I’m kind of laughing at the huge flap about Rev. Jeremiah Wright saying “God Damn America.” Why is that so shocking? Why is it so shocking that the pastor of a church in Chicago, where the entire south side is synonymous with minority poverty, would not have glowing things to say about our country?
We’ve heard a million commentators say the same thing in less direct terms over the years. Right after 9/11 plenty of people said it, including Rev. Wright in his “Chickens Come Home to Roost” sermon. Many of the United States problems in the Middle East are a direct result of our foreign policy. I am in full agreement with that statement. I wouldn’t necessarily say “God Damn America.” But I don’t find it shocking that someone else might.
Rev. Wright says a whole bunch of what I would consider far more controversial things in the same sermon that got completely glossed over (full audio available here). In the same sermon where he says “God Damn America” he says that the government invented HIV as a means of destroying black people. In the same sermon where he says “God Damn America” he calls Condi Rice a skeezer (that’s old school vocabulary for stank ho). In the same sermon where he says “God Damn America” he goes on a tirade against Tiger Woods that essentially labels the world’s greatest golfer a sell-out. All these things should have generated way more interest than his relatively well thought-out and explained riff that culminated in “God Damn America.”
But maybe those things don’t make for quite as breathlessly sensational TV.
March 30th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Almost 3,000 lives were lost and Pastor Wright’s answer to such a tragedy is to petition God to visit more sadness and plight on this country — and Obama won’t take a stand and tell his pastor “I disagree with this. Now is a time for unity in America - more than ever”? I don’t trust that in someone who wants to be my president.
All I know is, on the Sunday after Sept. 11 my priest told us to remember that on 9/11, God may have seemed far away from us but in truth, it’s those times during which He’s right beside us. We were asked to give consideration to this thought: God works in mysterious ways. We saw flame and fire and horrible images of tall buildings crumbling into dust, but who were we, as mere humans, to assume that in the midst of all the horror we saw the Hand of God wasn’t, in fact, lifting His children homeward into Heaven?
Not once in my parish church, which is - for the record - in a poor part of Atlanta’s southside and is mostly Hispanic, south Asian and black (I’m the white minority) - was God asked to “damn America.” Instead, we were implored to care for each other and bring about an even better America in the wake of tragedy.
Obama wants to be our president. He shouldn’t get a pass on the tough questions. If he’s elected, he certainly won’t.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:54 pm
The idea that we should rejoice in the prosperity of America because God is blessing us is an affront to all of the oppressed, disenfranchised people whose suffering has made American prosperity possible. This country is rich BECAUSE it stole (and continues to steal) from so many defenseless people. If you do believe in God and in divine retribution, or if you simply acknowledge cause and effect, you would be hard-pressed to deny that America is due for some hard times. I’m not referring to terrorism, per se. I’m certainly not trying to justify violence in any context. I’m just not one to ask for blessings that aren’t deserved. When Americans take some responsibility for the state for the state of things and making a true effort to change, then we’ll talk blessings.