Jeremiah Wright in Context

Diana Butler Bass wrote last Friday on the God's Politics blog a piece that helpfully puts some context into this controversy over Jeremiah Wright and his sermons, sermons that have in the minds of some, seriously wounded Barack Obama as a "post-racial" candidate.

She writes:

As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright's "radical" sermons today, I do not hear the words of a "dangerous" preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique. I hear Frederick Douglass. And, mostly, I hear the Gospel slant—I hear it from an angle that is not natural to me. It is good to hear that
slant.

That is not, of course, comfortable for white people. Nor is it easily understood in sound bites. It does not easily fit in a contemporary political campaign. But it is a deep spiritual river in American faith and culture, a river that—as I had to learn—flows from the throne of God.

Perhaps this controversy will help us all hear the cries of those who find themselves on the margins.