FROM THE PASTOR'S DESK
Dear Friends,
Since March 13th, when “Good Morning America” broadcast 30-second sound bites of several of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons, his character, Barack Obama’s character, and the United Church of Christ have undergone a barrage of criticism. As an ordained pastor in the UCC, I would like to respond.
Many of the white Americans who have criticized Rev. Wright for the content of a few of his sermons, know little about African American Christian worship in general or the 36-year ministry of Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Trinity, UCC, in particular. Therefore, let’s look at a few of the facts that lie behind the negative rhetoric.
In 1961, after hearing President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” Jeremiah Wright gave up his student deferment, left college and joined the Marines. When his two years of service were completed, he re-enlisted as a Navy Corpsman and became a cardiopulmonary technician. As valedictorian of his class, he was soon assigned to
Following his military service, Jeremiah Wright finished his undergraduate work and went to seminary. During his 36 years as pastor of Trinity UCC, Chicago, his congregation grew from 87 to 8,000 members. It is now the largest church in the United Church of Christ. The positive impact of his ministry has inspired several other large, African American congregations to join our denomination.
Rev. Wright belongs to a long and proud tradition of prophetic African American pastors, who preach liberation from the continuing bonds of injustice with great emotion and provocative language. (There is precedent for such preaching among the Old Testament prophets, such as Amos and Micah. They tell us that God sits in judgment of governments.) However, if you had visited Trinity, while Wright was the pastor there, you would have been warmly welcomed. You would have heard spirited singing that comes deep from the soul. However, you would also have heard passionate sermons that reflect the pain of Wright’s people. Some members of Wright’s congregation have risen into the middle class, but they are in the minority. Many others still live in neighborhoods, where innocent children are caught in the crossfire of warring gangs, where police officers are regularly accused of racial profiling, where there is a failing school system, and where the rates of incarceration and unemployment are extremely high. And, have the members of Rev. Wright’s congregation gone off, following one of his fiery sermons, to create more mayhem on
Instead, wealthy or poor, Trinity’s members have given million of dollars to start health care, prison and educational ministries that have helped thousands of poor people on the South Side of Chicago. Under Wright’s leadership, Trinity has reached out to the community with after-school programs and social services, as well as AIDS education and treatment programs. They have even built a state-of the art health care facility. During the past three years, Trinity members also have tithed more than $100,000 and have sent one of their associate pastors to start a new UCC congregation in
There will be some of you who will read this letter and respond with, “Yes, but Wright said…” Are phrases from a few sermons, enough to cancel out the rest of Rev. Wright’s life and work? Is there anyone reading this who has ever spoken passionately, but imprudently? Is there anyone else whose words have ever been misunderstood or taken out of context? The real issues that the controversy about Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama’s membership in Trinity, UCC, raise are the issue of character assassination and the issue of race. Is it fair to reduce the 36-year ministry of Rev. Wright to a 15 or 30 second sound bite? Is it fair to hold a presidential candidate responsible for a few words in a few sermons by his pastor? Do African American pastors have a right and a responsibility to preach within the style and the context that their people can relate to, or don’t they? These are some of the questions for us to ponder in our hearts.
The United Church of Christ has a long and proud history of supporting freedom of the pulpit. Members of our congregations do not take either the specific words of scripture or everything the pastor says as the “gospel truth.” Rather we encourage our pastors to craft relevant sermons that stimulate our thinking, broaden our perspectives, and pose challenging questions. We encourage our congregations to respond to sermons either individually or through “talk back” dialogue sessions. The United Church of Christ has tried to make room for many different kinds of clergy and many different kinds of people within their congregations. In our denomination, there is no one creed, no one theology, no one style of preaching, nor even of lay leadership that “fits all” of our churches.
Elsewhere in this newsletter, I have printed a copy of an ad that some clergy and lay people from the United Church of Christ ran in a national newspaper. It speaks of our denomination’s proud heritage of “evangelical courage” in promoting justice for all people regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. You might be surprised to know that several members of our congregation contributed to the expense of the ad. As the ad so poignantly says, “Our unity does not depend upon uniform agreement, but upon our shared allegiance to Jesus Christ.”
Faithfully,
Debbie
