Race, Religion and the Presidency

Submitted by William Burnett on Mon, 03/17/2008 - 14:45.

Okay. This video of Barack Obama's pastor, Dwight Hopkins, ranting about race and presidential politics has been circulating the internet and mainstream media for a short while now...

Obama has since distanced himself from Hopkins, but has had to defend his own position on race and where it fits into his political process. He seems to be doing a fairly effective job. But let's be honest here. Obama would not have to be taking time away from discussing his policies and his vision for America to discuss his race if he were... not black; i.e. if he were white. That, in itself, tends to lend truth to some what Wright said in this video clip.

I think anyone would have been absolutely naive not to think that race and race-baiting were not going to enter into the 2008 presidential race. The fact that Obama is doing so well in the Democratic primary, and could very well become the next President, means we have come a long way since slavery and Jim Crow. But the fact that race could still enter into the equation means we still have a long way to go. And let's be fair. Dwight Hopkins definitely appears to be race-baiting in his sermon. But his sermon was directed at a specific and narrow audience. Also, and more egregiously, race-baiting was whoever posted the original video clip on the internet and, of course, Fox News for giving it play.

I think there is room for movement on both sides of the racial divide. There are many of African descent who hold on zealously to bitterness and who stubbornly insist on defining themselves as victim to the point that their identities are wrapped up in what they're not, white, rather than what they are, persons with a unique culture and set of ideals and aspirations. The black community can, and must, be responsible for healing their own cultural wounds. First of all, only they are capable of doing so. But, more importantly, it is their right, as human subjects, to take charge of restoring themselves, as individuals and as a community, as human subjects rather than objects of a society foreign to them.

On the other side, my side, there has to be an honest acknowledgement that the bitterness among the black community was not created in a vaccuum. There were many grave injustices perpetrated on the black community by those of us of European descent. And if we were being fully honest, we would have to admit that, to this day, black Americans suffer the consequences of those injustice; and some of those injustices continue to be perpetuated. While we cannot heal the cultural wounds of the black community, we can acknowledge how we contribute to those wounds and work to include the black community fully in not only the responsibilities, but also the aspirations, of the greater American society.

* * * * * * *

But let's not forget that this video footage was a "sermon." And those who blew this sermon up were certainly rasing questions about Obama's consequent politico-religous views, since, after all, the man delivering the sermon was Obama's pastor, the pastor Obama professes to have given the theme of his campaign. Of course, it begs the further question about the impact this will have on the other claim being made that Obama is Muslim. Can you religion-bait with two seemingly contradictory claims about the nature of a candidate's religious beliefs? Given the short attention span of many who are following the race, of course, I think you can; and it is being done.

Now, of course, Dwight Hopkins is not only partisan, but is an unabashed supporter of Barack Obama. There's certainly nothing wrong with that. But he should have known he crossed a not-so-fine line when interjecting presidential politics into a sermon. I suspect the IRS is going to have a go at his church's books after this.

But that is besides the point. The broader effort at inserting religious discord into the presidential race is problematic. First, it is divisive in a year when we really need to come together as a society. But, more importantly, it revisits the question that has been challenging us over the last decade or so about how much particular sectarian beliefs should impact our nation's politics and laws.

I'm a firm believer in that line that seperates religion and politics. Yes. Our faith should move us to engage society in positive ways and to promote laws which are just and humane. But does promoting laws that are just and humane mean promoting laws which force our own sectarian beliefs onto others who don't share them? Of course not. Nor should we be making valuative judgements about people solely on the basis of their religious experiences... be they conservative christianity, liberal protestantism, black church, Jewish, Muslim or whatever.

Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus on Obama's Philadelphia speech on race

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 16:59.

 

 

"The Strange Ways of Black Folk" First Things March 28, 2008:

Slavery is, politically speaking, the “original sin” of our national founding, just as Obama says. And he is surely right in forthrightly condemning the “incendiary” words of his pastor. The great offense is not in the Reverend Wright’s “God damn America.” Biblical prophets called down the judgment of God on their people. But they invoked such judgment in order to call the people to repentance. They spoke so harshly because they had such a high and loving estimate of a divine election betrayed. The Reverend Wright—in starkest contrast to, for instance, Martin Luther King Jr., whose death we mark next week—was not calling for America to live up to its high promise. He was pronouncing God’s judgment on a nation whose original and actual sins of racism are beyond compassion, repentance, or forgiveness. He apparently relishes the prospect of America’s damnation.

And he does so for reasons that are, not to put too fine a point on it, simply crazy. For instance, the claim that the government unleashed the HIV virus in order to exterminate people of color. The question inevitably asked is why Senator Obama, for fifteen or more years, attentively listened to, generously supported, and submitted his children to the ministrations of a man who espoused such odious and bizarre views. To ask the question is not to deny that, as the senator emphasized, the Reverend Wright also did and said many good things. That a peddler of hate and vile slanders is not without virtues is quite beside the point.
 

Perhaps the single most telling statement in the Philadelphia speech is this: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” The most reasonable interpretation of that statement, maybe the only reasonable interpretation, is that the Reverend Wright represents “the black community.” This ignores the great majority of blacks in America, who are in the working and middle classes and participate fully in the opportunities and responsibilities of the American experience.
 

The senator lends his prestige to the claim promoted by sundry race hustlers that Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Bill Cosby, along with millions of other black Americans, are not black enough to be part of “the black community.” One can understand why a Harvard law-school graduate born in Hawaii with a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas would, for political and perhaps personal reasons, seek the street credential of having “roots” in a militantly black sector of the intensely race-conscious city of Chicago. But complicity in the explicit slander of America and the implicit slander of most blacks in America is a very high price to pay for a ticket of admission to “the black community.”

 

Richard Neuhaus is the pastor Catholics should walk out on

Submitted by TimH (not verified) on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 14:49.

Let me just point out the two vile distortions in this quote Fr. Neuhaus:

1) "And he does so for reasons that are, not to put too fine a point on it, simply crazy. For instance, the claim that the government unleashed the HIV virus in order to exterminate people of color." 

To say, "for instance" implies that what follows is a typical example of the content of Rev. Wright's sermons.  However, the fact is that the conspiracy theory of HIV origins, while indisputably put forward by Rev. Wright on one instance, is by most accounts the craziest and most outrageous thing he has ever said.  Not only is it wrong to judge someone based on the one worst idea they ever gave voice to, it is an outright lie to imply that that thing is typical of what they say week in and week out when it is clearly not.

2) The most odious part of this quote however, is Rev. Neuhaus's distortion of Sen. Obama's statement: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."  Anyone who made even the slightest effort to learn about Rev. Wright's church knows the emphasis they place on personal responsibility and taking responsibility for the well-being of their community, not unlike the much more famous emphasis of Bill Cosby.  However, in Rev. Neuhaus's telling, Sen. Obama's support for this church is somehow a direct slander against the likes of Cosby, or against black Republicans.  I'm not going to even try to analyze how he reached that conclusion because I have to get back to work.

3*) Sorry, one last point--how dare Rev. Neuhaus slander a fellow Christian by accusing him of joining the church for political reasons "and perhaps personal reasons" (how generous!).  I'm sure Barack Obama had his presidential ambitions in mind in Chicago back in 1988.  (FYI, he started law school the following year, and his first election for the IL state senate wasn't until eight years later in 1996.)