Is it Really so Wrong to be Wright?

Oh, the jeremiads of Jeremiah Wright! How will America ever survive if Obama is elected and brings his "liberation theology" to the White House? Let alone the fact that it's not far in the minds of most voters from "liberation" to "liberal," giving the former term the taint of the latter, is liberation theology really the threat to democracy that some have suggested? I thought the Electoral College was a threat to democracy. Or a school funding system that punishes people that live in the wrong neighborhoods. Or the widening gap between rich and poor. Or a national infrastructure that is literally cracking at the foundations. Or the high cost of fuel and the associated spikes in the cost of nearly everything else (being an economy and a diet whose "food pyramid" has light sweet crude as its major component). Or a government that, despite being the richest nation on earth, must borrow from other countries to keep itself afloat.

But no, it's got to be the raving black man. He's the real threat. After all, remember the race riots of 1968. The footage from Detroit? Burning storefronts, the National Guard, looting? Hello?! That is scary. All it takes is one black man with clips on YouTube to make it all happen again. Or, worse still, the pastor's parishioner and friend to find himself at the helm of this ship of democracy. Who knows, such a captain may let the rats take over, consume all the cargo and start putting on airs of being something they are not. (Well, Bush did the same things with his friends in oil, but let's let sleeping dogs die peacefully on Jan. 20, 2009.)

In any case, the truth is that the Bible is like the Saturday night special of bad theologians: always the weapon of choice for taking cheap shots. Consider the way slaveholders wielded it over slaves or bloodlettings. Consider the way end-times prophets (profiteers?) make hay with Revelation. Consider how the Geneva Bible contains 400 instances of the word "tyrant" and King James Bible none while the KJB even renders the unspeakable name of God as LORD in small caps, emphasizing a kind of feudal hierarchy. Consider the admittedly lousy thinking behind the liberation theology that came out of Latin America.

But if the Bible can and will be used as a weapon, in whose hands is it the most dangerous? In whose hands does it least belong? It is used by the powerful and moneyed (the "ruling class" or its apologists) to support their power. It has also been used by the powerless and the poor to seize power. Which is scarier? Or, maybe the better question, which better fits the message of the Gospels?

If you all will turn with me to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 - 7). It is a topsy-turvy sermon, where the old order is toppled. Everything you thought you knew is wrong or at the very least woefully incomplete. First of all, the powerless are held up and glorified, but the laws are also questioned, made matters of the heart--the thinking and feeling part of us--rather than matters of hand--the acting part. Of course, there is no one that is not depicted to some extent in verses 20 - 21 of chapter six in which Jesus exhorts us to forget about earthly wealth in favor of treasures in heaven, "for where your treasure is, there will be be your heart also." However, it's hard not to imagine that this seems to apply more to someone who actually HAS treasures than to someone who doesn't.

Regardless of what Jesus says, most of us grow up learning to obey authority and show deference to our betters. Most popular forms of patriotism hit both of targets pretty squarely: "My country, right or wrong." So if we are to have our bad theology, most of us would rather it come to us by way of the ruling class, the modern day Pharisees that rule the airwaves or megachurches. And they kind of have to be white. Maybe brown or black, so long as they don't rock the boat and say anything that will capsize the prevailing order. But as soon as a brother (and they are our brothers in Christ, right? aren't we all children of God, even the black sheep of the family?) speaks "truth to power," watch out.

That's what bothers me most about this whole situation: the inherent racism of our response to Wright's comments. We might say that we're trying to expose the racism of what he's saying, but in truth we are mostly reacting to hearing uncomfortable truths about the black experience in America. If we want to stop hearing such truths, let's change the truths that can be spoken. Let's make America a place that lives up to its ideals. Perhaps putting Barack Obama in the White House is a necessary step toward changing the truths about America and giving Wright one less jeremiad.