Obama's Pastor Not AN Issue

Like all Afro-American children during the 1950's, I watched as the preacher's with passionate and sometime's showmanship deliver the message with such fiery energy,the sleeves of their robes beating the air as if they would take flight at that very moment,it was enough to cause sinners to run to the altar and confess.

What an impact this early religious exposure had on my life,perhaps most important it provided persons of my generation and those before us with images,symbols,and models that ultimately helped shape our view of the world,as well as our vocational choice. The Rev.Jeremiah Wright is one of the many Afro-American Preachers who used poectic,analytic and descriptive language to convey urgency,to provide hope and vision that some day social change would come.These antics to some outside of the black church appeared to be a call for racial division,hate and violence,but in reality it was saying to the masses,put up stern resistance to the bigotry and isolation around you,don't shirk or allow yourself to be socially distorted,nor spiritually diminished.

There have been many others before Jeremiah Wright who openly preached racial hatred and felt it was their calling to provoke,expose,and liberate what seemed to their deluded minds God's Work. "Now I don't have to tell you how this has caused some lingering damage to Sen.Barack Obama's campaign but hopefully the issue has been defused in spite of the media's wish to stir up the witches brew."

I want to conclude with what I believe the Rev.Jeremiah Wright intended to communicate in his message.

Half a century ago people,generally believed that the world stood on the threshold of racial holocaust,uprising and punishment for America.They expected that ignorance,racial crimes and bigotry toward blacks would soon be banished from the earth,that those on the bottom would rise to the top,that the nation would learn to settle their social,economic and political differences amicably in a great parliament of humanity,and that eventually by the mutual consent of all people everywhere,(the principles of the sermon on the mount)would rule in men's heart and regulate the affairs of earth.This was also the prevailing mood in the black community which was one of uninhibited and increasingly starry-eyed optimisim and not without reason because western civization was about to experience a development more profound and far-reaching than in the two preceding millenniums.Remarkably that time has come again.