Just thought I'd link to the article. Martin Marty is a pretty big name to in Lutheran circles. Here are a few quotes from his article:
"The four S's charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don't stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home."
"That its members and pastor are, in their own term, "Africentric" should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be "Judeocentric" or that Chicago's Irish parishes be "Celtic-centric." Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace."
"But the Book of Jeremiah is so full of blasts and quasi curses — what biblical scholars call "imprecatory topoi" — that New England preachers invented a sermonic form called "the jeremiad," a style revived in some Wrightian shouts."
"Having said that, and reserving the right to offer more criticisms, I've been too impressed by the way Wright preaches the Christian Gospel to break with him. Those who were part of his ministry for years — school superintendents, nurses, legislators, teachers, laborers, the unemployed, the previously shunned and shamed, the anxious — are not going to turn their backs on their pastor and prophet."
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Chris, you know me, I'm not one to blindly criticize; as you may remember, I stood up for Obama late last year when all these rumors were going around about him being a covert Muslim.
But I must protest this post, Chris. Rev. Wright has said some very dangerous things, some things that I cannot reconcile with my faith or identity as a Jew, things I cannot push by the way-side.
He claimed certain pieces of Scripture in the Tenakh is wrong because it calls for the destruction of Israel's enemies. I watched a sermon in its entirety in which he says how evil and wrong the author of Psalm 137 was, seeing as how the psalmist prays for the destruction of Israel's enemies.
Given many psalms, prophecies, and history books in Scripture deal with this very topic, one must wonder how much of Scripture he discards to reconcile his anti-Israel theology.
He also equates Israel's actions with the actions of extremist Muslim suicide bombings of Hamas and Fatah. (This foolish gentile sentiment in all honesty and truth angers me and makes me sick to the stomach; these kids were murdered, for God's sake.) He praises the violent Palestinian Intifada, as I'll show below.
He has made some pretty outrageous claims about Israel. For example, he claims Israel and the formerly apartheid state of South Africa together were building a "racial bomb", that is, a bomb that kills only Blacks and Arabs.
I'd laugh if that the accusation wasn't so contemptuous.
Here is what was written in the church newsletter:
"Don't miss the opportunity to drive five miles to south Bethlehem. Feel the ecstasy of entering the most dramatic cave in which the Virgin Mary delivered her beautiful Palestinian baby. During the Second Intifadah, the uprising against Israeli occupation, Muslim and Christian activists, chased by the Israeli death squads, were given refuge in the church.
You may go and see the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, only a thirty minute drive. Beware; don't plunge into the dirty and polluted waters. The river is almost dry. Its waters were diverted by the Israelis. Five miles west, near Jericho, you will pass by the Mount of Temptation where Jesus fasted for forty days. I can no longer walk up the steep mountain and pay respect to the Greek monks who chose to dedicated their lives to their Lord at their ancient and lonely monastery at the summit.
I must tell you that Israel was the closest ally to the White Supremacists of South Africa. In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean off South Africa. The Israelis were given a blank check: they could test whenever they desired and did not even have to ask permission. Both worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs.
Arabs have always supported the dismatling of this racist government."
Frankly, after discovering this kind of "blame it on Jews/Zionists/Israel" hate speech coming from Wright, I just cannot risk the danger of putting someone in office who may be influenced by those views, views which I frankly find to be immoral and unscriptural.
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