Obama, Trinity Church, Pastor Wright & More

I have avoided addressing this issue because it is complicated—and because your conclusions about it depend very much on what you personally bring to it, and how you feel about the man Barack Obama, all things considered. But I recently received this query from a thoughtful and respected friend:

"Hi Greg:
...On a separate political issue, I'd be interested in your views on Obama's church and any implications you take from the positions of the pastors. I find the issue somewhat troubling."

So, now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, now that he has resigned his membership at Trinity Church, now that emotions have settled a little about the whole issue—but since it still matters—I share here an edited version of my response to my friend.

• . . . . . . . . .

Like you, I found the whole business with Trinity Church and Pastor Wright unsettling and potentially troubling. Certainly it has hurt Obama with a lot of white voters—and it caused me to take a harder look at the issue. And I must admit I am relieved he resigned his membership in Trinity Church yesterday.

But my first question about Obama has always been this: Do I trust the best of what I read and hear about him, and what I hear from him? Can I take seriously his core message of seeking more unity and working across barriers: political, cultural, racial, and yes, religious barriers. And then, do I trust his apparent honesty and transparency—reasonably, that is, within the context and limitations of political life and realities? Do I trust what he represents his identity and values to be? Do I trust him on the issues?

Here are the most important considerations for me about his Trinity Church experience, and about Obama the man:

• First, many people, white and Black, who have been an active part of church congregations for many years don't identify as much with the pastor as they do with their life and friends in the larger congregation. It is their community. They may disagree strongly with a pastor or dislike him or her strongly, but it is still their church, and pastors come and go. My parents have been part of a church for over 60 years, and that's just the way they've felt about it and its pastors who have come and gone. (Still, there are limits for us all, somewhere.)

• Second, most of us in white America, including white church-going America, really have no idea of the culture and politics of Black inner-city churches. Many, apparently, are very much like Trinity Church. They are committed to their faith and it's teaching, to charity, kindness and love in their church and community. They have extensive helping and compassion ministries in the inner cities (which is what originally attracted Obama). But they sometimes do not hesitate to describe—just as they see it—the place of inner-city Black life within the larger white society and body politick. And their pastors sometimes take their social issues and politics to the pulpit. It is not nuanced; it is their complaint about the life and circumstances historically dealt them. (And it can sound racist or unpatriotic, even frightening to many white folks.)

• Still, many in such churches do not share those views, or the circumstances that produced them. But they understand and sympathize with the unique facets, contours and history of Black inner city life and church community. Martin E. Marty, emeritus professor of theology and former dean of the University of Chicago School of Divinity recently wrote an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (4.11.08) explaining such Black churches and pastors within the context of their place, and praising them for the powerful, constructive force for good they are in those places. Interestingly, Professor Marty is also a long-term member of Trinity Church, the same church as Obama. And he was writing principally to provide understanding of Trinity Church and its pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

• But Professor Marty too denounced Wright's more socially offensive views, ascribing them to the scar tissue remaining from Wright's generation's social activism working against racial discrimination and segregation. And he clearly implied, I thought, that it was error to ascribe Wright's more offensive views to him or Obama just because they understood and sympathized with the social context and history of their development, and because within that context they still respected their pastor.
  

• Obama is not a product of the inner city Black culture. He grew up in a white American family, but in diverse places among diverse peoples (Hawaii, for most of his upbringing, but with a stay in Indonesia, age 6-10). He was parented in the early years by his white mother and later, significantly perhaps, by his white grandparents. His story is well known (if often misrepresented).

• And after graduating from college at Columbia, he looked in the mirror and saw a multi-racial man, more Black in appearance, who lacked any real sense of his Black identity. And although his father was African, Obama lived in America, and he would have to find his sense of Black identity within Black America. That, combined with his mother's example and encouragement to community service, brought him to Chicago's South Side and Trinity Church—by all accounts, the biggest, most respected and effective Black church in the area. And there he poured himself into community organizing and serving his church. There he built an understanding of being a Black American serving others in the Black community through a Black church.

• Of course, Obama later distinguished himself further, proving he was among the very brightest and most able as he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he also earned singular recognition as President of the Harvard Law Review. But, after a few years of law practice, and despite all the opportunities available for a distinguished and lucrative law career, he chose the more selfless direction of public service through the adjunct teaching of law and politics. He was seven years an Illinois state senator and is now a U.S. senator from Illinois. And the clear strength of his ability and his potential has again quickly propelled him to greater political prominence, now as a serious candidate with a serious chance to be elected President of the United States.

• He now has a clear and mature sense of who he is, and who he is not. He is not a white man, although he has much of a white man's cultural relationships, experiences and values. It's part of who he is. He is not a Black man, although he looks more like one, and has committed a significant part of his life to understanding and serving Black American people in the most challenging of community settings. That too is part of his identity. He is, at the least, a very special person with very unique experience.

• Barack Obama is a Christian man, but respects people of all faiths. He is a humanitarian, and his starting point is to respect all people and their differences. As a Christian and humanitarian, he cares about the poor and would provide better for them. He also knows the teaching of his faith: that after loving God and loving mankind, our next most important responsibility is to provide for the poor. And Jesus' goats-and-sheep example makes clear that we are to be measured on how well we follow that teaching. And the poor desperately need health care. So do lots of other people, too—47 million in 2005, and many more now. Obama will accountably address the needs of the poor and the need of all people for health care.

• Barack Obama is a man who understands that the prudent exercise of reason and Christ's teaching, too, provide but narrow circumstances where war is acceptable. It is to be avoided—like all anger and aggression—except in the case of defense of community. He knows—as most everyone does now—that prosecuting the Iraq War was an error, and it certainly wasn't defensive. As became the case in Vietnam, it will be unbearably heartbreaking to count a son, daughter, wife or husband among the last to die for a mistaken war that must soon end. I served six years in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. And it took me eight more years to read enough and be open enough to recognize that many good friends died there for nothing. It breaks my heart profoundly to know that so many of my brother Marines are now dying for nothing in Iraq. Obama will bring them out—responsibly, prudently, but he will bring them out.

I recognize in Barack Obama the best of all those experiences and influences in both his uniquely American identity and his gifted leadership potential. I can see how his family and life experiences fashioned an insightful, discerning, and self-assured multi-racial identity. And I can understand how that inspired him to hope and work for a greater sense of shared American identity and unity among all American people. That would be a welcome change in direction. I can see how he would earnestly make that a core value of his campaign identity.

At worst, he has been naive, but his transparency, his honesty (more than most politicians, at least) and his superior intellect and strength of character always win back the day for me. He is on the right side of issues most important to me, and I trust him on those issues. He still has a lot to learn, but he is a fast study, and how many presidents take office without a lot to learn, regardless of their political background?

And I have no questions about his patriotism. He is an American original, and he loves this country. And I believe he will defend it staunchly whenever the circumstances require it. But it troubles me that some would paint him unpatriotic because of his position against a misguided and debilitating Iraq War, or the misguided comments of his old pastor, or because he would open or broaden needed dialogue with threatening or unpredictable world powers (to keep potential enemies closer to us). And then there is the tactic of ascribing patriotic significance to whether one wears a flag pin or not, calling us back, dangerously, to the worst brand of McCarthy-era political intimidation, fear mongering and propaganda. What's next, loyalty oaths? Regrettably, we are likely to hear and see more of these sorts of campaign tactics.

But in the end, looking through all the campaign misinformation and misdirection tactics, I find an extraordinarily talented person I respect and trust. I could be wrong, of course. I make no guarantees. Nor do I expect others to be persuaded by my views; few have been. We are on new ground, traveling nervously on an unknown path. It has both exhilarating and dispiriting twists and turns to it. And, regardless of the result, it is social and cultural progress; it is civilization's progress. But in the end, I do believe this is the right person to lead our increasingly racially diverse and challenged country, and address an increasingly racially complex and challenged world.

Greg