Eugene Robinson: Wright Has No Monopoly On Black Church
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Meet my new favorite columnist.
That’s the title I confer on anyone who manages to articulate my thoughts so clearly without me knowing them personally.
I’m talking about his latest piece in today’s Washington Post, entitled Where Wright Went Wrong.
By now, if you’ve been following the national news, Dr. Jeremiah Wright has spoken publicly for the first time since the furor of his out-of-context remarks have been looped on Youtube for all to see.
I’ve attended Dr. Wright’s former church, Trinity United Church of Christ. And I lept to his defense when many in the mainstream media were trying to castigate him as a hateful bigot.
But I do think he’s wearing out his welcome, irritating his allies, and further threatening Senator Obama’s candidacy.
Here’s the closing from Robinson’s column:
I point all this out not to say that one tradition is better than another; as Wright said, different doesn’t mean deficient. But what Wright did was to try to frame the issue in such a way that to question him or anything he has ever said was to question the long, storied tradition of African American religion.
Historically and theologically, he was inflating his importance in a pride-goeth-before-the-fall kind of way. Politically, by surfacing now, he was throwing Barack Obama under the bus.
Sadly, it’s time for Obama to return the favor.
As hard as it is for me to say this, being the son of a high profile pastor… I kind of agree. Yikes. ]]>