Jesus Would Have Stayed With Rev. Wright

It’s an old and trusted trick, getting someone from a group claiming oppression to say it just ain’t so. Want someone to argue against a woman’s right to choose? Find a woman to do it. Want someone to say anti-discrimination laws shouldn’t includes gays and lesbians? Get a “healed” homosexual as your spokesperson. Enter Juan Williams of Fox News to criticize Barack Obama.

I’m not trying to take away Mr. Williams’ rights or to claim blacks in America must speak with one voice. African-Americans have as much right to an independent perspective as anyone. But by the same token, Juan Williams’ criticism of Mr. Obama should carry no more weight than Bill O’Reilly’s or Rush Limbaugh’s. Mr. Williams is above all a conservative commentator. But, since he is black, he has every right to speak as a black man.

What I do find objectionable is Mr. Williams’ presumption to speak for Jesus. He declares that if Jesus had been in the church of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he would have walked out in protest. I’d like to say this to Mr. Williams: Jesus is a friend of mine; I know Jesus and you’ve got him wrong when you say he’s soft on injustice. He would not have walked out of Rev. Wright’s church; he would have recruited him as a disciple. Jesus included many firebrands among his followers, even among the twelve. Remember the Apostle called Simon the Zealot?

Over the centuries we’ve rewritten Jesus to make him a friend of the comfortable status quo, just as many would now rewrite Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy. When minority victims in a culture suggest that the majority’s comfort comes at their expense, it can make the comfortable uneasy. At such a time it’s always good to have a Juan Williams or a sanitized Jesus on hand.

I’ve listened to some of the preaching for which Rev. Wright has been criticized and it pretty much seems to hit the mark. Maybe he should have skipped the stuff about the atomic bombs on Japan. But if you think black Americans don’t continue to feel deeply wounded by America’s racial history, you don’t know any blacks well enough to be trusted with their deepest feelings. By the same token, if you think deep-seated racial animosity among whites has magically disappeared, you haven’t sat in enough blue-collar bars.

It seems to me Mr. Williams has turned Jesus upside down. It was Jesus’ main adversary, the Jewish religious aristocracy, that sought accommodation with the rulers of their land. Jesus was an advocate of confrontation. I didn’t hear Rev. Wright call for armed conflict and neither did Jesus, although he allowed among his disciples those who did and then showed them a better way to stand up for justice.

The reaction to Rev. Wright is no more than a refusal to confront the truth about America and the role racism has played in politics as recently as the 2004 elections. Until we acknowledge our sins we will never move to the post-racial era of redemption Mr. Obama seems to promise.