The Chronicle Review
issue dated April 11, 2008
Prophet and Pastor
To his former professor, congregant, and friend, Jeremiah Wright has been
both
By MARTIN E. MARTY
Through the decades, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has called me teacher,
reminding me of the years when he earned a master's degree in theology and
ministry at the University of Chicago — and friend. My wife and I and our guests
have worshiped at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where he recently
completed a 36-year ministry.
Images of Wright's strident sermons, and his anger at the treatment of black
people in the United States, appear constantly on the Internet and cable
television, part of the latest controversy in our political-campaign season. His
critics call Wright anti-American. Critics of his critics charge that the clips
we hear and see have been taken out of context. But it is not the context of
particular sermons that the public needs, as that of Trinity church, and, above
all, its pastor.
In the early 1960s, at a time when many young people were being radicalized
by the Vietnam War, Wright left college and volunteered to join the United
States Marine Corps. After three years as a marine, he chose to serve three more
as a naval medical technician, during which time he received several White House
commendations. He came to Chicago to study not long after Martin Luther King
Jr.'s murder in 1968, the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia in 1969, and the
shooting of students at Kent State University in 1970.
Wright, like the gifted cohort of his fellow black students, was not content
to blend into the academic woodwork. Then the associate dean of the Divinity
School, I was informally delegated to talk to the black caucus. We learned that
what Wright and his peers wanted was the intense academic and practical
preparation for vocations that would make a difference, whether they chose to
pursue a Ph.D. or the pastorate. Chicago's Divinity School focuses on what it
calls "public ministry," which includes both conventional pastoral roles and
carrying the message and work of the church to the public arena. Wright has
since picked up numerous honorary doctorates, and served as an adjunct faculty
member at several seminaries. But after divinity school, he accepted a call to
serve then-struggling Trinity.
Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where
music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical
and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one
that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African
Christianity. 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.
Yes, while Trinity is "unapologetically Christian," as the second clause in
its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, "unashamedly
black." From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black
Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience.
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.
To the 10,000 members of Trinity, Jeremiah Wright was, until just a few
months ago, "Pastor Wright." Metaphorically, pastor means shepherd. Like members
of all congregations, the Trinity flock welcomes strong leadership for
organization, prayer, and preaching. One-on-one ministry is not easy with
thousands in the flock and when the pastor has national responsibilities, but
the forms of worship make each participant feel recognized. Responding to the
pastoral call to stand and be honored on Mother's Day, for instance,
grandmothers, single mothers, stepmothers, foster mothers, gay-and-lesbian
couples, all mothers stood when we visited. Wright asked how many believed that
they were alive because of the church's health fairs. The members of the large
pastoral staff know many hundreds of names, while hundreds of lay people share
the ministry.
Now, for the hard business: the sermons, which have been mercilessly chipped
into for wearying television clips. While Wright's sermons were pastoral — my
wife and I have always been awed to hear the Christian Gospel parsed for our
personal lives — they were also prophetic. At the university, we used to remark,
half lightheartedly, that this Jeremiah was trying to live up to his namesake,
the seventh-century B.C. prophet. Though Jeremiah of old did not "curse" his
people of Israel, Wright, as a biblical scholar, could point out that the
prophets Hosea and Micah did. But the Book of Jeremiah, written by numbers of
authors, 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.
In the end, however, Jeremiah was the prophet of hope, and that note of hope
is what attracts the multiclass membership at Trinity and significant television
audiences. Both Jeremiahs gave the people work to do: to advance the missions of
social justice and mercy that improve the lot of the suffering. For a sample,
read Jeremiah 29, where the prophet's letter to the exiles in Babylon exhorts
them to settle down and "seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I
have carried you into exile." Or listen to many a Jeremiah Wright sermon.
One may properly ask whether or how Jeremiah Wright — or anyone else —
experiences a prophetic call. Back when American radicals wanted to be called
prophets, I heard Saul Bellow say (and, I think, later saw it in writing):
"Being a prophet is nice work if you can get it, but sooner or later you have to
mention God." Wright mentioned God sooner. My wife and I recall but a single
overtly political pitch. Wright wanted 2,000 letters of protest sent to the
Chicago mayor's office about a public-library policy. Of course, if we had gone
more often, in times of profound tumult, we would have heard much more. The
United Church of Christ is a denomination that has taken raps for being
liberal — for example for its 50th anniversary "God is still speaking" campaign
and its pledge to be open and affirming to all, including gay people. In its
lineage are Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold and Richard Niebuhr, America's three
most-noted theologians; the Rev. King was much at home there.
Friendship develops through many gestures and shared delights (in the Marty
case, stops for sinfully rich barbecue after evening services), and people
across the economic spectrum can attest to the generosity of the Wright
family.
It would be unfair to Wright to gloss over his abrasive — to say the least —
edges, so, in the "Nobody's Perfect" column, I'll register some criticisms. To
me, Trinity's honoring of Minister Louis Farrakhan was abhorrent and
indefensible, and Wright's fantasies about the U.S. government's role in
spreading AIDS distracting and harmful. He, himself, is also aware of the
now-standard charge by some African-American clergy who say he is a victim of
cultural lag, overinfluenced by the terrible racial situation when he was
formed.
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.
Martin E. Marty is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity
School. His most recent book is The Christian World: A Global History (Modern
Library, 2008).
