Posted on 01/18/2008 4:51:29 AM PST by Chi-townChief
As delightful as it is to criticize politicians for being self-serving do-nothings, the field of Democratic presidential contenders offers some solid choices.
Finding flaws among the top three has turned into a science, with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards (less so) dissected daily like frogs in a biology class.
So when people stoop so low as to criticize and deconstruct Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama's South Side church, all that's left in their tired analysis on the cultural relevance and style of worship is a bunch of nothing.
This Trinity-bashing has to stop.
Last year, right-wing bloggers and pundits proclaimed Trinity's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a racist and separatist because the church calls itself "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." They saw something suspect in choir members who don colorful African-inspired clothing and sway back and forth to the rhythms of spirit-filled gospel music.
The mean-spirited rhetoric is flaring up again as we approach the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primary. The latest offender is polemicist Christopher Hitchens, whose recent descriptions of Trinity at Slate.com -- and reprinted in these pages Saturday -- make him seem less like the leading intellectual I know him to be than an anthropologist from outer space. He called Wright, a former soldier who holds a doctorate, a "character" and Trinity a "substandard, shade-oriented place."
To Hitchens and others who would misinterpret the basic and authentic Christian message of Trinity, I say back off. You don't know who you're messing with. You're denigrating the best of black America. You're criticizing God-fearing folk who value education and put their money and time where their mouths are in ministering to the community. These so-called critics are the same types who castigate black people for failing to address problems that plague the community, including education, HIV/AIDS and financial responsibility.
"We liked the fact that it was an active liberation ministry," said Yvette Moyo, 54, founder of the black family celebration and charity Real Men Cook and a 30-year Trinity member. "We are totally committed every single day with making a difference in our community."
The church's hospice program cared for Moyo's father before he died in October of lung cancer. Between the nurses, counselors and steady stream of visitors to her father's South Shore home, her dad, Rudolph Jackson, died with dignity, enveloped in unceasing prayer.
"Remember, the church was segregated a long time," said Moyo, who helps organize lectures and debates for the church. "When you look at some of the freedom movements throughout the country, the church has been a meeting place, sometimes the only place. It's important to have church as a place of reference in how you bring up black boys and girls through examples of how to be respectful of themselves and their history."
The last time striving, upwardly mobile black folks were pushed into a corner, something called the civil rights movement was born. These critics think they are slamming a small band of nondescript folks in some part of Chicago they probably don't think really exists, seeing as how they'd have to drive past Wrigley Field and south of Roosevelt Road to get there.
Voters must not allow these professional malcontents, and in Hitchens' case, a God hater, to skew their judgment on the best candidate to turn the economy around, get us out of this war that was justified on a pack of lies and put America back on solid financial footing.
Chicagoans -- and Christians everywhere -- know how instrumental the black church has been in lifting the community out of physical and intellectual bondage by promoting self-determination, a solid work ethic, education and more.
The only thing Trinity is guilty of, perhaps, is doing these things better than most.
Deborah Douglas is a Sun-Times editorial board member.
ddouglas@suntimes.com
“Deborah Douglas is a Sun-Times editorial board member.”
And takes it up the...you-know-where...for the Democratic Party.
Conservative white church that influences lives is bad.
OK - Now I understand.
Anybody have a link to the article by Hitchens? I know it was posted here in FR, but I can’t find it. I’d like to re-read it.
That’s interesting.
On one hand, we have a never ending nonstop attack on one guy’s religion. That’s all the liberal media can do, every time you turn around it’s mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon mormon. BTW, did you know that Romney is a mormon?
But on the other hand, the liberal media is saying back off. For Obama.
Do as I say, not as I do?
You can be certain that the Chicago Sun-Times would be leading the charge in these criticisms if Obama were a white Republican.
Thin skin = liberal = squeal like a pig when the tables are turned.
Waiting to hear the first black minister to actually preach this instead of just promoting racial issues. (crickets chirping) Looking at Sharpton or Jackson as role models proves that point. This church seems to exist just to promote media for money.
-—————You can be certain that the Chicago Sun-Times would be leading the charge in these criticisms if Obama were a white Republican.-————
Like Mitt Romney?
But, Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.
Some argue that blacks should vote for Clinton "because her husband was good to us," he continued.
"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."
This video features the views of Rev. Jeremiah A. White. It is video number two of fifteen posted on the Trinity UCC About page. Prepare to be shocked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfNEfEBYIZs
You know that print journalism is on its last legs when those are the best hair extensions she can afford.
She wrote it out and still missed the REVERSE DISCRIMINATION. Takes our concerns and twists it into right-wing bloggers (read white). Wholly smokes does she really think she is being all un-biased. Pick apart her editorial it is riff with discriminatory remarks against white conservatives. Gee I am so glad my church is White and Unapologetically Christian! We'd be castigated for such a statement and so should they.
The Chicago SunTimes should be ashamed for printing this garbage.
White Separatist / Supremacist Bad....Black Separatist / Supremacist Good.
No no no—not only does he get a pass by most of the media for even belonging to such a “church”, he even gets defended for it, and people are told to “back off”! Just imagine if the candidate was white—it wouldn’t matter if his church fed a small country, he would be lambasted for belonging to a “supremecist” church! But not Obama, oh no-not only can he belong to such a church, people are told that they must “back off” and stop picking on him! This is unbelievable, doesn’t anyone in the media have the balls to call this bull*hit out?
No no no—not only does he get a pass by most of the media for even belonging to such a “church”, he even gets defended for it, and people are told to “back off”! Just imagine if the candidate was white—it wouldn’t matter if his church fed a small country, he would be lambasted for belonging to a “supremecist” church! But not Obama, oh no-not only can he belong to such a church, people are told that they must “back off” and stop picking on him! This is unbelievable, doesn’t anyone in the media have the balls to call this bull*hit out?
How would it go over if a white candidate was attending a church that openly claimed to be "Unashamedly White and Unapologetically Christian?"
Obama's church celebrates a backwards culture which serves to continue to cause its adherants to live in poverty and ignorance, fear and violence. This culture, in its purest form on the African continent, still engages in human slavery today as it has for centuries. It is nothing to celebrate, but something to reject utterly.
What has this got to do with anything? My Mother died last week in hospice, at home, surrounded by her family. The hospice was run by St. John's Mercy Medical here is St. Louis. The care they gave her was outstanding! I can not say enough about how they treated not only her, but the whole family. After all, I thought that was the point of hospice.
The way I read that sentence about hospice is that the church did something that extraordinary and was at no cost to the family. Well, to inform everyone, but Medicare covers hospice at 100%, so the church didn't do anything exceptional for this man.
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest. I hate it when someone takes something like the death of a loved one and uses it for purposes like this.
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