Many of the supporters of the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) are more than just a little bit peeved these days that the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright has gone public in his defense of reputation, his theology. Black Liberation Theology. Where’s the “contrition” in that philosophy?
On the other hand, Sen. Obama’s critics are ecstatic. They feel Rev. Wright has piled more fuel at the foot of the already incendiary stake to which Sen. Obama–a healer, a reconciler, a conciliator, who has eschewed a race-base campaign all these months–has been bound. Somewhere, smirking, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) must be hoping someone will soon toss a torch onto the awaiting bonfire.
Just two months ago, Sen. Obama was forced to “reject and denounce” the unsolicited kind words said about him on Feb. 25 by Min. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. Min. Farrakhan’s name is still being bandied about in this latest contretemps, even though he has been silent on the subject for the last 60 days. Go figure.
Suppose, just suppose, in his remarks before the National Press Club April 28, instead of quoting the Bible: “God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, so shall he reap…” in defending his “incendiary” comment about America’s “chickens coming home to roost” on Sept. 11, 2001; suppose instead Rev. Wright had quoted James Russell Lowell’s poem, “The Present Crisis.”
“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,–
“Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
“Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.” Continue reading