Comments on: Why The Jeremiah Wright Issue Won’t Go Away

By: Rev. Chad Fickett

Rev. Chad Fickett — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have a question for you. Shouldn't ministers of all colors and faiths, when they stand behind the sacred desk, speak only what God has said? I hope you understand my question. I am not saying as Ministers we cant have a political stand. But I have a problem with Pastor allowing Politicians to stand behind the sacred desk to promote their agendas. And I believe history has shown no matter what political party you endorse it is hard to know everyones agenda. We must get back to following the leading of the Holy Spirit and aligning our thoughts and statements with scripture.

Please respond. I am curios for your answer.

Pastor Chad

By: Phil

Phil — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Elizabeth Conley

Elizabeth Conley — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There comes a time when the idiocy of pastors no longer reflects on anyone but themselves.

Thanks to the startling bad taste of Fox News and the moral depravity of Reverend Manning, my children's vocabularies have just been expanded. I'll be defining "whore" to the 9 year old boy as simply "a word we don't need to use", but I'm afraid the 11 year old will want to know more. Good grief! Enough already!

What is truly mind blowing, is that Reverend Manning's flock is going to support him and his ridiculous remarks no matter what. Why do Christians engage in the type of group think normally ascribed to lemmings? This phenomenon is depressing!

By: walrus

walrus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Haven

Haven — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Phil wrote: Not to mention the fact that if a white pastor did that, the IRS would shut him down. The holy union between the Religious Right and the Republican Party defies this sentiment.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Haven

Haven — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Bob, it would appear the religious right/white evangelicals are still devoted to the Republican Party.

Evidence of Evangelical Shift is Still Slim

Evangelicals may be shifting away from the Republican Party, but a recent poll doesn't offer compelling evidence to support that claim.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/evidence_of_evangelical_shift.html

However, evangelicals of color seemed to have flirted with the Republican Party for George Bush Jr.’s first term, but they shifted back to the Democratic Party. (Warmongering seems to be more popular with white evangelicals/religious right.) I think white denominational Protestants have been trending toward the Democratic Party, while white non-denominational Protestants/white evangelicals have remained loyal to the GOP (God’s Own Party).

Doug Wead spoke of the strategy (Rove called it “securing the base” for the second Bush) for the first Bush and it has been a winning strategy since the Dixiecrats left the Democratic Party.

Then in 1988, when we won with the Bush senior campaign and carried the highest total of evangelical votes ever in American history, we lost as we always do -- the Republicans -- we lost the Jewish vote and the Hispanic vote and all those votes. We lost the Catholic vote. We were the first modern presidency to win an election and it was a landslide and not win the Catholic vote. It was barely, but we lost the Catholic vote.

How did we do it? We carried 82 percent or 83 percent of the evangelical vote. I remember when it was all over-- this was one of the reasons I got a job in the White House -- but I remember when it was all over, there was great shock from me and others saying, "Whoa, this is unhealthy." We immediately began going after the Catholic vote.

While at the same time, we were frightened by the fact that we lost all these votes and still won the White House. The message did come home. My God, you can win the White House with nothing but evangelicals if you can get enough of them, if you get them all, and they're a huge number. ...from:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/interviews/wead.html

By: Haven

Haven — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Haven - your own sources betray you. In the article you reference (from a left wing site by the way) it says:

"At best, the data are inconclusive. But many are likely to conclude that the poll and memo are examples of a group trying to be too cute with numbers and language in an effort to promote their cause and lead journalists to a particular conclusion."

Hardly a reliable source. If you choose to be agenda driven, that's fine. Just admit it, and then we can work from there.... :-)

By: Shawnda

Shawnda — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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.