It wasn’t long ago that conservative pundit Bill Kristol was predicting a renewed “Wright is Wrong” assault on Barack Obama. Kristol got his inside information from Sarah Palin and assumed that Number 2 provided a reliable window into the heart of Number 1.
Not so. At least for now.
John McCain has consistently refused use Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” as a blunt instrument. Moreover, the Arizona Senator hasn’t allowed his Alaskan pit bull to drag the Chicago preacher back into the campaign. Mike Allen’s article in Politico argues that if McCain’s advisers had their way it would be all-Jeremiah-all-the-time.
McCain has made his opponent’s ties to the now-infamous Bill Ayers the centerpiece of his campaign. This simply deepens the mystification. Analysts across the political spectrum have greeted the Ayers connection with skepticism. Jeremiah Wright, on the other hand, is routinely decried as the-man-who-hates-America by white opinion leaders left, right and center. The notion that Barack Obama’s erstwhile pastor preachers racial hatred is one of the few issues on which professional experts agree (the current passion for Wall Street welfare being another).
Since I first published this post, several readers have suggested an obvious explanation for McCain’s reluctance: he has a few preacher problems of his own, namely, the Revs. Rod Parsley and Ted Hagee.
The apocalyptic theology of many evangelical preachers leads them to speculate endlessly about the mystical link between America (the New Israel), the Israel mentioned in the Bible and the modern state of Israel. The real concern of these speculations is America; Israel, whether ancient or modern, comes in as a means to an end. As a result, Jews are sometimes presented in a highly ambigous light. Taken out of context, guys like Parsley and Hagee come off sounding downright anti-semetic.
But I doubt many pundits are willing to do the digging required to sort all of this out. McCain’s mistake was to take endorsements from men he didn’t understand. McCain isn’t particularly religious and can’t afford to get chest deep in the exotic waters of American evangelical theology.
Barack Obama’s situation is very different. He didn’t just take an endorsement from influential but controversial preachers; he willingly sat under the preaching of a single man for decades. How could Obama not know, detractors ask, that his pastor was a hate-spewing racist? Unlike McCain, the Democratic candidate was intimately aware of the content of his preacher’s sermons.
If John McCain tried to embarrass his opponent with the preacher issue he could expect a little media blowback, but not much. Some people in his camp are clearly eager to play the preacher card. So the question remains, why is McCain so reluctant to cash in?
As I have noted before, African Americans have a much more nuanced understanding of the Reverend Wright business because black preachers teach that God sometimes abandons his chosen people to the consequences of their actions.
Take the 11th chapter of Hosea, for example. God, speaking through the prophet, recalls how tenderly he cared for Ephraim (Israel). “It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.”
But when Israel turned to idolatry and contempt for the poor, God’s blessing became a curse. “They shall return to Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of the their gates, and devour them in their fortresses. My people are bent onh turning away from me; so they are appointed to the yoke and none shall remove it.”
Jeremiah Wright’s talk of chickens coming home to roost sounds pretty tame in comparison.
Bible students will point remind me that the God of Hosea changes his mind, almost in mid-sentence. “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.”
Nonetheless, a few generations down the road, the Babylonians (the inhabitants of present day Iraq) destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and carried the people of the covenant across the wilderness into foreign captivity.
How could such a thing have happened? This is the central question of the Old Testament (the crucifixion of Jesus holds a similar place in the Christian New Testament). Instead of a single answer you find a prolonged debate in which all participants agree on only one point: God’s chosen people had been punished by God–Babylon was simply the instrument by which the divine decree was carried out.
African Americans have little trouble believing that a just and merciful God can come in judgment against his most fervent admirers.
A fascinating scene in the 22nd chapter of Acts illustrates the experiential divide separating white and black Americans. Preaching to a largely Jewish crowd in Jerusalem, the Apostle Paul tells the story of his Damascus Road conversion and claims that God sent him as a missionary to the Gentiles (non-Jews). When the crowd exploded in fury, a Roman centurian grabbed Paul and dragged him into the barracks that stood near the Temple.
Unfamiliar with Jewish sectarian disputes, the centurian decided to flog his prisoner until he learned what was going on. Seconds before the first blow fell, Paul asked a question that turned the centurion’s heart to stone: “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman citizen, and uncondemned?”
Profuse apologies were offered, Paul was released from the flogging post and the cruel lash was put away.
Being a Roman citizen in the first century was much like being white in contemporary America. Black Americans know how it feels to be treated as non-citizens. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the criminal justice system. This basic inequity drew 20,000 black church people and college students to Jena, Louisiana.
Abraham Lincoln interpreted the Civil War as the just judgment of God on a chosen nation. The Almighty had damned America for the sin of slavery. This explains why Lincoln bore so little malice toward the Southern States: all had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
White conservatives see America as a nation chosen by God, “a nation of exceptionalism,” as Sarah Palin has it.
White liberals reject the notion that God has any interest in American politics or any relevance to political debate.
Conservatives castigate the American Jeremiah for suggesting that God regards America as one nation among many. Liberals reject the notion that God bears any relevance to human affairs.
If John McCain tried to associate his opponent with the hate-monger from Chicago few would question his judgment.
So why is the Republican candidate holding back?
Maybe John McCain understands that there is something about the Jeremiah Wright business that eludes the grasp of white America.
I doubt very much that McCain appreciates the radicality of the biblical prophets, but he must have noticed that black Americans have a unique take on the Wright episode. Black leaders have criticized Wright for his choice of words, but they see the “God damn America” bit as one part of one sermon. Wright’s inelegant and self-indulgent response to criticism earned rebukes from many black pundits, but few have condemned his preaching out of hand.
Those who know the black experience in America and the black religious tradition were not shocked by the anger in the preacher’s voice or by the suggestion that we have earned the world’s distrust. It was a hard word, delivered in anger; a species of anger African Americans understand all too well.
However you explain it, John McCain is to be congratulated for his refusal to demagogue the Wright issue. Barack Obama attended Wright’s church because he was nourished by Rev. Wright’s prophetic insights. Aging preachers like Jeremiah Wright are angry in a way that a younger generation of black men and women are not. Black Americans who came to their adult years after the Jim Crow era and the harrowing glory of the civil rights movement can’t always feel the anger, but they understand it all the same.
Barack Obama understands where his former preaching is coming from. Maybe John McCain understands that he doesn’t understand.
Friends of Justice 
Alan: I believe you’ve overlooked the obvious in your examination of why McCain refuses to use the Rev. Wright issue against Obama, although you alluded to it. The main reason in my opinion is that he has his own “preacher problem”, with Pastor Hagey (sp?) from down in San Antonio. Hagey made some pretty harsh anti-Israel statements earliy on, before he decided that the Jews were the chosen people and the allies of millenialist evangelicals. McCain first “loved his neck” and thanked him for his endorsement, but when these statements came out, he dropped Hagey like a hot potato. Also–McCain knows that most people find it ludicrous that a man can be held accountable for the sometimes ridiculous statments that their preachers make. Although most Americans believe in “God”, most of them (I think) only attend church once or twice a month, and take what their preachers say with a huge dose of salt. Thus, I think McCain (and his handlers) see it as a non-starter. JCB.
Jim, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I should have touched on the Hagee issue. Obama sat under Wright’s preaching for years while most people appreciate that McCain had only a cursory grasp of Hagee’s extreme positions. A few pundits on the left have challenged McCain on his preacher endorsements, but not many. The “God damn America” quote sounds like rank anti-Americanism to the biblically illiterate and is difficult to defend, especially in a campaign driven by sound-bytes. It is clear that Sarah Palin was ready to go after Wright. McCain is behind in the polls and must use every issue at his disposal, no matter how desperate. So, while I thank you for mentioning McCain’s preacher problem, I don’t think that alone was enough to dissuade him.
McCain had more preacher problems than just Hagee. There’s the guy from Ohio. I can’t remember his name or specifics about him. Also, preachers on the right–Falwell and Robinson in particular–have made statements regarding America just as negative as anything Jeremiah Wright said. It may be that McCain knows he would be opening a can of worms he’d rather leave closed. Of course, he may yet open it. Maybe even tomorrow night.
I agree with you Charles. McCain may just open that can in the eleventh hour but right now I would bet that his advisors are trying to come up with an economic plan similar to Baracks to see if he can get a boost in the polls. The Wright issue might be the last hail Mary.
Not to get off the subject but, doesn’t it seems like CNN is doing what it can to journalistically to give McCain an edge over Obama. Whether it is giving someone the spot light to voice negativity against him or making misleading statements to exagerating the polls. Any comments?
I think CNN is trying to stake its claim to the middle ground between FOX and MSNBC. There is thus a marked unwillingness to editorialize or pass judgment on the candidates. This is supposed to look like objectivity. Too often, however, CNN coverage degenerates into talking head contests between paid partisans.
It is the nature of human nature that people exaggerate the size of harms done to them by others and see harms done by them to others as through the wrong end of a telescope. I have no doubt that black Americans exaggerate the harms of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching and current racism of the criminal “justice” system in this way. However the reality of these harms is so great that there is little room for exaggeration, and I would warrant, as a white man from Australia that Jerimah Wright’s rants against America are pretty much 100% in accord with the facts.
The fact that “white opinion leaders left, right and cente” agree that rev Wright is so wrong shows how extreme is their ability to understand the experience of being a nigger in the USA.
Incidentally it does not matter to McCain that he is behind. Martial law is coming to your country soon and the only question is whether George W invokes it before the election or after Obama has been declared the winner. He might decide to remain dictator for the indefinite future or he might appoint McCain to that position.
See this recent posts on The Existentialist Cowboy.
certain white [mainly] fundamentalist Christians condemn Rev. Wright’s remarks – but heartily condoned David Wilkinson saying virtually the same thing after 9-11, [in a ‘prophecy’], but in quite different language.
Of course to David Wilkinson, [who I very much respected in the past], it was because of homosexuality etc in America that America was ‘reaping what it sowed’ – whereas to Rev. Wright it other issues closer to home for him and many of his congregants.
However, it is still frustrating that so many criics of Obama have not tried to understand on a human level what Obama said at the time [that’s if they even bothered to read what he said].
Obama, as with many fair people who try to maintain a balance, distanced himself from the Rev.’s more extreme views, whilst, quite rightly, commending him, as an elder, for all the good he and his church have done and do, in the community.
but here are some of Obama’s actual words
from a July 21 interview by Newsweek:
Newsweek: You said you didn’t hear a lot of the sermons at Trinity. How often did you go?
Obama: At the beginning, we went fairly frequently. We were single, so I’d say we probably went two or three times a month. When we had Malia, our first child, we went less frequently, and that probably continued for a couple of years, just because—I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it’s not easy … As they got older, we would go back a little more frequently, probably twice a month. But then I started campaigning for the United States Senate, and at that point I was in church every Sunday, maybe two, three churches a Sunday, but they weren’t Trinity—because that was one of the most effective ways for us to campaign and reach out to people. So, there was quite a big chunk of time, especially during the Senate race, where we might not have gone to Trinity for two, three months at a time.
~~~~~~~~~~
”…experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it’s not easy..”
how I relate 🙂