OBAMA'S PREACHER

From the latest episode of PBS's Bill Moyers Journal, an interview with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

REVEREND WRIGHT: In Genesis:2 it says God breathes into the nostrils of what God had formed from the dust. God donated some divinity to some dirt and we became living souls. That's God breath you have in you, that's God's breath that you just breathed. God is the giver of life. Let me tell you what that means. That means we have no right to take a life whether as a gang banger living the thug life, or as a President lying about leading a nation into war. We have no right to take a life! Whether through the immorality of a slave trade, or the immorality of refusing HIV/AIDS money to countries or agencies who do not tow your political line! We have no right to take a life! Turn to your neighbors and say we have no right to take a life!

And

BILL MOYERS: Are you saying that the members of Trinity leave the world of unemployment, leave the world of discrimination, leave the world of that daily struggle and come to church for-

REVEREND WRIGHT: For encouragement, to go back out and make a difference in their world. To go back out and change that world, to not just talk about heaven by and by, but to get equipped and to get to know that we are not alone in this struggle, and that the struggle can make a difference. Not to leave that world and pretend that we are now in some sort of fantasy land, as Martin Marty called it, but that we serve a God who comes into history on the side of the oppressed. That we serve a God who cares about the poor. That we serve a God who says that as much as you've done unto the least of these, my little ones, you've done unto me, so that we are not alone. Because that same God says I'm with you, and I'm with you in the struggle. Our United Church of Christ says courage and the struggle for justice and peace that is an ongoing struggle.

Click here to watch the interview or read the transcript.

Okay, I already knew that I like this guy, but I had no idea that I would walk away from this interview so intensely admiring him. That is, if God exists, and there is some truth to the Bible, Reverend Wright is much closer to what I hope and imagine the Divine to be than most any other holy man I've encountered. Sure, Wright's rhetoric can be fiery and offensive to those who prefer American mythology over American history, but his condemnations, replayed so often on cable news channels, come from a deep sense of compassion and love for the human race--Wright rhetorically tears down America's facade in order to build up its people. And it is very important to note that, as far as I can tell from this interview, Wright is much more about the positive message of God's love, and how that love brings strength and hope, than he is about examining what's wrong with our country.

This guy fucking rocks.

Watching this, I found myself deeply moved by what he had to say, especially the first part of the transcript excerpt above: "We have no right to take a life." To extend his line of thinking, if all humans possess a spark of the divine, then killing somebody, anybody, is tantamount to killing God, to personally crucifying Jesus. And America has killed millions throughout its bloody history.

God damn America, indeed.

Here's another thought. Yesterday I watched CNN for a few minutes and saw a couple of the usual idiot pundits asserting that Obama, after attending Wright's church in Chicago for twenty years, simply must have been influenced by his rhetoric. The point was to make Obama look like a wild-eyed leftist, dangerous to the country, and most decidedly not to be elected President. Although I totally disagree with their conclusion, I have to admit that I'm inclined to agree with the initial assertion: Barack Obama must have been influenced by his preacher after all these years. But what the pro-war, pro-exploitation, pro-establishment CNN pundits see as dangerous, I see as wonderful.

Obama probably is a bigtime lefty. And it drives me nuts that he thinks he's got to hide it.

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