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Reverend Jeremiah Wright: Religious Freedom Versus State Religion, Ethics, Politics and Strategy
by James Petras
The sustained vituperative attack and the feeble apologetic defense of Reverend Wright’s brilliant, eloquent and substantive sermon in defense of human dignity speaks to the basic ethical, political and strategic issues of our epoch. For Reverend Wright was not merely ‘commenting’ on an ethical omission of our day but raising fundamental principles about the behavior of states, the role of individual conscience in the face of crimes against humanity and the need to give name and take action in the face of evil.
The entire spectrum of politicians, the mass media and, in particular, the political parties and two (and a half) of the presidential candidates raise, by their hostile reaction and the substance of their criticism, vital issues of the relation between the State and Religion.
“They know what they say”, (to paraphrase and re-state Jesus
Christ’s comments on his persecutors) applies with a vengeance to the
barrage of mindless screeds which were intentionally launched against
the Reverend’s brilliant analysis and dissection of the immoral means
in pursuit of the great crimes of our epoch.
Of course, the verbal
assault of Reverend Wright was directed explicitly to discredit and
disqualify Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Barak Obama, a
long time member of Wright’s United Church of Christ Chicago parish.
Many were, and continue to be, vile accusations charging that his
sermon was ‘incendiary’, ‘anti-American’, ‘racist’ and ‘politically
extremist’.
Phrases critical of US empire-building were dubbed the ‘God
Damn America’ sermon. Moral condemnations of ‘war and money’ were
decontextualized to accuse Reverend Wright of being ‘a man of hate’, ‘a
hate monger’ and a ‘racist extremist’. The insults and verbal assassins
came from both liberal and conservative politicians, writers, mass
media pundits and commentators.
Barak Obama’s ‘defense’ of
Wright was based on separating the benign and respected avuncular
‘person’ (or personality) of the Reverend from his brilliant,
substantive, historical analysis, political diagnosis and profoundly
ethical moral judgment. By defending the messenger but condemning the
profound message, Obama ultimately sided with the political defenders
and apologists of a brutal, militaristic, imperial order, thus enabling
him to continue his electoral campaign.
Key Theoretical and Analytical Insights
Wright’s speech is informed by four profound theoretical and conceptual insights:
First,
Wright’s central idea is that repeated large-scale, long-term offensive
imperial wars and military actions lead to military reactions or
counter-attacks on US property and lives, military and civilian,
outside and inside the United States. Given the authoritarian political
environment and the hostile mass media, Wright cites the utterances of
a former US Ambassador and long-time member of the State Department
Establishment, Edward Peck to corroborate his observation.
Contrary to
the pro-empire political scientists who predominate in the prestigious
Ivy League universities, and ignore the historical framework of
critical readings of empire building, Wright’s theoretical argument is
grounded in a wealth of historical experiences, which he enumerates to
reinforce his central point.
His theoretical argument is woven around
the 9/11 Muslim-Arab attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
He cites the colonial and post-colonial savaging of the Middle East,
including the military attacks and economic boycott of Iraq, the
bombing of Sudan, the US support of state terrorist regimes and the
Israeli destruction of Palestinian and Lebanese lives. Imperial action
and anti-imperial re-action — Wright’s algebraic formulation refutes
the Ivy League professors’ propagandistic arguments, which extrapolate
the violence of the anti-imperial reaction from its preceding bloody
imperial historical framework in order to present the subsequent
imperialist action as a defensive response.
Wright’s
theoretical-historical correction of the false premises of orthodox
academics and mainstream politicians regarding the source of violence
in the international system lays the groundwork for a detailed
commentary and moral judgment of the principal conflicts of our time.
By
bringing to the fore a succinct enumeration of the sequence of US
violent military actions from the violent seizure of Indian lands to
the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima, to the colonial wars in Africa to
the invasion of Panama and the bombing of Grenada, Wright establishes
the historical basis for his judgment that the driving force of US
foreign policy is ‘militarism and money’. His critics, unable or
unwilling to challenge his historical narrative, resort to ad hominem
attacks, relying on labeling techniques, attributing to him a
‘strident’ style or ‘incendiary language’.
Second, Wright
provides a socio-psychological framework for understanding contemporary
elite-manipulated and motivated mass violent sentiment in the aftermath
of 9/11 and the initial general embrace of a military response.
Wright
sets out a three-stage sequence of socio-psychological ‘feelings’: (1)
reverence for the sites attacked and sorrow for the victims, (2)
revenge against a general ‘other’ (to be designated by the imperial
rulers), (3) hatred and war against enemies and unarmed innocents
alike. Drawing on historical analogies with the biblical account (Psalm
137, all nine verses) of the Israelite reverence of the Temple (of
Jerusalem), its destruction (by Chaldeans) and their subsequent return
and revenge (slaughter and eviction of all non-Israelite inhabitants),
Wright draws a parallel with the US reverence for ‘money’, symbolized
by the World Trade Center, and ‘military’ (the Pentagon); their thirst
for ‘revenge’ rooted in the ‘feelings’ of pain, sorrow, anger, outrage,
destruction and senseless carnage’ this leads, he reasons, to hatred
and demands to attack and punish ‘someone’ (‘pay back’). In our time
this means killing armed adversaries and unarmed civilians —
Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers and civilians. Wright brilliantly
elucidates the emotional and political link between ‘worship’ (over
losses) and ‘war’, presumably to restore the ‘revered sites’ of money
(financial credibility) and military power (imperial credibility).
Wright’s
socio-psychological framework allows us to understand the way in which
the Bush Administration blended mass objects of veneration (loss of
human lives) with the sacred sites of the elite (Wall Street and the
Pentagon) into a powerful engine of war. Interestingly, Wright’s
citation of the biblical account of Israeli indiscriminate revenge
(‘happy is he who dashes their infants against the rocks’ Psalm 137)
parallels the policies and practices pursued by the contemporary
American Israelite policy makers in the Pentagon who pursued policies
of total destruction and dismemberment of Iraq. Though Wright does not
specifically refer to this parallelism, it springs to mind when he
refers to the current injustices, and his specific mention of Israeli
oppression of the Palestinians as part of the global injustices.
Third,
Reverend Wright links his ‘practical’ historical and theoretical
analysis to a set of moral judgments and policy prescriptions. The wars
of the last 500 years have economic and racial dimensions (‘riches and
color’) pitting rich white elites against poor people of color.
Imperial violence begets oppressed violence; state terror based on
superior arms begets individuals willing to sacrifice their lives in
terrorist responses. Confronted with these historical and social
conditions, he counsels the American people (not just his black
parishioners) to engage in ‘self-reflection’. By emphasizing and giving
priority to ‘self’ reflection he wants to undermine the effort of the
political elites to focus mass attention on the asserted faults of
‘other people’, the target of military assaults. Wright emphasizes the
need to create primary (family) and secondary (community) solidarity
and affection (love) as opposed to bonding with the war-making elite.
By emphasizing reflection, Wright is openly rejecting blind adhesion to
the elite and belief in their lies for war.
From the Socratic
logic of critical self-reflection (‘know yourself’) and solidarity,
Wright envisions a time for ‘social transformation’. Armed with a
social awareness of the historical and present record of elite-driven
imperial wars, Wright postulates the need for fundamental structural
changes, “…in the way we have been doing things as a society, a
country, as an arrogant superpower. We cannot keep messing other
countries”. In other words Wright links changes in inner individual
spiritual and social consciousness with collective social and political
action directed at a fundamental transformation of the social structure
and economic and political system, which make us an ‘arrogant
superpower’.
In his own words, Wright wants to convince the
American people to transform imperial military wars into internal
political wars against racist and class injustices. He proposes a
fundamental redistribution of wealth through reallocation of the public
budget. Citing the “$1.3 trillion dollar tax gift to the rich”, he
counters with a policy proposal to fund universal health care and the
reconstruction of the educational system to serve the poor.
Reverend
Wright, in speaking to the American people, not only condemns human
catastrophes inflicted on working people at home and abroad by the
‘arrogant superpower’ empire-builders, but points to the great
historical opportunities for changes. His is not a message of other
worldly spiritual salvation; it is a call to action here and now. His
is not a superficial critique of individual misbehavior or ‘failed
policies’ (as his former parishioner, Obama would have it) but a deep
structural analysis of systemic failure which demands a ‘social
transformation, which goes to the root of the present day policies of
imperial wars and state and individual terrorism.
Conclusion
The
reason for the repeated vicious personal attacks on Reverend Wright by
the mass media and the political leaders and academic apologists for
empire building is abundantly clear — to prevent a powerful,
reasonable, logical and relevant analysis from influencing the American
public or even exercising any influence on the Presidential campaign.
Equally
important the political and media attacks on Reverend Wright are meant
to destroy freedom of conscience, the separation of Church and State.
What the critics want, is a religion and religious figures at the
service of the state, which blesses war planners, honors war criminals,
arouses mass hatred of state-designated target peoples. The ‘arrogant
superpower’ honors the ministers, priests and rabbis who follow state
policy spewing hatred against Arabs and Muslims. Nothing more and
nothing less, Reverend Wright is standing in word and deed for the
freedom and autonomy of individuals and institutions against the
voracious spread of totalitarian state power.
Clearly the
irrational vituperative, sustained attack on Reverend Wright is more
than a reactionary political electoral ploy in a racist electoral
campaign; it is a fundamental attack on our democratic freedoms and the
autonomy of our religious institutions.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an
adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power
of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006) and Rulers and
Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007).
He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Read other articles by
James, or visit James's
website.
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