I linked his statements; well, more of a news report which contained them really.
Here’s the most oft-quoted statements in the press:
An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright’s sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.
“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,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “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.”
In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda’s attacks because of its own terrorism.
“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” he told his congregation.
The thing is…as someone who goes to a church where that kind of speech would be heard, his comments only faze me mildly. I’ve heard enough fire and brimstone to last a good while, countries being damned and suffering for their transgresses, heck, how many times have I heard that sermon. Granted, not about America.
It’s how he connected it to being a result of our policies in other nations - it’s the use of the chickens coming home to roost line (folks in that church knew who he was quoting I bet you) that make it seem like offensive rhetoric than anything else.
It’s also the ongoing use of white America being in control and how blacks have to be wary of being crushed again by the majority. He’s manipulating a very powerful and profound fear in the black community that flies in the face of Obama’s pronouncement of their being a United States of America, not a white or black America.
Honestly, I just don’t see what business a pastor, reverend, rabbi, bishop, whatever, has of speaking about politics on the pulpit. I’ve heard variations of that sermon before, and it works
just as well without acting so high-minded about your political viewpoint.
Plus, “I could no more disown him than I could disown the black community?” What? A pastor does not represent the black community. Disowning Louis Farrakhan is not like disowning the black community, nor is disowning any black person. I don’t want him to disown the guy, I just feel like that blanket comment makes me wary.