Barack Obama would like us to forget about Trinity United Church of Christ and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor of 20 years.
With good reason.
Wright is not only an embarrassment now to Obama; he’s an embarrassment to the entire country.
Yet, it would be wrong to forget about Wright – to stop probing into what he said and the influence he had on his spiritual disciple, Barack H. Obama.
Until very recently, Obama was happy to explain to anyone who would listen the powerful part Wright and the church played in his life, in shaping his worldview, in filling a spiritual void in his life, in providing the missing foundation for his own values.
In fact, that’s just what Obama did back in 2006 in a speech that should be read by everyone who thinks it’s time to “move on” from the Jeremiah Wright matter.
It was in Wright’s church that Obama experienced what he describes as a dramatic spiritual conversion that reshaped his life and gave it new meaning.
“I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me,” he said. “They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.”
Notice that Obama was working with many churches as a community organizer. That means he was undoubtedly exposed to all kinds of teaching, all kinds of theological viewpoints, all kinds of political and spiritual perspectives. Yet, he made a choice – to join Jeremiah Wright’s church, walk down that particular aisle, get married in that particular sanctuary, get his children baptized by that particular pastor and support that particular congregation with his significant tithes and offerings.
Why?
“For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today,” he said. “Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.”
Well, that would explain why he chose to join the black church, but why Jeremiah Wright’s particular church?
“It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith,” Obama said. “It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”
Obama recognizes that was a significant decision, one that shapes the way he sees the world and responds to it.
“That’s a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans – evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives,” he said. “It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Barack H. Obama’s most basic beliefs and values were either shaped or affirmed in Jeremiah Wright’s pulpit in the Trinity United Church of Christ. There is simply no way around that. Barack H. Obama told us so himself not that long ago.
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