It occurs to me that there is more to the controversy over Jeremiah Wright's remarks than meets the eye -- but not in the dark ways that bloggers like Jerome Armstrong would opportunistically seem to imply. Rather, I think it touches upon a number of questions about the role of faith and the institution of the Church in both public and private live, questions that many Americans of all faiths and on all sides of the political spectrum are uncomfortable talking about.
Perhaps the best and most nuanced treatment of the Wright issue so far has been from Andrew Sullivan. I suspect that this is because Sullivan, as a gay man and an intellectual but also a practicing Roman Catholic, is a man who is used to wrestling with a complexity of beliefs, and reconciling the cognitive dissonance these tend to entail.
The most important comment that Sullivan has made is here, which I will quote at some length; the pullout quotes are from Dreams from My Father:
The appeal of that church to Obama was not anger or racism or the ugliness in some of Jeremiah Wright's tub-thumping. What Obama discovered - as a previous atheist - was the spiritual power of Christian hope.
Here's the relevant section:
"And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of the ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had been spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until the black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.
Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shamed about, memories more accessible than those of ancient Egypt, memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild. And if part of me continued to feel that this Sunday communion sometimes simplified our condition, that it could sometimes disguise or suppress the very real conflicts among us and would fulfill its promise only through action, I also felt for the first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent, incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our narrow dreams."
My italics. I don't know how you can read Obama's writing or listen to any of his speeches and believe that Wright's ugliest messages are what Obama believes or has ever believed. He wrote these words long before he was running for president. They struck me powerfully as I read them; because they helped me understand how hard hope can be for the very poor or those from broken families or gripped with addiction. I don't see how the impulse to listen to, bond with, and help those people is an ugly impulse, however ugly the anger that can come from those places sometimes is.
What this suggests is that Obama's personal journey has involved not so much the development of a belief in the power of a Christian God, but rather, the development of a belief in the power of the Christian Church, and in particular the Black Christian Church, to be a transformative and potentially positive force in poor, black communities.
Now, let me be very careful here. I am not suggesting that Obama does not believe in God. The truth is that that none of us are in a position to evaluate the faith of anybody that we do not know personally. None of the leading contenders for President, specifically including John McCain and Hillary Clinton, strike me as manifestly faithful or manifestly faithless.
But I am suggesting that Obama is intelligent enough to recognize the distinction between the private role of faith, and the public role of the Church, and that he is courageous enough in his own beliefs to hold the two somewhat at arm's-length from one another.
The fact is, there are a lot of things said by Reverends and Rabbis, Mullahs and Ministers, Popes and Deacons, that are not believed in their entirety by many of the people sitting in the pews. This extends to the occasions on which comments are made about politics or the community in a place of worship, but also to their interpretation of religious texts themselves, and even their underlying belief in a deity.
Faith is supposed to be like a cosmic on-off switch: you are either a Believer or you are not, you are either a Chosen One or you are not. But in fact, the vast majority of Americans, and perhaps the vast majority of people around the world, are sort of half-pregnant with faith. There are some things they believe and some things they do not. There are some things they believe at some points in their lives, and not at other times.
This is what Obama cannot quite talk about, because it is something that we haven't become comfortable talking about in American public life. Obama can't say something like this:
"You know, there are a lot of things that the Reverend said I was uncomfortable with -- and most of them had nothing to do with politics."
To say something like that, Obama would risk being branded as an atheist by the hypocrites on the right who conflate public proclamations of one's faith for personal virtue, and who callously use faith as a political bargaining chip. The 'athiest' label is potentially the most damaging in American Politics, perhaps even more so than being Muslim, or being gay. And this is because in the callous expediency of 24-hour media cycles and 15-second soundbytes, there is not time to permit a genuine discussion of faith. It is sometimes said -- often wrong-headedly -- that those who protest too much against homosexuality are uncomfortable with their own sexual inclinations. But I think this actually holds more true in the arena of faith. In matters of faith, we are all somewhere on the Kinsey spectrum, and some commentators who would use religion as a bludgeon probably have a great deal of doubt about their own relationship with God.
However, just as there are those who would use religion as a tool to divide and conquer (regardless of their own personal beliefs about God) -- there are also those who would use religion as an affirmative force in their community (again, regardless of their own personal beliefs about God). Barack Obama would seem to be one of these people. In fact, it was precisely because of this recognition that Obama chose to join the Trinity United Church of Christ:
It was because of these newfound understandings —- that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved —- that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized. (source)
A little bit of context is important here. Obama came to Chicago in 1985 to work as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. This was a terrible time on the South Side of Chicago, in the midst of the crack epidemic. Obama was working alongside local church groups, and the people he was working on behalf of were mostly black, and almost uniformly poor. Many of them also came from a religious tradition, which was not the case with Obama. And so it would have been very important for Obama to understand the role of the Church in poor, black, urban communities. There would have been few better ways for him to do this than to join the Trinity United Church of Christ, which with more than 10,000 members, is among the largest religious institutions on the South Side of Chicago. Along the way, Obama navigated the complexities and came to develop a belief in the power of the Church -- and perhaps also (or perhaps not!) a belief in the power of God.
***
Let me bring one other thing up. There is one part of my heritage that I share directly with Barack Obama: he was a lecturer at the University of Chicago law school while I was an undergraduate there. Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago is located, is one of the most diverse communities in America, along both racial, economic, and religious lines. But out of this soup comes a vibrant neighborhood (even if it is one that isn't necessarily as integrated as it could be).
Likewise, at the U. of C., we are taught from a variety of texts. We read Durkheim and Marx, Milton Friedman and the Holy Bible. The University of Chicago is home to some of the most conservative scholars in America -- people like Leon Kass, and many of those in the economics department -- and also some of the most liberal.
Above all else, what we are taught at the University of Chicago is to have confidence in our powers of critical thinking. I deliberately avoid using the term the "skill", because I believe that critical thinking is something that is innate -- in all of us -- but something which some of us choose not to use.
If one has confidence in his power to think critically, he need not be afraid of being exposed to ideas that he might disagree with. On the contrary, being exposed to such ideas can tend to sharpen one's confidence in his critical thinking, so that he can accept some -- and denounce and reject others. As an aside, this is one reason why I continue to read materials from all sides of the political spectrum. I am able to accept insights on some issues from Andrew Sullivan, while I might disagree with him on others.
This process is very important to understand if you are to understand Barack Obama. Barack Obama seems to have a gift for mediating different viewpoints -- and this is no doubt owed, in large part, to his having been exposed to different viewpoints.
A number of the controversies related to Barack Obama recently stem from the false assumption that Obama might slavishly accept the beliefs and advise of those he is close to -- perhaps like our current President! -- without placing them into his overall worldview, and his overall framework of critical thought.
Barack Obama can listen to what Austen Goolsbee has to say -- and sort out the good from the bad. He can listen to what Samantha Power has to say -- and sort out the good from the bad. And he can listen to what Jeremiah Wright has to say -- and sort out the good from the bad.
And where he rejects something that Jeremiah Wright says, there still may be empowerment in understanding where that sentiment comes from. Why does Jeremiah Wright say things that so many of us would disagree with? Where does that anger come from? Can we reject a belief as being categorically without value -- but understand that there is value in knowing the origin of that belief?
I believe that we can. And it's evident to me that Barack Obama believes that we can too.
I am tired of a politics that underestimates the intelligence of the American Public.
Caveat: I am not religious, and I apologize if I have overstepped my bounds at any point during this diary.