Thought Experiment: A speech Obama might give on Pastor Wright

My fellow Americans, I stand before you today to describe how spirituality informs my life, and may someday inform my presidency. Let me start by saying that I’m a proud Christian, I’m proud to be a member of TUCC, and I’m proud to have had Jeremiah Wright as my pastor. My faith and my church are integral to my hopeful outlook, my belief in my fellow man, and my desire to serve my country as a proud American.

Ironically, my church and my relationship with its Pastor, Jermiah Wright, have caused many to question these characteristics which I consider the hallmarks of my candidacy. Therefore, I feel it is important to talk about what is in my heart so that the missing parts of this story can be better understood. I believe that when the full measure of my spirituality is taken, Americans will be confident in the core values and ideas that I take away from my church – even if they aren’t completely comfortable with the way those values and ideas are delivered.

Many of you had never heard of TUCC prior to my candidacy. Your first exposure to my Pastor was a series of outrageous sound bites played over and over on network and cable news. Most of you now struggle to understand why I would be a member of this congregation for 20 years. You struggle to understand why I would want my children raised in this church.

Let me say that first and foremost, I am a member of TUCC to enter into a covenant with the Lord through his son Jesus Christ, to celebrate and reaffirm that relationship through communal worship and conversation, and to use Christian values to guide my choices. These are the core motivations held by Christians all around the world.

But TUCC offered me an approach to Christianity that was uniquely empowering. TUCC presented scripture and spirituality in a way that a person with African heritage such as me could more closely identify. TUCC’s Africentric approach allowed me to fully realize a relationship with God that heretofore did not exist.

But TUCC’s Africentic approach … the very thing that attracted me … is a nuance that can be misunderstood. Critics charge that Africentrism is tantamount to black separatism. But this charge is not true. Black separatism violates the fundamental Christian value that we are all equal in God’s eyes. Africentrism is akin to Europeans painting Jesus to look like them in spite of the fact that most scholars believe that he was a Semite.

But Pastor Wright was also a major factor in my decision to join TUCC. I respected his service to his country in the Marines, his scholarly work, his service to God and to his community, and his ability to grow TUCC from an 87 member congregation to over 8000 today. His sermons had a deep emotional impact which translates into a powerful spiritual fervor. And though he occasionally went over the top, the positive far outweighed the negative.

Furthermore when Pastor Wright is put in context, it becomes easy to interpret his sermons differently. Pastor Wright was a product of the 1960’s civil rights movement. He watched the leaders of the day overcome injustice by directly challenging the people of America. And so, when he sees what he believes to be injustice today he is not hesitant to do the same. He sees this as his patriotic duty. When he unfortunately analyzes public events in the context of race, I tend to look at them through the context of social justice and inequality. The power of his ideas is not lost in the translation.

This is not to say that Pastor Wright never offends me or that I am apologizing for his transgressions. The idea that we somehow deserved 9/11 was an egregious error, as was the honoring of Louis Farrakhan. Furthermore, I view his race-centric views as wrong-headed. However, I understand that some of this is a product of his experiences.

I understand that even after I have explained all this, that some will still think badly of Pastor Wright. Hopefully most will understand that I think highly of him even though I know he has to be taken with a grain of salt. And hopefully most will understand that Pastor Wright and TUCC are my pathway to a deeply rewarding relationship with god. This is why I stand by them.