A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Marty and Wright

One noteworthy fact mentioned in this Nicholas Kristof column on the Obama/Jeremiah Wright brouhaha is that, apparently, noted religious historian and veritable dean of American mainline Lutheranism Martin Marty is a longtime associate of Wright’s:

Many well-meaning Americans perceive Mr. Wright as fundamentally a hate-monger who preaches antagonism toward whites. But those who know his church say that is an unrecognizable caricature: He is a complex figure and sometimes a reckless speaker, but one of his central messages is not anti-white hostility but black self-reliance.

“The big thing for Wright is hope,” said Martin Marty, one of America’s foremost theologians, who has known the Rev. Wright for 35 years and attended many of his services. “You hear ‘hope, hope, hope.’ Lots of ordinary people are there, and they’re there not to blast the whites. They’re there to get hope.”

Professor Marty said that as a white person, he sticks out in the largely black congregation but is always greeted with warmth and hospitality. “It’s not anti-white,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who’s white who walks out of there not feeling affirmed.”

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3 responses to “Marty and Wright”

  1. CPA

    This is an important moment of clarity, but only IF we recognize how broadly true this is across the spectrum.

    All KINDS of people have programs or ideologies of “hate” which don’t seem to turn them into bad people, even in their personal relations with the hated.

    E.g.
    Jerry Fallwell was personally just as kind and welcoming to gays in his church as Jeremiah Wright was of whites in his — there is much testimony to this.

    George Wallace, Jessie Helms, and Strom Thurmond were personally quite gracious to blacks in their lives. Another true fact that most liberals treated as somehow a distraction from the very objective “reality” of their “hate”.

    and remember those sermons of Mike Huckabee? You know, the ones we never heard because they might contain “hateful” comments about wives submitting to their husbands?

    Well, all I can say is Mike Huckabee was VERY smart not to release them. Because the exact same game would be played with him (except with the roles reversed).

    I haven’t seen Obama’s speech (I don’t listen to presidential speeches almost on principle), but from what I have heard it sounds remarkable precisely because it rejects the boundary-policing gamesmanship that has so impoverished our thinking. It recognizes that ideologies (even strange and indeed obnoxious ones) do not directly translate into “hate”. It recognizes that many of the “viewpoints” and “bold statements” that we all pride ourselves on are half the time more showmanship and temporary pique than categorical statements.

    But be realistic: it’s not going to last, and campaign consultants in Obama’s America aren’t going to be any less gleeful when they can play the “gotcha” game of hounding certain statements out of the public consciousness.

    Personally, as a historian, I have found UNLEARNING the simple habit of linking illiberal ideologies to moral turpitude to be one of the biggest obstacles I have had to face in understanding the past. But I would still highly recommend that everyone hoping to run for higher office avoid ever weakening those internal taboos on sympathizing with the illiberal, solely to try and understand others. Those taboos are the price of running for office in the US (other countries have different ones), and they aren’t any weaker after Obama’s speech.

    For proof, take a look over here:

    http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/ehrenreich

    Same gotcha modality, same deliberate and labored effort NOT to understand the other in his or her own terms, same heresy hunting mania.

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  2. John F. Salmon, Jr.

    Perhaps you owe it to yourself to read Barack Obama’s speech at the Constitution Center last week. As a white senior citizen I can say that I hope I live long enough to vote for Barack Obama to be our next president, and I don’t mean as a write-in candidate. The reading of “Dreams From My Father” convinced me that his openness and honestry in telling his story made him very special. I did not think he would become a candidate so soon, but I think we need to think of what his presidency will mean for the future of our country, for our grandchildren, and for our place in the world.

    Reply
  3. More Marty on Wright « A Thinking Reed

    […] Marty on Wright March 26, 2008 The other day I blogged about the comments from esteemed religious historian Martin Marty on Jeremiah Wright’s […]

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