WASHINGTON (RNS) — The longtime pastor of Sen. Barack Obama's black megachurch in Chicago has come under fire for sermons that many have called racist, offensive — and even dangerous.
Jeremiah Wright has called the federal government the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.” Just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Wright said “America's chickens are coming home to roost.”
Observers of the black church say Wright's sermons may seem incendiary, but they reflect a proud history of what Walter Earl Fluker of Morehouse College in Atlanta calls “prophetic preaching, which is the trademark of the black church tradition, of which Jeremiah Wright is perhaps one of the most illustrious exemplars.”
Peter Paris, professor emeritus of Christian social ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary, attended seminary with Wright in the 1960s and said Wright fits in the prophetic tradition of both the black church and the Bible.
“Prophets are basically reformers and not revolutionaries,” said Paris. “There's a line beyond which one is no longer prophetic but one is revolutionary. He's not there, but the language may appear from time to time to be there.”
Even those who disagree with Wright's comments — politically or otherwise — maintain his right to preach the truth as he sees it in the pulpit.
“For many African-Americans, everything that Jeremiah Wright said would be considered true,” said Harry Jackson, the conservative black leader of the High Impact Leadership Coalition and a pastor in Lanham, Md. “It is the spirit in which he said it, the attitude even of bitterness, that comes through in that particular piece, that's the thing that taints the whole thing.”
And some, including white evangelical activist Jim Wallis, say Wright's comments, however incendiary, reflect reality in black America.
“That the country is mostly run by rich white people, that's a pretty broadly based opinion among most people in the black community, including black churches,” said Wallis, the founder of Washington-based Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
Those who know Wright, and who have observed the black church, say he fits squarely in the truth-telling tradition of prophetic preachers who speak truth to power and say things others might not.
Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor of African-American studies at Colby College in Maine, wasn't surprised to hear Wright combat racism.
“If you're really a Bible-believing Christian, you've got to take seriously the issues of poverty, the issues of racism, the issues of oppression,” said Gilkes, assistant pastor of a Baptist church in Cambridge, Mass.
Marvin McMickle, professor of homiletics at Ashland University in Ohio, said it is inappropriate to assume Wright's words also would be Obama's simply because the senator worships in his church.
“I think the notion that because your pastor says something, it must necessarily either be shared by each member, or it reflects the unspoken views of the members, or he is in some sense a surrogate for Obama, is completely false,” said McMickle, author of Where Have all the Prophets Gone?