New Republic’s Noam Scheiber quotes from David Mendell’s Obama biography
to explain why Obama joined Wright’s church in the first place :
Wright earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sacred music from
Howard University and initially pursued a Ph.D. at the University of
Chicago Divinity School before interrupting his studies to minister
full-time. His intellectualism and black militancy put him at odds with
some Baptist ministers around Chicago, with whom he often sparred
publicly, and he finally accepted a position at Trinity. …Wright remains a maverick among Chicago’s vast assortment of black
preachers. He will question Scripture when he feels it forsakes common
sense; he is an ardent foe of mandatory school prayer; and he is a
staunch advocate for homosexual rights, which is almost unheard-of
among African-American ministers. Gay and lesbian couples, with hands
clasped, can be spotted in Trinity’s pews each Sunday. Even if some
blacks consider Wright’s church serving only the bourgeois set, his
ministry attracts a broad cross section of Chicago’s black community.
Obama first noticed the church because Wright had placed a "Free
Africa" sign out front to protest continuing apartheid. The liberal,
Columbia-educated Obama was attracted to Wright’s cerebral and
inclusive nature, as opposed to the more socially conservative and less
educated ministers around Chicago. Wright developed into a counselor
and mentor to Obama as Obama sought to understand the power of
Christianity in the lives of black Americans, and as he grappled with
the complex vagaries of Chicago’s black political scene. "Trying to
hold a conversation with a guy like Barack, and him trying to hold a
conversation with some ministers, it’s like you are dating someone and
she wants to talk to you about Rosie and what she saw on Oprah,
and that’s it," Wright explained. "But here I was, able to stay with
him lockstep as we moved from topic to topic. . . . He felt comfortable
asking me questions that were postmodern, post-Enlightenment and that
college-educated and graduate school-trained people wrestle with when
it comes to the faith. We talked about race and politics. I was not
threatened by those questions." …But more than that, Trinity’s less doctrinal approach to the Bible
intrigued and attracted Obama. "Faith to him is how he sees the human
condition," Wright said. "Faith to him is not . . . litmus test,
mouth-spouting, quoting Scripture. It’s what you do with your life, how
you live your life. That’s far more important than beating someone over
the head with Scripture that says women shouldn’t wear pants or if you
drink, you’re going to hell. That’s just not who Barack is."
Makes sense to me, and
connects better with the Wright we all saw on the Moyer’s show. Negative comments following Scheiber’s post are the thing that drive me nuts about this
whole episode. The key is to understand that the political is not the
religious. They influence one another, but both are
completely different forms of discourse. That seems to be a hard
concept for so many people to grasp.
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