Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers – my analysis

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor and the focus of right-wing inflamed controversy smears, including death threats, was on Bill Moyers’ Journal tonight in what will surely be Moyers’ top-rated show for some time. (See the Moyers blog for more.)

Wright overall was pretty good, and especially with the “God Damn America” sermon, Moyers did a nice segue/setup.

That said, while Moyers was certainly a sympathetic, and knowledgeable, interviewer, he didn't give Wright a 100 percent pass on his relations with Farrakhan or what he noted Wright mentor Martin Marty called Wright's “rough edges” and “abrasiveness.”

Here are some other observations of mine.

First, I now know more about where Wright gets his “black Jesus” ideas from. Early in the show, a clip from Wright’s church showed him claiming almost all the Bible takes place in Africa.

WRONG.

The Fertile Crescent/Middle East are in Asia. Indeed, “erev” and “assu” or similar are old words in Hebrew and related Semitic languages, and are of course the roots of “Europe” and “Asia.” (The Greek myth of Zeus and Europa was lifted from the Fertile Crescent.)

Wright was right, in many ways, about the “prophetic voice.” I’ve heard preachers both white and black have a voice like that for this-world prophetic justice. Beyond that, as for the church’s slogan, “Unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian,” Wright had the quote of embracing Christianity without abandoning Africanity. That said, the motto was adopted under the pastor before Wright.

“Bad,” and more seriously from my small American minority point of view, came back, though.

Wright, as with Arianna Huffington, whom I blogged about earlier this week, though not so explicitly, seemed to indicate religious belief was necessary to find meaning in and give meaning to life.

WRONG.

And, that’s not just a white atheist guy saying that.


Meet The Infidel Guy, Reginald Finley, arguably America’s top black atheist. I know he would have the same condemnation.

Anyway, Wright then spoke in more detail about the “God damn America” book. First, getting back to that prophetic voice, the voice of people like Amos and Hosea, or the blessings and curses (or conDE/AMNnations, if you will) of Deuteronomy, he said religious leaders are supposed to, per their tradition, challenge government.

Of course, politically and socially conservative white evangelical churches are clueless about that in the pews, in large part from preachers who refuse to engage in such condemnations, unless it’s the hot-button issue of abortion or gays.

But, Wright spelled out the results of that.

When you start confusing God and government … you’re in serious trouble. (It’s like), ‘My government, right or wrong.’

The sermon clip was complete enough to show Wright explaining how the Roman government of Jesus’ time and the British Empire of a century ago both failed, then making a segue to the failures of American foreign policy before coming to the “God damn America” line.

I have a linguistic hair to split, though. Wright would have been better saying “God damnS America” to make that point clear.

Moyers also had Wright talk through the sermon he gave the Sunday after 9/11, where he used Psalm 137 as his text, the famous “By the waters of Babylon” psalm, for those of a Judeo-Christian background. It is called that from its opening line, which sets the words of the psalm on the lips of Jewish exiles in the Babylonian captivity under its King Nebuchadrezzer (the actual name of the biblically misrendered “Nebuchadnezzar”).

Anyway, here’s the last line of that psalm, Wright’s sermonic cornerstone:

O daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us —
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against a rock.

Wright told Moyers he was speaking to the people of his church who, like many other Americans, wanted revenge after 9/11. He said the psalm showed they had biblical precedent for feeling that way, but that the Bible called people beyond that to growth.

But, one problem, not just of Wright, but of about any Christian minister or Jewish rabbi. The psalm itself ends with that as the last verse. Before a “bible,” or an Old Testament/Tanakh, or even a book called “Psalms,” or even one its five original separate books, was assembled, that psalm was read alone.

As a cry for vengeance.

Later on, Wright mentioned racism in all sorts of holy books, not just the Bible, but also places like the Babylonian Talmud and the Hindu Vedas. (And he’s right.) He also mentioned problematic passages, like the Levite of Judges 19 who has a concubine then abandons her to be gang-raped to death.

But, he ignored something like the holocaust Yahweh himself expressly commanded in I Samuel 15, in talking about Psalm 137.

No, Rev. Wright (and 99 percent of other preachers), your God was originally understood and embraced as a God who wanted vengeance. The author of that psalm understood that.

So, Wright did a pretty good job of selling his theology. And, by that, I mean Christian theology, not just black Christian theology. But, that “prophetic voice” has some devil’s tritone clarion calls.