On Declaring ‘God Damn America’: Obama and Wright, Neibuhr and Cone

An amazing moment is unfolding in the United States.  In response to criticism of inflammatory snippets taken from the sermons of The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor for over twenty years, Senator Obama wrote and delivered the most powerful speech on race in America I have ever heard.  The speech, watched live on Tuesday by over 4 million, and now the top video on YouTube since with over 1.7 million views, discusses Rev. Wright’s sermons against the backdrop of our nation’s struggle with slavery and race from its very beginnings.  While much of the television and internet debate has taken place in attack mode, drawing on sound bites and shallow understanding of the issues, Senator Obama has paid down on his oft-professed “faith in the decency and generosity of the America people” by offering them a personal, eloquent, and thoughtful accounting of the problems and possibilities before us regarding the very real racial fissures in our nation.

When I heard Senator Obama speak in Hartford in January, he said: “I’ve not only read the Constitution, I’ve taught the Constitution and I believe in the Constitution.”  And as he began his speech on race in the United States of America, the Constitution provided his title and starting place.  “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”  He recounted how the framers of the Constitution looked the issue of slavery in the eye and blinked, leaving its resolution to future generations.  The answer was there all along, however.  The Constitution, Senator Obama points out, has at its “very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law.”  Successive generations have had to take up the hard work of forming a more perfect union.  And it was, he says, for the sake of this work that he decided to run for president—“to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.”  Perhaps more importantly, his conviction is that we cannot solve these problems—we cannot perfect the union—unless we do it together.

This, as I’ve argued before, represents at significant  and distinctive theological framing of the possibilities of the nation and it is hard for many Americans to accept.  Let me first comment on why Senator Obama’s viewpoint is so significant theologically, and why it is hard for Americans to accept.  Within that context, then, I can finally say something about the so-called ‘inflammatory’ and ‘anti-American’ preaching of The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, long the senior pastor of Senator Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Senator Obama’s favorite theologian is not a black liberation theologian, as is the case for Rev. Wright (who cites James Cone, among others).  Obama’s favorite theologian is Reinhold Neibuhr, whose long and influential career at Union Theological Seminary in New York cast a web of influence that caught up preachers and presidents alike, including perhaps most famously Martin Luther King Jr.  Asked by David Brooks of the New York Times what he took away from Neibuhr’s writings, Obama said “"I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism."  Such a perspective embodies what Niebuhr called Christian realism, a counterpoint to what he called America’s tendency to embrace a belief in the doctrine of ‘special providence,’ that is, the idea that we are a redeemer nation called to spread our light to others who struggle in darkness.  Read Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History, for example, to get more on this perspective, or listen to his sermon on “Our Lord’s Conception of the Providence of God” here.

Why is this sort of perspective hard for many Americans to accept?  At present, one of the overwhelming reasons is the hyper-patriotic reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  President Bush has played strongly into the tradition that views America as pure, and as destined to bring our light to the world that still lives in darkness.  That framing—good versus evil, freedom versus tyranny—has been powerful in a time of great national anxiety and I think propelled President Bush to a second term despite his gross mismanagement of the nation on many levels, not least of which is the war in Iraq, a war I have called immoral and unjust from the start.  When people buy into the rhetoric of America as innocent, as guardian of the moral high ground, as somehow beyond the pale of critique, then a Niebuhrian perspective sounds unpatriotic at best. 

If someone has the view of America as innocent, and of patriotism as upholding glory of our nation’s ideals at any cost, then there is little room for a prophetic critique of the sins of the nation—slavery and the legacy of racism as a major case in point.  Many reactions to Rev. Wright’s sermon, dug up by ABC News and replayed on television and YouTube, have come from this perspective.  I have not seen the full sermon anywhere (which is a concern—who wants to be quoted out of context), but the clip being broadcast shows Rev. Wright preaching in a 2003 sermon:

“"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people, God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Unless we as a nation, and especially those of us who are white, can hear in Rev. Wright’s sermon a cry for a more perfect union, then I think we’ve missed the deepest level of such a stinging critique.  This is, after all, sentiment expressed by a respected and highly educated Christian minister, a man who served his country honorably as a United States Marine, one who has continued to serve his country in the tough neighborhoods of South Chicago where many white people wouldn’t dare to visit, let alone live and work.  Read Rev. Wright’s full sermon titled “The Audacity of Hope” (the source of Senator Obama’s book title) and you’ll see what tremendous brokenness he deals with on a daily basis.   Yet he does not end there; he ends with a call for hope for a world of liberty and justice for all, even and especially when no visible signs can be found, because God has promised to make a way out of no way, and that promise sustains us in the face of unjust bondage. 

Anyone who takes the time to study the statistics on drug use versus drug sentencing will quickly see how disproportionately black Americans have born the brunt of this social ill.   A recent study by the Pew Center on the States titled “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008” says that while only 1 in 106 white men ages 18 and older are in prison, 1 in 15 black men ages 18 and older are currently serving time.  The agony of such a statistic for the black community cries out in the words of Rev. Wright.  And such prophetic cries are a staple of the American tradition from Frederick Douglass’ stinging denunciation of the 4th of July to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s exposing of America’s morally bankrupt foreign policy to Rev. Wright’s denunciation of America’s complacency in the fact of the disproportionate incarceration of America’s black population.  It is, as Robert Bellah reminds us again and again as perhaps our most distinguished sociologist of American life, a virtue of our more inspiring national leaders has been the ability to evoke our nations’ standing under the judgment of God, and not only God’s blessing.  False prophets lead us to believe that God would only have blessing in store for us. 

Abraham Lincoln, for example, in his Second Inaugural:

“If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’.”

Rev. Wright, it turns out, does not condemn America unequivocally.  He said, “God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”  That prophetic cry, that lament, could well be construed as a Christian American cry for “a more perfect union.”  We live, as the pledge of allegiance to the flag says, as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  When I say that pledge at the elementary school my children attend, surrounded by 80% black children in a failing school district struggling against the odds to build community and educate well, I have a sense that it is indeed a pledge and not the reality.  You may prefer more sugar-coated rhetoric, but we in America stand under God’s judgment for the sins of our nation.  We all have a role in seeking to pay due on that pledge, to come together with Senator Obama--whether or not he becomes the next president of the United States--to “build a more perfect union.”  It will not ever be perfect, but we have the choice before us now, in an unprecedented moment in time, to join together in making it “more perfect.” 

Peace,

Chris

Comments

[Stephen Rose]

Hi ... Nicely put. I would suggest though that Obama goes beyond Niebuhr and in the direction of King, a step Niebuhr never took except possibly cereberally if that is a word. Anyway I feel neo-orthodoxy did not succeed in serving as a theology for a movement. Maybe as a brake or caution but not as an aid to progress or an evolved society or person. Neither, of course does liberation theology in itself -- which I relate to the Balkanization of everything over the past 40 years. An embarassing but probably necessary time intellectuially, or so I feel. The theology needed to encompass what Barack might be about has more to do with building on critiques that go back to Nietzsche and to the unfinished work of creating a hermeneutic that recognizes the Bible's role in distorting what Jesus was (may have been) up to. Cheers, S

[Stephen Rose]

I notice you teach at Yale. I had a devastatingly bad time there back in 1966 when my book The Grass Roots Church was roundly bashed by a highly snobbish faculty. I once lived for a while with Bill Coffin. Leon Watts was a good friend and colleague. Cheers, S

[Adam Copeland]

Thanks for the thoughtful post. White American preachers would do well to read more OT prophets. Amos spoke out beautifully against the powers of the day. The black church is faithful to the OT, the white church pushes patriotism more than the prophets.

Theologically speaking, we should daily discern the ways in which God might damn our country's ills. How we more white preachers say it, though, is the question.

http://adamjcopeland.com

[V. E. M. N.C. R.]

Your article is all well and good, however, you, like ALL of America, including the African-Americans, DO NOT LOOK after other minorities and THEIR issues. Are we to repeat history? For hundreds of years MY PEOPLE have been discriminated upon and we were in America BEFORE she brought slaves. They killed our ranchers and theiir families and stole their homes and land. We have been mistreated by the color of our skin, too.

Why, just recently, MY PEOPLE held demonstrations about the way INS treats those who are "aliens." My understanding is that the African-Americans made the first declaration in one of the Carolinas to gather MY PEOPLE and deoport us because we were taking all the jobs!! I have not seen a waiting line by African-Americans to fill those positions that are now vacant, have you? Has anyone? In some states,just because you don't speak English, you can be sent back and you might be a citizen of the United States!!

So, Rev. Wright, Obama and now you, sir, are encouraging this false idea that in America there is only black and white. Where does that leave Latinos, Asians and, let's NOT FORGET, Native Americans?

Are we entering a new age of a "New Irony' in America?" Are Americans supposed to accept, "The Audacity of Hope," only for themselves and African-Americans? Are, "We the People," in America black and white?

I thank THE LAMB OF GOD, Jesus Christ, had the "AUDACITY" to die for ALL OF HIS CHILDREN. JESUS DOES NOT DIFFERENCIATE!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!
I am a first generation Mexican American and 35 years in Christ Jesus.
Latinos are the "NEW SLAVES."

There resides in America a new age of a new kind of injustice and bigotry...if your skin isn't black or white....food for thought.

Thank You

[Sarah Griffin]

Hi, Uncle Chris. It's Sarah, and I have a couple of questions about faith and Lutheranism. I thought you would be the best able to answer them. OK, here we go:
1. What is the difference between Lutheranism and other Protestant religions? (Especially Baptist, as we attended a Baptist service for a Sunday and saw some different stuff than at our usual church.)
2. Is it OK to be confused about God? I mean, I don't have any proof he's here, and as a member of the overtly cynical 1990s generation, I wanted to know if there really is evidence for Jesus and God's existence. If there is, could you show some? (Just so you know, this question isn't meant in a "ha there is no evidence" way, but rather a "I'm scientifically curious" way.)
Thank you so much!!!
Love, Sarah Griffin

[Angelo]

Ambivalence and denial are unequal to repentance.