"A Pulpit-and-Pews Gulf on Obama’s Ex-Pastor" (with video)

NY Times:

LUMBERTON, N.C. — The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., under fire for statements that have embarrassed Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, has found staunch support in the pulpits of black churches around North Carolina. The people in the pews, however, are far less accepting.

In interviews at churches in cities and towns including Charlotte, Greensboro, Lumberton and Goldsboro, ministers expressed the view that Mr. Obama and Mr. Wright had been attacked by a superficial and biased news media. Many said they were teaching Mr. Wright’s sermons in Bible study classes. They are delivering lectures on the roots of Mr. Wright’s style of ministry and preaching against what they see as attempts to make Mr. Wright a divisive figure.

“People get fired up when they see people trying to scapegoat a presidential candidate because of a pastor,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro and the president of the state branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “And No. 2, the fact that you’re beating up on someone that’s very profound and very prophetic.”

But many parishioners are not nearly as sympathetic to Mr. Wright, saying they are disappointed with him for taking a personal dispute public with little concern for the harm it would do to the Obama campaign. (This sentiment is particularly strong among younger voters.) Others call Mr. Wright arrogant and untrustworthy, and still others say he is fighting old fights.

“He needs to take the political and keep it separate from the spiritual,” said Rita Harrison, 48, an Obama supporter who was cutting hair at Allison’s Salon in Whiteville. “Why would you risk this man’s campaign because of some personal comments? Because that’s what it is, it’s personal.”

Nonetheless, many black voters maintain that the situation has come about because of a double standard that holds Mr. Obama accountable for Mr. Wright’s views while white political figures are not always held accountable for controversial opinions of their associates. They add that it makes them all the more motivated to support Mr. Obama.

While the number of white voters registering in North Carolina has been rising steadily, black voters have been registering at a faster rate. State election statistics show that of the nearly 65,000 African-Americans who have registered this year, two-thirds signed up after March 15, around the time the most controversial of Mr. Wright’s statements began being broadcast on the news.

It is impossible to say whom these newly registered voters are supporting or why they registered. But several pastors said the Wright controversy had been driving voter participation, which churches have been particularly active in encouraging.

“It galvanizes them politically,” said the Rev. Dr. Ricky A. Woods, the senior minister of the 140-year-old First Baptist Church-West in Charlotte. “There was a sense that the church was still a faith zone where the double standard didn’t apply. Now they see double standards going on there, too, and that’s what’s causing all this galvanization.”

Though their views are not necessarily representative of those of black ministers elsewhere, many pastors here describe Mr. Wright, who belongs to the liberal, predominantly white United Church of Christ, as a friend and role model. He is a frequent guest in North Carolina pulpits, and has been a voice in state social issues for decades.

Pastors like Dr. Barber are teaching quizzical parishioners about Mr. Wright’s place in the prophetic tradition, a style of preaching that combines spiritual guidance with often harsh social criticism and has its roots in Old Testament prophets.

While the congregation is learning the background of Mr. Wright’s sermons, Dr. Barber said, church members have expressed anger over their belief that Mr. Wright’s words have been twisted and taken out of context in the campaign.

“Like this ad that has come out in our state that has taken a snippet of a sermon of Wright,” Dr. Barber said, referring to a television advertisement from the state Republican Party that ties the Democratic candidates for governor to Mr. Obama and, by extension, to Mr. Wright. “It’s a form of race baiting, and many of them have seen it before.”

But not everyone is so quick to leap to Mr. Wright’s defense. Some are offended by the notion, put forth by Mr. Wright, that an attack on him was an attack on the black church itself.

“He don’t speak for all black people, at least not for me,” said Loreen Morman, 47, of Evergreen, a supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama’s Democratic rival.

More common, at least judging from call-in shows on black radio stations and interviews in and around Lumberton, is the opinion that Mr. Wright made a serious error this week when he spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, days before Mr. Obama was to face a tight primary next Tuesday against Mrs. Clinton here and in Indiana.

“There’s some truth to the things Reverend Wright spoke about,” said Rodney Singletary, 40, an associate pastor of Walking by Faith ministries in Chadbourn. “And the Bible says the truth shall set you free. But the Bible also says there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.”

Many black voters, including some of Mr. Wright’s detractors, fault the news media for pushing the story. But whether the coverage is viewed more as sensationalism or racism may depend on the generation of the voter.

Frances M. Cummings, 67, a former state legislator who was the first black teacher at Lumberton High School, said younger people did not understand the social forces that were working against them. “They don’t know anything about not being served at a restaurant or not going to college where you wanted to go,” Ms. Cummings said.

While she called Mr. Wright’s timing poor, Ms. Cummings said the news media “put him in the opposing corner, and he had to come out swinging.”

At Clawson’s barbershop, a small blue building on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive with Obama signs taped to the windows, the older clientele recalled having to sit outside doctor’s offices and take Constitution tests to vote. But, to nods of agreement, Sandell F. Clawson Jr., 71, the owner, said Mr. Wright’s comments risked bringing old, contentious issues to a campaign that was trying to move past them.

“Where he’s coming from is good,” Mr. Clawson said. “He’s just late coming.”

Howie P.S.: Meanwhile Ed Schultz and others are blasting Hillaryland for the connection to Mickey Kantor, Carville and Stephanopolous who are seen in what some view as a "shocking 1992 Clinton team video" over remarks about Indiana voters with a racial overtone. Ben Smith takes another perspective. As does Andrew Sullivan.

Barack Obama

Bill Moyers & Jeremiah Wright (video)

PBS, transcript and video Pt. 1 (30:13)and Pt. 2 (22:39):

Bill Moyers interviews the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in his first broadcast interview with a journalist since he became embroiled in a controversy for his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama. Wright, who retired in early 2008 as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Senator Obama is a member, has been at the center of controversy for comments he made during sermons, which surfaced in the press in March.

Barack Obama

"Obama’s balancing act"

The Times (South Africa):

Black hopeful has to allay white fears while confronting racism, says Andrew P Jones--Think of your average black manager who works in corporate America. As a high-level executive in the company, he enjoys a good salary, perks and lives a nice life.

The problem is that in the workplace no high fives among blacks are allowed, no black jokes, no banter with the black male and female colleagues he is close to in church or elsewhere outside the work environment are tolerated.

Ironically, though, among whites he is free to intermingle as he pleases and, among his white colleagues, relationships that extend outside the workplace carry on into the job environment. However, any commensurate level of camaraderie among black executives is frowned upon.

On one hand, institutional racism demands that he associate mainly with whites to get to where he wants to go. On the other, it is his blackness and his associations with black people that make him feel good about himself .

Now overlay this scenario on black and white America and you can begin to understand how and why Barack Obama is bound to get into trouble. He has to tell white America what it wants to hear to get its votes, while the authenticity of his message rests in a tone of voice that can only be masked for so long.

Obama received his political acculturation in the heart of black America, the south side of Chicago — Harold Washington, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan country — a place so segregated that whites and blacks have long since accepted it as the status quo. Black politicians in Chicago have known for decades that if they are to get elected, black people are going to vote for them and vice versa for whites.

In black communities, the pulpit of the church has traditionally been a place where black ministers could speak their minds freely.

And in the old days, when black men worked for the post office and talented black businesswomen had to settle for running hair-dressing shops, the church was a sanctuary where black professionals could congregate and commune.

In the same way that during the period preceding the June 1976 uprising many young people here in South Africa were taught and inspired by teachers in black schools, black professionals were nurtured politically by radical reverends in cities like Atlanta and Chicago .

Obama was among a generation of young black professionals, many of whom attended black churches and in doing so found mentorship and a spiritual home. By his own admission, Reverend Wright, who seven years ago uttered the words “God damn America” was Obama’s spiritual and political mentor. He married Obama and his wife, Michelle, and introduced them both to black political religious thought. My guess is that Wright opened political doors for Obama to be accepted by the black people of Illinois .

A further truth and perhaps the most profound one is that, given the tradition of the church, Wright was not preaching hate when he condemned Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica and reminded America of Nagasaki and Hiroshima just after 9/11. Black people in black churches are not counselled by black ministers to hate white people. What they are told, though, is that white ain’t automatically right because it’s white and black is not always wrong for the same reason.

In the context of that message, the more politically aware ministers like Wright have been known to remind black parishioners of the importance of dealing with their own self hate as opposed to preaching hate for whites. And that has to do with a legacy of slavery and racism that has split most black people in two.

On the one hand we love our country and see ourselves as an integral part of it. On the other, much of what the US stands for has to do with our oppression and increasingly a kind of imperial oppression over the entire world, something many black people find worrying.

Obama knows this. His problem, though, like that of the black average manager, is the extent to which he can utter the truth in public and still have white America accept him as their leader. If he chooses to develop his political and spiritual association with black America to the extent that he prioritises our concerns, then white America could turn on him and there goes his dream. Maybe.

Yet black leaders have no choice but to condemn racism because not to do so would mean perpetuating those systems that are the causes of slavery and oppression.

This is a fine line to draw at a time when the US stands closer than ever to having a person of colour as Commander-in-Chief .

# Jones is an African-American man who has lived in South Africa for 13 years and is a TV producer and violinist.

Barack Obama