Adding "context" to Wright's sermons
Friday, April 25, 2008
Defenders of Rev. Jeremiah Wright from Trinity United Church of Christ have used terms like "soundbite" and "context" to suggest that the public can't interpret what they are hearing without more information... but then come up pretty shallow on just exactly what everyone is missing.Theology elites like Walter Brueggemann condescendingly insist that the general public is too stupid to interpret what Wright is really saying. Brueggemann claims that "righteous indignation" over Wright "smacks of embarrassing ignorance" without really pealing back what people are missing.
In tonight's interview with Bill Moyers on PBS, Wright plays the same card:
“The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly. When something is taken like a soundbite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public, that’s not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or, as the learned journalist from the New York Times called me, a ‘wackadoodle.’"
No one is claiming that there is a "failure to communicate"... this is just more spin. Yesterday ABC News posted a partial transcript to Wright's post-9/11 sermon and if you read it, the context doesn't change anything. In fact, the context of the sermon validates the concerns that many people are echoing about Wright. This also explains the lack of depth in using "context" as a defense for Wright's sermons.
5 Comments:
commented by 
Anonymous, 11:41 AM
Anonymous, 11:41 AM
I can almost sympathize with Rev. Wright. It must be a horrible shock to have constructed worldly success by preaching victimization to the volnerable, and then suddenly to be called to account--before all humanity--with absolutely nowhere to hide.
OK, I don't get it. I cannot find anything offensive in Rev. Wright's sermon. Can any sane person deny that America has done damnable things? How can any sane person deny that the controversy over Rev. Wright's words is a distorted made-for-media campaign that is far, far more damaging to America than the words of any pastor?
I don't see anything in this discussion but a case of myopia; people for whom believing is seeing. When are we ever going to be able to move beyond this nonsense?
I don't see anything in this discussion but a case of myopia; people for whom believing is seeing. When are we ever going to be able to move beyond this nonsense?
Yeah, there's no way that I could believe that the same government that purposefully injected black men with syphillis in Tuskeegee, and that dealt drugs to fund the Contras, would ever be involved with AIDS or crack. That's just nuts.
pd:
The U.S., like any country, has done bad things. Isn't the business of "damning" a nation up to God and shouldn't he be leading a call to repentance (including himself)?
Anon (4)
Get the Tuskegee experiment down right. The government didn't inject men with syphilis: they didn't treat men who already have it. Don't act like a doofus. But then again, I can't reason you out of something you didn't reason yourself into to begin with.
The U.S., like any country, has done bad things. Isn't the business of "damning" a nation up to God and shouldn't he be leading a call to repentance (including himself)?
Anon (4)
Get the Tuskegee experiment down right. The government didn't inject men with syphilis: they didn't treat men who already have it. Don't act like a doofus. But then again, I can't reason you out of something you didn't reason yourself into to begin with.
Out of context or not, his leftist views are damaging not only to UCC but to everyone who has to listen to them.
Can't we all just get along?