Phil Cooke

While it sounds good, I actually don't think that's true.  After all, if we just "say what Jesus said" we'd be reading the NT words in red and that's about it.  We do have to deliver context, illustrations, personal stories and application.  Your job as a pastor is to help the audience understand what Jesus meant, and how to apply it to their lives.   But I do agree with you that many of the things Pastor Wright has said are totally out of bounds when it comes to preaching the gospel.  Context is one thing.  Political diatribe is another.  Not to mention the fact that if a white pastor did that, the IRS would shut him down.

I think the release of Obama's tax returns underscores a point that Phil was making about how involved Obama was with Wright and his church. In a year that Obama and his wife made over $1 million dollars he gave only $5,000 to Wright´s church. I would think Obama's spin doctors would seize on that to prove that if all those tithing sermons didn't reach Obama then surely his wacky racist sermons didn't either.

That's actually not true Haven, and your bias clouds your better judgment. I understand your feelings that it often appears that the Religious Right is in bed with the Republican party, and for many years that's been true. However, that is dramatically changing, as polling data indicates, and even back in it's heyday, it didn't have much impact on individual churches. Right now, there are at least two white congregations in the Los Angeles area that are under an IRS investigation because of pastors talking politics from the pulpit. But at the same time, we've seen the parade of Democratic candidates making the rounds throughout African American churches here in Los Angeles with no problems at all. I would love to see the IRS bug out of church business altogether. I don't think they have any right to censor anything a pastor says, but as long as they do, it should be balanced.

The “white-evangelical-as-base-strategy” has had a lot of help from this gem from Republican Strategists. Bob Herbert, a New York Times columnist, reported a 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, published in Southern Politics in the 1990s by Prof. Alexander P. Lamis, in which Lee Atwater discussed politics in the South:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.  

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.".^[11]

Herbert wrote in the same column, "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."^[

From:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Bob's right Haven. Surely you're not so naive that you don't realize that the Left desperately needs to keep the "Christian Right is in bed with the GOP" myth alive. It would devastate Democratic fundraising should they lose that tried and true enemy. Anyone with political fundraising experience knows that you need an enemy to keep the dollars coming in. And the idea that the Christian right are simply puppets of the GOP is a great one for them. Democrats need the dollars, and that's why it's so important to manipulate the numbers to keep that enemy out there. But you won't find many legitimate journalists who still believe the old idea is still true.

Haven – If you're looking for racists on this site, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.  I'm African-American, and this site is about media, faith, and culture.  I can tell you that if you're going to take racial offense at the comments here, you're a little over-sensitive and this site isn't for you.  Certainly there are issues out there, but in reading over your posts, you keep deviating from the topic Phil's setting and distracting us from where we need to be.  There are media issues at stake in politics, faith, culture, education, and other areas, and we're attempting here to make sense of it all.  By always making it a racial issue, you're missing the point – not to mention missing the opportunity to make a real, positive contribution to the conversation.

Sam, you are right…bias and racism clouds that biochemisty, as in Haven's case.  There is a middle-of-the-road perspective that steps out of racial history because of the common ground of the true Gospel.  Churches like Fred Price, T.D. Jakes, Keith Butler, Creflo Dollar, Billy Joe Daughtery and Rod Parsley have proven that, whether a biracial, multiracial or primarily Black congregation.  I only mention these pastors because most know who they are…there are so many others out there who espouse the same balance to media, faith and culture and who are making a significant, positive impact on their communities minus the hateful, inciting rhetoric, as with Mr. Wright.

I assure you, throughout the history of American Protestantism, Black leaders who were blunt and in your face conserving the sin of white privilege were labeled as purveyors of “hateful & inciting rhetoric.” Today is no different.

  AmeriKan: “There is a middle-of-the-road perspective that steps out of racial history because of the common ground of the true Gospel.” You are not some nihilistic super-man who can claim to exist outside of history. You and I live and breathe the history our ancestors have given us. It doesn’t determine who we are, however it contributes to who we are. History is still under the authority of God, pretending to live outside of history is just as bad as claiming you can live outside of God.  The eternal truth of Jesus Christ survives in spite of the white privilege who claims it. And just to remind all of you who seem to believe the Gospel is some touchy feelly pop-psychology for the white middle-classes, you belittle the faith when you use it to ignore injustice.  

If you believe the Bible is the living word of God, then you live and breathe the past right here in the present and the future.

The fact that you deny the power of white privilege shows me you are indeed in bondage to the sins of the past.Using Christ to embrace cultural relativism, which is what white privilege is, is very sad.

Haven, forgive and live.  Same for Wright.  Forgive and live.