Maybe it is just the circles we run in but as a conservative not simply a Republican right winger, I know that most of the conservatives I know (as opposed to most of the liberals I know) are better tippers, more likely to hold a door for the person coming in behind them and to express gratitude for the door being held for them.  Most of the conservatives I know are more likely to help a neighbor or family member in need with goods, money or sevices than most of the liberals I know.  I believe it is a imperative to help the least of these as has been mentioned many times the place of dispute is I believe a question of the best way do accomplish this.  I think that the federal government is the least efficient way to accomplish almost everything.  I am a little tired of being accused of not caring. 
Have groups of people (in general) been abused in the U.S. legally and tacitly?  Yes absolutely.  Have African-Americans been treated shabily? (not trying to lessen the satanic institution of slavery).  Yes.  Do we live in country which makes it possible to redress grievances Yes.  is it a perfect country?  Like a man said; “show me a better one.” I will never know what it is like to be a black man in america.  You will never know what it is like to be me.  Fortunately for us both Jesus died for you and me.  And He knows us both.

Wright’s comments are not mere slips of the tongue, they are carefully fhought out messages he truely believes.  Obama isn’t just a member of his church, Obama placed Wright on his election campaign committee, until this came out into the open.  Plus, Wright and his church gave Louis Farrakan a humanitarian award.  Louis Farrakan is one of the worse anti-semites in the world.  So, for Obama to pretend that he’s unaware of this man’s stance, or to now backtrack on this man’s positions is beyond credible. 

Historians tell us that we need to study the past to prevent making the same mistakes in the future.  Obama is not credible.  You do not make an anti-semite a member of your election committee, and then declare I never knew this. 

His own words, and his twenty year association with Wright are what truely reveal his beliefs and mindset.

Brother Dean,

You stated something about you like Obama’s message about hope...I do as well and I can actually take both message as messages of hope as a African American man in America.....without facing what is wrong in the country still, understanding that some of the bad things that happen in this country is this countries fault.....doesn;t the bible say, “you reap what you sow?” Well with slavery and all the other ills that we have perpetuated in this country.....why are remarks like this so surprising to any one?  LIke I said before just check the history books and then read some black history that is conveniently left out of the books, such as all the great inventors, then you may have a better understanding why some people feel the way they feel.....nothing about my 40 years in the US has been peachy but that does not make me want to go anywhere else!!

Gary - yours is the first sensible post I have seen so far!

My greatest cause for concern over this issue is what the media and talking heads are saying about the church.  What some of us are saying as well.

If you do not like the pastor, leave.

A church is more than its pastor.  A great church is larger than the ego and scope of the pastor.  Why stay?  Sunday School teachers who enrich the lives of my children.  A small group that has created life changing relationships.  Opportunities to serve in ways that no other church allows me to serve.  There was a moment when I was in deep need, the pastor helped me through it.

All of these are more important than a Sunday sermon.  Sunday is important, but for a Christian with a deep spirituality.  Are the latter more important than the former?

I think this controversy does not bode well for church.  We live in a world where commitment is fickle at best, where people church shop extensively, and now the media and some of us are saying..."If you don’t like what the pastor says on a given Sunday...leave.”

Am I to comfort the comfortable all the time?
I thought it was to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.  Good news of Jesus..."If I step on your toes, you are free to leave and pursue your faith on your own.”

What is the lesson for the church in this controversy?

From a strictly religious standpoint I’m not sure who seems like the better candidate.  Obama’s pastor has expressed some extreme views, but Obama has distanced himself from those views if not from the man.  At least he seems to be an “involved” Christian, going to church (even if some of the Pastor’s views seem extreme).

It seems that we Christians want Obama to be a Christian (as we do all candidates) but we want him to renounce his former Pastor and church for some extreme comments made by the Pastor that Obama has never endorsed.

John McCain seems to not be an extremely religious man. His press releases list him as an Episcopalian and he grew up Episcopalian, attending Episcopal schools, but McCain himself says he’s Baptist and says he attends a Baptist church in Phoenix.  So, he was raised Episcopalian and has come out in support of gay rights and gay marriage before, but he says he is Baptist (the largest Protestant denomination in the country)(that seems convenient).  Does he attend church when he’s in Washington?

When asked about his religious affiliation and views McCain answered, “…the most important thing is that I’m a Christian. And I don’t have anything else to say on the issue.”

James Dobson has come out vigorously against McCain saying “I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances.” Even if he is running against Hillary Clinton?

Last year McCain was criticized for saying he believed the constitution established the United States as a “Christian nation”.  But previously McCain has denounced Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and compared them to Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, as “agents of intolerance” who were “corrupting influences” in American politics. Later McCain hit Falwell and Robertson even harder, blasting them for what he called “the evil influence that they exercise over the Republican Party.”

Now we turn to the present political race and we find McCain giving the commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.  That also seems convenient.  Politically expedient?

So, what are John McCain’s religious views?  What are Obama’s?  And I’m not sure I even want to think about Hillary Clinton’s religious views.

I long ago intended to be done with this thread, but have to jump back in to respond to a comment Pezz made.

Pezz says: I doubt most black Americans have endured a fraction of the racism I have endured just for being white.

Please, you can’t possibly believe this. You describe one incident which was unfortunate, but cannot begin to compare to the crimes committed against black Americans by the white American aristocracy. How many times have the police pulled you over because you are white, a restaurant server avoided serving you because you are white, people crossed to the other side of the street because they see your white face coming toward them?  The list of what our black brothers and sisters still face daily goes on and on. 

This doesn’t excuse Pastor’s Wright’s comments, but it might begin to explain his anger.  Claiming that you understand is patronizing at best.

Wendi

To Wendy,
Don’t judge me till you know me.  I don’t have one story, but dozens.  After gym class there was a handful of African American kids waiting by the exit door of the locker room.  I managed to escape by pushing and fighting my way through, but my friend Bob did not.  They caught him and dragged him up two flights of a dark stairwell leading to the gym.  In that stairwell they stripped him naked and then 5 large, strong teens took their belts and beat him with the buckles.  They lashed him until he was an unrecongnizable bloody pile of ripped flesh.  Then they opened the door leading to the hallway of class rooms and threw his naked body into the hall just as class was dimissed.  Bob never went to school again.  Ever....I’ve had guns held to my head, knives touching my eyeballs, and endured countless beatings.... why..... because I was white.  The point here is not a to compare who has had it worse.... But that words like Rev. Wrights propogate the kind of terror I have had to live through.

We revere Martin Luther King Jr. as a great man and a great leader.  If you want to get to know Martin Luther King, get to know Jeremiah Wright.  Get to know Frederick D. Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, who decries the fact that there are two cities of Dallas, north and south and that there is a line that divides them and that line is black and white.

We revere Martin Luther King while we revile Jeremiah Wright for a few sound bites opponents of Barak Obama dug up, a greatest-hits compilation of Wright’s most incendiary comments.  We are outraged by JW’s remarks condemning America for the racism he perceives still exists today while we celebrate MLK’s “I have a dream” speech, but apparently forget that MLK also condemned America in his time saying “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.” and “The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.”

MLK also said, “We have guided missiles and misguided men” and “I have condemned any organizer of war, regardless of his rank or nationality”.

The Washington Post describes the response from Rev. Wright’s church thus; Flooded with a tide of criticism, Trinity declines to condemn Wright’s remarks, instead casting them as consistent with the traditions of the black church. He practices a “black liberation theology” that encourages a preacher to speak forcefully against the institutions of oppression, and occasional hyperbole is an occupational hazard, ministers said. “There’s so much passion in what we do that it can overflow,” said the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III, senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas.

MLK said, “I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood”.

I can tell you the day Martin Luther King dreamed about has not yet come.  Not in much of Georgia, not in the much of the South, not in much of America. To white America this is a perception they do not wish to acknowledge, a picture that is seen very differently by whites and blacks, but it is a reality whether we acknowledge it or not.  This is Jeremiah Wright’s reality and sometimes the frustration he, and most of black America, feels manifests itself in things he says.

I grew up in the South in the 60’s and saw the racism that was a fact then and though less prevalent and less obvious is still a fact today.  I was fortunate though, I’m white, I saw the racism without having to live with it every minute of every day.  It sickened me when I saw it but I could escape it, men like Rev. King, Haynes and Wright could not escape it and I’m sure that helped shape them.

I grew up attending a fundamentalist church in a small town.  The church, as it should, had a great influence over the people in that small town.  Among the things I learned at church was that men were superior to women and that it was God’s will that women be subservient to men (and that women might occasionally need to be reminded of this by non-verbal means).  I heard the men at church joking that the races should be separate but equal; some were just more equal than others.  I heard the preacher rail against those who wanted to over turn the anti-misogyny laws banning inter-racial marriage. I heard a Martin Luther King called an agent of the devil.  I remember a visiting “preacher” talking about the “Knights of the Lord’s forces on earth” saying our brothers who serve the Lord need our help and that he would be talking to some of us more about this later.  I was about 9 or 10 at the time so I wasn’t one of the ones he talked to later and when I asked my mother bout it, saint that she was, she told me what they were talking about and helped me see how wrong they were.

The reality that exists in America today is complex and varies depending on place and circumstance and there are vast differences in the perceptions of individuals from the different races.  Let’s not condemn a man for a handful of comments made while speaking out about his perception of reality, a handful of comments from a lifetime of speaking out.  And let’s not condemn a political candidate for comments not made by him, comments he has said he doesn’t agree with.  Ïn response to this controversy and questions about racism in America Sen. Obama said, “… the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races”

There are candidates who will maintain the status quo and not make anyone uncomfortable by bringing up issues of race, and there is a candidate who is a unique position to understand issues of race.  I’m not advocating who to vote for, I’m just saying if you want to understand the issues of race in America listen to Barak Obama when he talks about race.  Many people remember John F. Kennedy’s speech about faith.  If you want to know more about faith and about race in America, read Obama’s speech on race from March 18th.  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/18/politics/main3947908.shtml

What I can stand is this attitude that says, “because he’s black he has a right to make baseless, insane remarks.” Again, I bring up the HIV comment.  That’s not something any white preacher could get away with in any pulpit had he said something directed at black people.  You can’t justify his comments for being angry.  What happened to me certainly hurt me.  But It’s never right.... to do wrong… to do right.  He’s made bigoted remarks that needs justification or recantation.  If we don’t hold everyone to the same standards it’s racism in reverse.  There’s this white guilt that let’s people get away with nonsense just because they are black.  That’s a shame.  One day God will hold him accoutable for his words.... they have hurt white and black alike.  Until a man like that admits he was wrong, anyone who supports or defends him is suffering from an embarassing amount of white guilt.