conditions, and yet it is they who produced the spirituals (and the blues), the greatest forms of lyricism from the American pulpit and some of the most profound biblical interpretation in the history of Christianity. The deep meaning of hope is found in the fact that hope and suffering are inextricably linked.

Of course Obama learned “The Audacity of Hope” in church. When I am empty and tired and fed up, I too go to Trinity United Church of Christ to be inspired and renewed by the kind of community that knows that life is not just handed to you. You have to hope beyond hope and lift one another up to make it at all. When Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. recently retired as senior pastor at Trinity UCC, I emailed him that I considered him the best theologian, hands down, I had ever heard from the pulpit. And believe me, I’ve heard a lot of preaching in my life.

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Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
President, Chicago Theological Seminary

The Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, is the 11th President of Chicago Theological Seminary. She has been a Professor of Theology at the seminary for 20 years and director of its graduate degree center for five years. Her area of expertise is contextual theologies of liberation, specializing in issues of violence and violation. An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ since 1974, the “On Faith” panelist is the author or editor of thirteen books and has been a translator for two translations of the Bible. Her works include Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States (1996) and The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Translation (1995). Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Thistlethwaite has been working diligently to promote peace, including a presentation at the U.S. Institute of Peace, which appears in one of their special reports. Most recently she edited and contributed to Adam, Eve and the Genome: Theology in Dialogue with the Human Genome Project (2003).

Jane Fisler Hoffman is a member of Barack's church:

Wright's comment:

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

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Some people are conflating a comment about America with racism. It's as if they don't consider blacks Americans. Wright's comment was about the treatments blacks have endured in this country and American imperialism.