Reply #: Richard Miniter: In Defense of Obama's Pastor

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In Defense of Obama's Pastor

Richard Miniter March 14, 2008 8:18 PM

Obama has banged out a statement for the Huffington Post, announcing that his controversial pastor, Rev. Wright, is due to retire shortly.

Here’s the money quote: “The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He’s drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents. Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.”

Apparently no one in Obama’s campaign wanted to take the risk of the good reverend announcing his own retirement. Reporters and bloggers might have questions and he might feel moved by the spirit to answer.

The one bright side of the controversy is that it ends any speculation that Obama is some kind of crypto-Muslim. (The MSM is so unfamiliar with the cadences of evangelical sermons, black or white, that it failed to see the deeply Christian rythmns in Obama’s oratory. Another diversity failure among the MSM: failing to hire people with different beliefs and experiences, rather than people of different colors and sexes but the same world view, but I digress.)

Indeed, it is a lack of understanding of the black church that contributes to the blogosphere’s and MSM’s mistaking Rev. Wright for a hate-monger. The time has come for some balance.

The video that Fox News Channel and Powerline have been featuring, which shows Rev. Wright sermonizing, doesn’t seem that shocking to me. Rev. Wright is a black Christian minister who sees Jesus a black man persecuted by white Roman society. It sounds like a clever way to get his flock to come to church, not an anti-white hatefest. It seems like a tool to get his followers to identify with Jesus. You are suffering and the Savior has suffered just like you, but he followed the word of God and he triumphed and you can too. I have heard similar sermons in white and black evangelical churches.

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