The Cauldren of Religion, Politics, and Race

At the start of the primary season, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was positioned as a post-racial candidate: the product of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, Obama eschewed any rhetoric of racial politics, except the notion of uniting Americans of all creeds and colors.

Recently unearthed sermons, however from the former pastor of his Chicago church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, have brought these issues to the fore, to Obama’s detriment.

Over the past week, crude video clips of Rev. Wright suggesting that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were a case of “America’s chickens [coming] home to roost,” or that black Americans should sing “God Damn America” rather than “God Bless America” as a result of their treatment by the government have dogged Obama, undermining his message of hope and unity by broadcasting controversial and inflammatory messages.

“I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue,” Obama said Friday, saying that he’d never heard any of them personally.

Still, distancing himself from Wright is going to be difficult for Obama. He considered Wright a spiritual advisor. Wright married Obama and his wife, and he presided over the baptisms of their two daughters. The title of Obama’s most recent book, The Audacity of Hope, was lifted from one of Wright’s sermons.

In fact, over a year ago, Sen. Obama’s campaign had already recognized the need for distance from the pastor. In February 2007, as Obama was announcing his candidacy, he disinvited Wright from speaking at that event. Wright told the New York Times then that Obama told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons… It’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

Rev. Wright is hardly the only religious figure in America to take political positions. Pat Robertson endorses presidential candidates. Catholic bishops publicly announce that they intend to deny the Eucharist to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.

Rev. Wright’s comments, of course, come not only from a religious and political background, but also from a racial one. If religion and politics are a combustible combination, adding race to the fix only throws gasoline on the fire.

One of the national T.V. networks interviewed a female churchgoer at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side about Rev. Wright’s “controversial” statements. “That’s not controversial,” the woman said. “That’s called being black in America.”

To a great extent, she is right. Your humble diarist is far from qualified to speak to what it’s like to be Black in America, and that is exactly the point. And while Rev. Wright is at times overtly critical of the U.S., he does not seem to thrive in the victimhood of all African-Americans, as do some well-known black religious figures.

From Saturday’s New York Times:

The minister’s defenders say the statements that have been playing this week on television are outliers, taken out of context, and that he is not anti-white. The United Church of Christ, the denomination of the Chicago church, is overwhelmingly white. And Mr. Wright is an equal opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their education and work ethic.

“I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: Everyone who’s your color ain’t your kind,” Richard Sewell, a church member, said in an interview last year.

It is disquieting to see conservative whites on talk radio attack Wright as a “race-baiter” without acknowledging his equal criticism of the black community, in addition to the shameful truths at the basis of some of his arguments.

Furthermore, isn’t it unfair to hold Sen. Obama responsible for every position his pastor takes? Massachusetts Democrats don’t question Sen. Ted Kennedy’s commitment to protecting abortion rights because he is a Catholic. President Bush certainly does not fall in line with the United Methodist Church on the issue of capital punishment.

Last week, Obama compared Wright to “a crazy uncle” with whom he doesn’t always agree. Such an analogy was regrettable. Obama should have immediately made clear that he does not intend, necessarily, to accept spiritual guidance and foreign policy advice, for instance, from the same source. Americans have no doubt seen for more than seven years what a foreign policy supposedly inspired from the divine has wrought.

It is clear, in his writings and speeches, that Obama does not view America and the world through the same lens Wright does. The closing line in The Audacity of Hope reads, “My heart is filled with love for this country.” Suggesting that Obama is a closet anti-American plays upon our ugliest racial prejudices, making white voters, even those inclined to support Obama, that he is one of “them,” and not one of “us.” Obama’s argument, which he is expected to make in a speech about race and the Wright controversy tomorrow in Philadelphia, is that there is only “us”: Americans.

Throughout his campaign, Obama has positioned himself as post-partisan and post-racial. Those ideas—or ideals—comprise the very essence of his campaign. Sen. Obama has pointed to the tactics of Sen. Clinton and her camp, while fighting for many of the same policy goals, as the dangerous, destructive brand of politics from which America ought to rid herself. Wright’s rhetoric on race and society, though Obama may regard it as well-meaning, should serve as a similar model.

The reason why Obama must distance himself from Wright and his sermons in his speech tomorrow is not just because they are controversial or wrong, necessarily, but because they challenge his forward-thinking campaign of optimism. For Obama to win, he must convince Americans that he is the same as they are, but his campaign is different. Not the other way around.