[News] Transcript: Rev. Jeremiah Wright speech to National Press Club

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Transcript: Rev. Jeremiah Wright speech to National Press Club

April 28, 2008

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB SPEAKER BREAKFAST WITH THE 
REVEREND DR. JEREMIAH WRIGHT, SENIOR PASTOR OF 
THE TRINITY UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, CHICAGO, 
ILLINOIS TOPIC: THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS 
EXPERIENCE MODERATOR: DONNA LEINWAND, REPORTER, 
USA TODAY, AND VICE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB

THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C. 9:00 A.M. EDT, MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2008

MS. LEINWAND: Good morning. Good morning, and 
welcome to the National Press Club for our 
speaker breakfast featuring Reverend Jeremiah 
Wright. My name is Donna Leinwand. I'm the vice 
president of the National Press Club and a reporter for USA Today.

I'd like to welcome club members and their guests 
in the audience today, as well as those of you 
watching on C-SPAN. And I -- we have many, many guests here today.

We're looking forward to today's speech, and 
afterwards I will ask as many questions as time 
permits. Please hold your applause during the 
speech, so that we have time for as many 
questions as possible. For our broadcast 
audience, I'd like to explain that if you hear 
applause, it may be from the general public and 
guests of members who attend our luncheons (sic) 
and not necessarily from the working press. 
(Laughter.) And there are a lot here today.

So I'd like now to introduce our head table 
guests and ask them to stand briefly when their names are called.

 From your right, we have Melissa Charbonneau, 
CBN News, and vice chair of the Speakers 
Committee; Frederick Douglass IV, founder of the 
Frederick Douglass Organization and publisher of 
FrederickDouglassiv.org; Jerry Zremski, past 
National Press Club president and a reporter for 
the Buffalo News -- bureau chief, actually, for 
the Buffalo News; Kim Chipman of Bloomberg News; 
the Reverend Dr. Iva Carruthers, general 
secretary of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor 
Conference; Kevin Chappell of Ebony and Jet 
magazine; Reverend Ramah E. Wright, the wife of the pastor.

We'll skip over the podium and go to Angela 
Greiling Keane of Bloomberg News and chair of the Speakers Committee.

And skipping our guest, the Reverend Dr. Barbara 
A. Reynolds, president of Reynolds News Service 
and the Speakers Committee member who organized today's event.

We have Jeri Wright, a daughter of the pastor and 
president of Grace of God Incorporated; April 
Ryan of American Urban Radio; Greta Van Susteren 
of Fox News; Dorothy Gilliam, director of Prime 
Movers Media Program at George Washington 
University; and Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune. (Applause.)

The Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. has 
preached the Christian Gospel from the pulpit of 
Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for 
more than 36 years. When Wright became pastor at 
Trinity in 1972, the church had 87 members. It 
now has 8,000. He is acclaimed for using 
charismatic style, music and soaring rhetoric to 
attract thousands of people to the inner-city 
church and for developing social outreach 
programs for the community. The church's motto: 
Unashamedly black, and unapologetically Christian.

He has spoken forcefully and openly about 
problems in his city, his country and the world. 
He has spoken against U.S. involvement in Iraq 
and for divestment in South Africa. He pushes for 
African- American churches to use music 
traditional to black culture, rather than what he calls Euro-centric hymns.

The most widely quoted and most controversial was 
a 2003 sermon in which he condemned America for 
mistreatment of its black citizens and for 
racism. His quote: "Not 'God bless America,' 'God 
damn America,'" he said. "God damn America for 
treating its citizens as less than human."

In another sermon, he accused American 
policymakers of being under the sway of the Ku 
Klux Klan -- the U.S. of KKK A., he said.

Last month these fiery sermons draw unflattering 
media attention for Senator Barack Obama, a 
member of Wright's congregation for 20 years. 
Obama said it was Wright's sermon "The Audacity 
to Hope" that inspired the title of his 
best-selling memoir and 2004 Democratic National 
Convention speech. Obama is now distancing himself from the preacher.

Reverend Wright, who has announced that he is 
stepping down from his pulpit, says the media 
have plucked his comments out of context in an 
attempt to brand him as an extremist. He says his 
detractors used the comments to stoke fear among 
Americans who are unfamiliar with the African-American church.

Reverend Wright, we welcome you to the Press Club 
and to take some questions from -- (laughter) -- 
from this gigantic audience. We have here 
reporters. And so, Reverend Wright, the floor is 
now yours. (Cheers, extended applause.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you, Reverend Wright! (Laughter.)

REV. WRIGHT: Over the next few days, prominent 
scholars of the African-American religious 
tradition from several different disciplines -- 
theologians, church historians, ethicists, 
professors of Hebrew bible, homiletics, 
hermeneutics and historians of religions -- those 
scholars will join in with sociologists, 
political analysts, local church pastors and 
denominational officials to examine the 
African-American religious experience and its 
historical, theological and political context. 
The workshops, the panel discussions and the 
symposia will go into much more intricate detail 
about this unknown phenomenon of the black church 
-- (laughter) -- than I have time to go into in 
the few moments that we have to share together.

And I would invite you to spend the next two days 
getting to know just a little bit about a 
religious tradition that is as old as and, in 
some instances, older than this country. And this 
is a country which houses its religious tradition 
that we all love and a country that some of us 
have served. It is a tradition that is in some 
ways like Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man". It 
has been right here in our midst and on our 
shores since the 1600s, but it was, has been and, 
in far too many instances, still is invisible to 
the dominant culture in terms of its rich 
history, its incredible legacy and its multiple meanings.

The black religious experience is a tradition 
that at one point in American history was 
actually called "the invisible institution," as 
it was forced underground by the Black Codes. The 
Black Codes prohibited the gathering of more than 
two black people without a white person being 
present to monitor the conversation, the content 
and the mood of any discourse between persons of 
African descent in this country.

Africans did not stop worshipping because of the 
Black Codes. Africans did not stop gathering for 
inspiration and information and for encouragement 
and for hope in the midst of discouraging and 
seemingly hopeless circumstances. They just 
gathered out of the eyesight and the earshot of 
those who defined them as less than human.

They became, in other words, invisible in and 
invisible to the eyes of the dominant culture.

They gathered to worship in brush arbors -- 
sometimes called hush arbors -- where the 
slaveholders, slave patrols and Uncle Toms couldn't hear nobody pray.

 From the 1700s in the North America, with the 
founding of the first legally recognized 
independent black congregations, through the end 
of the Civil War and the passing of the 13th and 
14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United 
States of America, the black religious experience 
was informed by, enriched by, expanded by, 
challenged by, shaped by and influenced by the 
influx of Africans from the other two Americas 
and the Africans brought into this country from 
the Caribbean, plus the Africans who were called 
"fresh blacks" by the slave traders, those 
Africans who had not been through the seasoning 
process of the Middle Passage in the Caribbean 
colonies, those Africans on the sea coast islands 
off of Georgia and South Carolina, the Gullah -- 
(changing pronunciation) -- we say in English 
Gullah; those of us in the black community say 
Geechee -- those people brought into the black 
religious experience, a flavor that other seasoned Africans could not bring.

It is those various streams of the black 
religious experience which will be addressed in 
summary form over the next two days, streams 
which require full courses at the university and 
graduate- school level and cannot be fully 
addressed in a two-day symposium, and streams 
which tragically remain invisible in a dominant 
culture which knows nothing about those whom 
Langston Hughes calls the darker brother and sister.

It is all of those streams that make up this 
multi-layered and rich tapestry of the black 
religious experience, and I stand before you to 
open up this two-day symposium with the hope that 
this most recent attack on the black church -- 
this is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright; it is 
an attack on the black church. (Applause.)

As the vice president told you, that applause 
comes from not the working press. (Laughter.)

The most recent attack on the black church -- it 
is our hope that this just might mean that the 
reality of the African-American church will no 
longer be invisible. Maybe now, as an honest 
dialogue about race in this country begins, a 
dialogue called for by Senator Obama and a 
dialogue to begin in the United Church of Christ 
among 5,700 congregations in just a few weeks -- 
maybe now, as that dialogue begins, the religious 
tradition that has kept hope alive for a people 
struggling to survive in countless hopeless 
situations, maybe that religious tradition will 
be understood, celebrated and even embraced by a 
nation that seems not to have noticed why 11:00 
on Sunday morning has been called the most 
segregated hour in America. We have known since 
1787 that it is the most segregated hour. Maybe 
now we can begin to understand why -- (audio break).

And maybe now we can begin to take steps to move 
the black religious tradition from the status of 
invisible to the status of invaluable, not just 
for some black people in this country, but for all the people in this country.

Maybe this dialogue on race -- an honest dialogue 
that does not engage in denial or superficial 
platitudes -- maybe this dialogue on race can 
move the people of faith in this country from 
various stages of alienation and marginalization 
to the exciting possibility of reconciliation. 
That is my hope as I open up this two-day 
symposium, and I open it as a pastor and a 
professor who comes from a long tradition of what 
I call "the prophetic theology of the black church."

Now, in the 1960s, the term "liberation theology" 
began to gain currency with the writings and the 
teachings of preachers, pastors, priests and 
professors from Latin America. Their theology was 
done from the underside. Their viewpoint was not 
from the top down or from a set of teachings 
which undergirded imperialism. Their viewpoints, 
rather, were from the bottom up, the thoughts and 
understandings of God, the faith, religion and 
the bible from those whose lives were ground 
under, mangled and destroyed by the ruling 
classes or the oppressors. Liberation theology 
started in and started from a different place. It 
started from the vantage point of the oppressed.

In the late 1960s, when Dr. James Cone's powerful 
books burst onto the scene, the term "black 
liberation theology" began to be used. I do not 
in any way disagree with Dr. Cone, nor do I in 
any way diminish the inimitable and incomparable 
contribution that he has made and that he 
continues to make to the field of theology. Jim, 
incidentally, is a personal friend of mine.

I call our faith tradition, however, "the 
prophetic tradition of the black church," because 
I take its origins back past Jim Cone, past the 
sermons and songs of Africans in bondage in the 
transatlantic slave trade. I take it back past 
the problem of western ideology and notions of 
white supremacy. I take and trace the theology of 
the black church back to the prophets in the 
Hebrew bible and to its last prophet, in my 
tradition, the one we call Jesus of Nazareth.

The prophetic tradition of the black church has 
its roots in Isaiah, the 61st chapter, where God 
says the prophet is to preach the gospel to the 
poor and to set at liberty those who are held 
captive. Liberating the captives also liberates 
those who are holding them captive. It frees the 
captive and it frees the captors. It frees the 
oppressed and it frees the oppressors. The 
prophetic theology of the black church during the 
days of chattel slavery was a theology of 
liberation. It was preached to set free those who 
were held in bondage, spiritually, 
psychologically and sometimes physically, and it 
was practiced to set the slaveholders free from 
the notion that they could define other human 
beings or confine a soul set free by the power of the gospel.

The prophetic theology of the black church during 
the days of segregation, Jim Crow, lynching and 
the "separate but equal" fantasy was a theology of liberation.

It was preached to set African-Americans free 
from the notion of second-class citizenship, 
which was the law of the land. And it was 
practiced to set free misguided and miseducated 
Americans from the notion that they were actually 
superior to other Americans based on the color of their skin.

The prophetic theology of the black church in our 
day is preached to set African-Americans and all 
other Americans free from the misconceived notion 
that different means deficient. Being different 
does not mean one is deficient. It simply means 
one is different, like snowflakes, like the 
diversity that God loves. Black music is 
different from European and European music. It is 
not deficient. It is just different. Black 
worship is different from European and 
European-American worship. It is not deficient. 
It is just different. Black preaching is 
different from European and European- American 
preaching. It is not deficient. It is just 
different. It is not bombastic. It is not 
controversial. It's different. (Laughter, applause.)

Those of you who can't see on C-SPAN, we had one 
or two working press clap along with -- 
(laughter) -- the non-working press. (Laughter.)

Black learning styles are different from European 
and European- American learning styles. They are 
not deficient. They are just different.

This principle of difference does not mean 
deficient is at the heart of the prophetic 
theology of the black church. It is a theology of liberation.

The prophetic theology of the black church is not 
only a theology of liberation; it is also a 
theology of transformation, which is also rooted 
in Isaiah 61, the text from which Jesus preached 
in his inaugural message as recorded by Luke. 
When you read the entire passage from either 
Isaiah 61 or Luke 4, and do not try to understand 
the passage or the content of the passage in the 
context of a sound bite, what you see is God's 
desire for a radical change in a social order that has gone sour.

God's desire is for positive, meaningful and 
permanent change. God does not want one people 
seeing themselves as superior to other people. 
God does not want the powerless masses -- the 
poor, the widows, the marginalized and those 
underserved by the powerful few -- to stay locked 
into sick systems which treat some in the society 
as being more equal than others in that same 
society. God's desire is for positive change, 
transformation; real change, not cosmetic change, 
transformation; radical change or a change that 
makes a permanent difference, transformation. 
God's desire is for transformation, changed 
lives, changed minds, changed laws, changed 
social orders and changed hearts in a changed 
world. This principle of transformation is at the 
heart of the prophetic theology of the black church.

These two foci of liberation and transformation 
have been at the very core of the black religious 
experience from the days of David Walker, Harriet 
Tubman, Richard Allen, Jarena Lee, Bishop Henry 
McNeal Turner and Sojourner Truth through the 
days of Adam Clayton Powell, Ida B. Wells, Dr. 
Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, 
Barbara Jordan, Cornel West and Fannie Lou Hamer.

These two foci of liberation and transformation 
have been at the very core of the United Church 
of Christ since its predecessor denomination, the 
Congregational Church of New England came to the 
moral defense and paid for the legal defense of 
the Mende people aboard the slave ship Amistad, 
since the days when the United Church of Christ 
fought against slavery, played an active role in 
the Underground Railroad and set up over 500 
schools for the Africans who were freed from 
slavery in 1865. And these two foci remain at the 
core of the teachings of the United Church of 
Christ as it has fought against apartheid in 
South Africa and racism in the United States of 
America ever since the union which formed the United Church of Christ in 1957.

These two foci of liberation and transformation 
have also been at the very core and the 
congregation of Trinity United Church of Christ 
since it was founded in 1961, and these foci have 
been the bedrock of our preaching and practice for the past 36 years.

Our congregation, as you heard in the 
introduction, took a stand against apartheid when 
the government of our country was supporting the 
racist regime of the Afrikaner government in 
South Africa. (Applause.) Our congregation stood 
in solidarity with the peasants in El Salvador 
and Nicaragua while our government, through Ollie 
North and the Iran-Contra scandal was supporting 
the contras who were killing the peasant and the 
Miskito Indian in those two countries. (Applause.)

Our congregation sent 35 men and women through 
accredited seminaries to earn their master of 
divinity degrees with an additional 40 currently 
being enrolled in seminary while building two 
senior citizen housing complexes and running two 
child-care programs for the poor, the unemployed, 
the low-income parents on the south side of 
Chicago for the past 30 years. Our congregation 
feeds over 5,000 homeless and needy families 
every year while our government cuts food stamps 
and spends billions fighting in an unjust war in Iraq. (Cheers, applause.)

Our congregation has sent dozens of boys and 
girls to fight in the Vietnam War, the first Gulf 
War and the present two wars in Afghanistan and 
Iraq. My goddaughter's unit just arrived in Iraq 
this week, while those who call me unpatriotic 
have used their positions of privilege to avoid 
military service while sending -- (cheers, 
applause) -- while sending over 4,000 American 
boys and girls of every race to die over a lie. (Boos, jeers.)

Our congregation has had an HIV/AIDS ministry for 
over two decades. Our congregation has awarded 
over $1 million to graduating high school seniors 
going into college, and an additional one-half 
million dollars to the United Negro College Fund 
and the six HBCUs related to the United Church of 
Christ while advocating for health care for the 
uninsured, workers' rights for those forbidden to 
form unions and fighting the unjust sentencing 
system which has sent black men and women to 
prison for longer terms for possession of crack 
cocaine than white men and women have to serve 
for the possession of powder cocaine.

Our congregation has had a prison ministry for 30 
years, a drug and alcohol recovery ministry for 
20 years, a full-service program for senior 
citizens and 22 different ministries for the 
youth of our church from preschool through high 
school all proceeding from the starting point of 
liberation and transformation, a prophetic 
theology which presumes God's desire for changed 
minds, changed laws, changed social orders, 
changed lives, changed hearts in a changed world.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah!

REV. WRIGHT: The prophetic theology of the black 
church is a theology of liberation. It is a theology of transformation.

And it is ultimately a theology of 
reconciliation. The Apostle Paul said, "Be ye 
reconciled one to another, even as God was in 
Christ reconciling the world to God's self."

God does not desire for us, as children of God, 
to be at war with each other, to see each other 
as superior or inferior, to hate each other, 
abuse each other, misuse each other, define each other or put each other down.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

REV. WRIGHT: God wants us reconciled one to 
another, and that third principle in the 
prophetic theology of the black church is also 
and has always been at the heart of the black 
church experience in North America. When Richard 
Allen and Absalom Jones were dragged out of St. 
George's Methodist Episcopal Church in 
Philadelphia during the same year, 1787, when the 
Constitution was framed in Philadelphia, for 
daring to kneel at their altar next to white 
worshipers, they founded the Free African 
Society, and they welcomed white members into 
their congregation to show that reconciliation was the goal, not retaliation.

Absalom Jones became the rector of the St. Thomas 
Anglican Church in 1791, and St. Thomas welcomed 
white Anglicans in the spirit of reconciliation.

Richard Allen became the founding pastor of the 
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. And 
the motto of the AME Church has always been "God 
our Father, man our brother, and Christ our 
Redeemer" -- the word "man" included men and 
women of all races back in 1787 and 1792 -- in the spirit of reconciliation.

The black church's role in the fight for equality 
and justice from the 1700s up until 2008 has 
always had as its core the non- negotiable 
doctrine of reconciliation, children of God 
repenting for past sins against each other. Jim 
Wallis says America's racist -- sin of racism has 
never even been confessed, much less repented 
for. Repenting for past sins against each other 
and being reconciled to one another -- Jim Wallis 
is white, by the way -- (laughter) -- being 
reconciled to one another because of the love of 
God, who made all of us in God's image.

Reconciliation, the years have taught me, is 
where the hardest work is found for those of us 
in the Christian faith, however, because it means 
some critical thinking and some reexamination of faulty assumptions.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That's right.

REV. WRIGHT: When using the paradigm of Dr. 
William Augustus Jones, Dr. Jones, in his book 
"God in the Ghetto," argues quite accurately that 
one's theology, how I see God, determines one's 
anthropology, how I see humans, and one's 
anthropology then determines one's sociology, how I order my society.

Now the implications from the outset are obvious.

If I see God as male; if I see God as white male; 
if I see God as superior, as God over us and not 
Immanuel, which means God with us; if I see God 
as mean, vengeful, authoritarian, sexist or 
misogynist, then I see humans through that lens.

My theological lens shapes my anthropological 
lens. And as a result, white males are superior; 
all others are inferior. And I order my society 
where I can worship God on Sunday morning, 
wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on 
Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe. (Cheers, applause.)

I can have laws which favor whites over blacks, 
in America or South Africa. I can construct a 
theology of apartheid, in the Afrikaner church, 
and a theology of white supremacy in the North American or Germanic church.

The implications from the outset are obvious. But 
then the complicated work is left to be done, as 
you dig deeper into the constructs, which 
tradition, habits and hermeneutics put on your plate.

To say, I am a Christian, is not enough. Why? 
Because the Christianity of the slaveholder is 
not the Christianity of the slave. The God to 
whom the slaveholders pray, as they ride on the 
decks of the slave ship, is not the God to whom 
the enslaved are praying, as they ride beneath 
the decks on that same slave ship.

How we are seeing God, our theology, is not the 
same. And what we both mean when we say, I am a 
Christian, is not the same thing. The prophetic 
theology of the black church has always seen and 
still sees all of God's children as sisters and 
brothers, equals who need reconciliation, who 
need to be reconciled as equals, in order for us 
to walk together into the future which God has prepared for us.

Reconciliation does not mean that blacks become 
whites or whites become blacks or Hispanics 
become Asian or that Asians become Europeans. 
Reconciliation means we embrace our individual 
rich histories, all of them. We retain who we 
are, as persons of different cultures, while 
acknowledging that those of other cultures are 
not superior or inferior to us; they are just different from us.

We root out any teaching of superiority, 
inferiority, hatred or prejudice. And we 
recognize for the first time in modern history, 
in the West, that the other who stands before us 
with a different color of skin, a different 
texture of hair, different music, different 
preaching styles and different dance moves; that 
other is one of God's children just as we are, no 
better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness just as we are.

Only then will liberation, transformation and 
reconciliation become realities and cease being 
ever elusive ideals. Thank you for having me in 
your midst this morning. (Applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: We do want to get in our questions. 
Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

I do want to repeat again, for those us you 
watching us on C- SPAN, that we do have a number 
of guests here today. And so the applause and the 
comments, that you hear from the audience, are 
not necessarily those of the working press, who are mostly in the balconies.

You have said that the media have taken you out 
of context. Can you explain what you mean in a 
sermon shortly after 9/11 when you said the 
United States had brought the terrorist attacks 
on itself, quote, "America's chickens are coming home to roost"?

REV. WRIGHT: Have you heard the whole sermon? 
(Laughter, applause.) Have you heard the whole sermon?

MS. LEINWAND: I -- most -- (chuckles) --

REV. WRIGHT: No, no, the whole sermon. That's -- 
yes or no. No, you haven't heard the whole 
sermon? That nullifies that question.

Well, let me try to respond in a non-bombastic 
way. (Applause.) If you heard the whole sermon, 
first of all, you heard that I was quoting the 
ambassador from Iraq. That's number one. But 
number two, to quote the Bible, "Be not deceived; 
God is not mocked, for whatsoever you sew that you also shall" --

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: "Reap."

REV. WRIGHT: Jesus said, "Do unto others as you 
would have them do unto you." You cannot do 
terrorism on other people and expect it never to 
come back on you. Those are biblical principles, 
not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles. (Applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: Some critics have said that your 
sermons are unpatriotic. How do you feel about 
America and about being an American? (Laughter.)

REV. WRIGHT: I feel that those citizens who say 
that have never heard my sermons, nor do they 
know me. They are unfair accusations taken from 
sound bites, and that which is looped over and over again on certain channels.

I served six years in the military. Does that 
make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve? (Cheers, applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: Please, I ask you to keep your 
comments and your applause to a minimum, so that 
we can work in as many questions as possible.

Senator Obama has -- (talk from audience members) 
-- please, we're trying to ask as many questions 
as possible today, so if you can keep your applause to a minimum.

Senator Obama has tried to explain away some of 
your most contentious comments and has distanced 
himself from you. It's clear that many people in 
his campaign consider you a detriment. In that 
context, why are you speaking out now?

REV. WRIGHT: On November the 5th and on January 
21st, I'll still be a pastor. As I've said, this 
is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has 
nothing to do with Senator Obama. This is an 
attack on the black church launched by people who 
know nothing about the African- American religious tradition.

And why I am speaking out now? In our community, 
we have something called playing the dozens. If 
you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama 
-- (laughter) -- and her religious tradition and 
my daddy and his religious tradition and my 
grandma, you got another thing coming. (Applause.)

(To audience members.) Bless your hearts.

MS. LEINWAND: What is your relationship with 
Louis Farrakhan? Do you agree with and respect 
his views, including his most racially divisive views?

x x views?

REV. WRIGHT: As I said on the Bill Moyers show, 
one of our news channels keeps playing a news 
clip from 20 years ago, when Louis said 20 years 
ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter 
religion. He was talking about the same thing 
United Nations resolutions say, the same thing 
now that President Carter's being vilified for 
and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And 
everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti- 
Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago.

I believe that people of all faiths have to work 
together in this country if we're going to be 
build a future for our children, whether those 
people are -- just as Michelle and Barack don't 
agree on everything, Ramah and I don't agree on 
everything, Louis and I don't agree on 
everything. Most of you-all don't agree -- you 
got two people in the same room, you got three opinions. (Laughter.)

What I think about him, as I said on Bill Moyers 
and it got edited out -- how many other 
African-Americans or European-Americans do you 
know that can get 1 million people together on 
the mall? He is one of the most important voices 
in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think 
about him. I said, as I said on Bill Moyers, when 
Louis Farrakhan speaks it's like E.F. Hutton 
speaks. All black America listens. Whether they 
agree with him or not, they listen.

Now, I am not going to put down Louis Farrakhan 
any more than Mandela will put down Fidel Castro. 
You remember that Ted Koppel show where Ted 
wanted Mandela to put down Castro because Castro 
is our enemy, and he said, "You don't tell me who 
my enemies are; you don't tell me who my friends are."

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah!

REV. WRIGHT: Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He 
did not put me in chains, he did not put me in 
slavery, and he didn't make me this color. (Cheers, applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: What is your motivation for 
characterizing Senator Obama's response to you 
as, quote, "what a politician had to say"? What do you mean by that?

REV. WRIGHT: What I mean is what several of my 
white friends and several of my white Jewish 
friends have written me and said to me. They 
said, "You're a Christian. You understand 
forgiveness. We both know that if Senator Obama 
did not say what he said, he would never get 
elected." Politicians say what they say and do 
what they do based on electability, based on 
sound bites, based on polls -- Huffington, 
whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what 
they say because they are pastors. They have a 
different person to whom they're accountable.

As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm 
still going to have to be answerable to God, 
November 5th and January 21st. That's what I 
mean. I do what pastors do. He does what 
politicians do. I am not running for office. I am 
hoping to being vice president. (Laughter.)

MS. LEINWAND: In light of your -- in light of 
your widely quoted comment damning America, do 
you think you owe the American people an apology?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No!

MS. LEINWAND: If not, do you think that America 
is still damned in the eyes of God?

REV. WRIGHT: The government of leaders, those -- 
as I said to Barack Obama, my member -- I'm a 
pastor; he's a member. I'm not a "spiritual 
mentor" -- hoodoo. I'm his pastor. And I said to 
Barack Obama last year, "If you get elected, 
November the 5th I'm coming after you, because 
you'll be representing a government whose 
policies grind under people." All right?

It's about policy, not the American people.

And if you saw the Bill Moyers show, I was 
talking about, although it got edited, I was -- 
do you know, that's biblical? God doesn't bless 
everything. God condemns something. And D-E-M-N, 
demn, is where we get the word damn. God damns some practices.

And there is no excuse for the things that the 
government, not the American people, have done. 
That doesn't make me not like America, or unpatriotic.

So when Jesus says, not only you brood of vipers, 
now he's playing the dozens because he's talking 
about their mamas. To say brood means your mother 
is an asp, A-S-P. (Laughter.) Should we put Jesus out of the congregation?

When Jesus says, you will be brought down to 
hell, that's not -- that's bombastic device of 
speech. Maybe we ought to take Jesus out of this Christian faith. No.

What I said about and what I think about and what 
-- again until I can't -- until racism and 
slavery are confessed and asked for -- we asked 
the Japanese to forgive us. We have never as a 
country -- in fact, Clinton almost got in trouble 
because he almost apologized at Goree Island.

We have never apologized as a country. Britain 
has apologized to Africans. But this country's 
leaders have refused to apologize. So until that 
apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on 
your foot and asking you, does this hurt do you 
forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I'm 
still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?

MS. LEINWAND: All right.

Senator Obama has been in your congregation for 
20 years. Yet you were not invited to his 
announcement of his presidential candidacy in 
Illinois. And in the most recent presidential 
debate in Pennsylvania, he said he had denounced you.

Are you disappointed that Senator Obama has chosen to walk away from you?

REV. WRIGHT: Whoever wrote that question doesn't 
read or watch the news. He did not denounce me. 
He distanced himself from some of my remarks, 
like most of you, never having heard the sermon, all right?

What was the rest of your question? I got 
confused in that the person who wrote it hadn't --

MS. LEINWAND: Were you disappointed that he distanced himself?

REV. WRIGHT: He didn't distance himself. He had 
to distance himself, because he's a politician, 
from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American.

He said I didn't offer any words of hope. How 
would he know? He never heard the rest of the sermon. You never heard it.

I offered words of hope. I offered 
reconciliation. I offered restoration in that 
sermon. But nobody heard the sermon. They just 
heard this little soundbite of a sermon.

That was not the whole question. There was 
something else, in the first part of the question, that I wanted to address.

MS. LEINWAND: You weren't invited.

REV. WRIGHT: Oh, all right.

I was not invited, because that was a political 
event. Let me say again, I'm his pastor.

At a political event, who started it off? Senator 
Dick Durbin. I started it off downstairs with 
him, his wife and children in prayer. That's what pastors do.

So I started it off in prayer. When he went out 
into the public, that wasn't about prayer; that 
wasn't about pastor-member. Pastor- member took 
place downstairs. What took place upstairs was political.

So that's how I feel about that. He did, as I 
said, what politicians do. This was a political 
event. He wasn't announcing, "I'm saved, 
sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost." He 
was announcing, "I'm running for president of the United States."

(Laughter.)

MS. LEINWAND: You just mentioned that Senator 
Obama hadn't heard many of your sermons. Does 
that mean he's not much of a churchgoer, or does 
he doze off in the pews? (Laughter.)

REV. WRIGHT: I just wanted to see -- is that your 
question? That's your question.

MS. LEINWAND: That is.

REV. WRIGHT: He goes to church about much as you 
do. What did your pastor preach on last week? 
(Laughter.) You don't know. Okay. (Shouts, laughter, applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: In your sermon, you said the 
government lied about inventing the HIV virus as 
a means of genocide against people of color. So I 
ask you: Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?

REV. WRIGHT: Have you read Horowitz's book 
"Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola"? Whoever wrote 
that question, have you read "Medical Apartheid"? You've read it?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You are -- (off mike).

REV. WRIGHT: I --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Off mike.)

REV. WRIGHT: Oh, you -- is that one of the reporters?

MS. LEINWAND: Please, no questions from --

REV. WRIGHT: No questions from the floor.

I read different things. As I said to my members, 
if you haven't read things, then you can't -- and 
based on the Tuskegee experiment and based on 
what has happened to Africans in this country, I 
believe our government is capable of doing anything.

In fact, in fact, in fact, one of the -- one of 
the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms 
of biological warfare was a non- question, 
because all we had to do was check the sales 
record. We sold him those biological weapons that 
he was using against his own people.

So any time a government can put together 
biological warfare to kill people and then get 
angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.

MS. LEINWAND: You have likened Israeli policies 
to apartheid and its treatment of Palestinians 
with Native Americans. Can you explain your views on Israel?

REV. WRIGHT: Where did I liken it to that? 
Whoever wrote the question, tell me where I 
likened them. Jimmy Carter called it apartheid. 
Jeremiah Wright doesn't "liken" anything to anything.

My position on Israel is that Israel has a right 
to exist; that Israelis have a right to exist, as 
I said, reconciled one to another. Have you read 
The Link? Do you read The Link -- Americans for 
Middle Eastern Understanding, where Palestinians 
and Israelis need to sit down and talk to each 
other and work out a solution where their 
children can grow in a world together and not be 
talking about killing each other; that that is not God's will.

So my position is that Israel and the people of 
Israel be the people of God who are worrying 
about reconciliation and who are trying to do 
what God wants for God's people, which is reconciliation.

MS. LEINWAND: In your understanding of 
Christianity, does God love the white racist in 
the same way he loves he loves the oppressed black American?

REV. WRIGHT: John 3:16. Jesus said it much better 
than I could ever say it: "For God so loved the 
world" -- "world" is white, black, Iraqi, 
Darfurian, Sudanese, Zulu, Kosha (sp). God loves 
all of God's children, because all of God's children are made in God's image.

MS. LEINWAND: Can you elaborate on your 
comparison of the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus 
to the U.S. Marine Corps? Do you still believe 
that is an appropriate comparison? And why?

REV. WRIGHT: One of the things that will be 
covered at symposiums over the next two days is 
biblical history, which many of the working press are unfamiliar with.

(Laughter.)

In biblical history, there's not one word written 
in the Bible, between Genesis and Revelation, 
that was not written under one of six different 
kinds of oppression: Egyptian oppression, 
Assyrian oppression, Persian oppression, Greek 
oppression, Roman oppression, Babylonian oppression.

The Roman oppression is the period in which Jesus 
was born. And comparing imperialism that was 
going on in Luke, imperialism was going on when 
Caesar Augustus sent out a degree that the whole 
world should be taxed -- they were in charge of 
the world; sounds like some other governments I 
know -- that yes, I can compare that. We have 
troops stationed all over the world, just like 
Rome had troops stationed all over the world, 
because we run the world. That notion of 
imperialism is not the message of the Gospel of 
the Prince of Peace nor God, who loves the world. (Applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: Former President Bill Clinton has 
been widely criticized in this campaign. Many 
African-Americans think he has said things aimed 
at defining Senator Obama as the black candidate. 
What do you think of President Clinton's 
comments, particularly those before the South Carolina primary?

REV. WRIGHT: I don't think anything about them. I 
came here to talk about the prophetic theology of 
the black church. I'm not talking about 
candidates or their positions or their feelings 
or what they have to say to get elected.

MS. LEINWAND: Well, okay. We'll give you a church 
question. Please explain how the black church and 
the white church can reconcile.

REV. WRIGHT: Well, there are many white churches 
and white persons who are members of churches and 
clergy and denominations who have already taken 
great steps in terms of reconciliation. In the 
Underground Railroad, it was the white church 
that played the largest role in getting Africans 
out of slavery, in setting up almost all 40 of 
the HBCUs. It was the white church that sent missionaries into the South.

As I mentioned in my presentation, our 
denomination, all by itself, set up over 500 of 
those schools. You know them today as Howard 
University, Fisk, LeMoyne-Owen, Tougaloo, Dillard 
University, Howard University. So they've done --

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Morehouse.

REV. WRIGHT: -- Morehouse, Morehouse; don't 
forget Morehouse -- (chuckles) -- Spelman -- that 
white Christians have been trying for a long time 
to reconcile, that for other white Christians to 
understand that we must be reconciled is to 
understand the injustice that was done to our 
people as we raped the continent, brought those 
people here, built our country and then defined them as less than human.

And more Christians, more of us working together, 
not just white Christians but whites and blacks 
of every faith, and ecumenically working together 
-- Father Pfleger, by the way -- he might be one 
of the ones -- (applause) -- modeled out what it 
means to be reconciled as brothers and sisters in 
Christ and brothers and sisters made in the image of God.

MS. LEINWAND: You said there is a lack of 
understanding by people of other backgrounds of 
the African-American church. What are some of 
those misunderstandings, and how would you 
purport to fix them, particularly when some of 
your comments are found to be offensive by white churches?

REV. WRIGHT: Carter G. Woodson about 80 years ago 
wrote a book entitled "The Miseducation (of the 
Negro)." I would try to fix it starting at the 
educational level in the grammar schools, as Dr. 
Asa Hilliard did in his infusion curriculum -- 
starting at the grammar schools to tell our 
children this story and to tell our children the 
true story. That's how I'd go about fixing it, 
because until you know the true story, then 
you're reacting to my words and not to the truth.

MS. LEINWAND: Jesus said, "I am the way, the 
truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father 
but through me." Do you believe this?

And do you think Islam is a way to salvation?

REV. WRIGHT: Jesus also said, "Other sheep have I 
who are not of this fold." (Cheers, applause.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah!

MS. LEINWAND: Do you think people of other races 
would feel welcome at your church?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah!

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No!

REV. WRIGHT: Yes. We have members of other races 
in our church. We have Hispanics. We have 
Caribbean. We have South Americans. We have 
whites. The conference minister -- please 
understand, United Church of Christ is a 
predominantly white denomination of, again -- 
some of you do not know United Church of Christ, 
just found out about liberation theology, just 
found out about the United Church of Christ. The 
conference minister, Dr. Jane Fisler Hoffman, a 
white woman, and her husband not only are members 
of the congregation, but on her last Sunday 
before taking the assignment as the interim 
conference minister of the Southern California 
Conference of the United Church of Christ, a 
white woman stood in our pulpit and said, "I am 
unashamedly African." (Cheers, applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: You first gained media attention -- 
significant media attention for your sermon 
several weeks ago. Why did you wait so long 
before giving the public your side of the sound bite story?

REV. WRIGHT: As I said to Bill Moyers -- and he 
also edited this one out -- because of my 
mother's advice to me. My mother's advice was 
being seen all over the -- all over the corporate 
media channels, and it's a paraphrase of the Book 
of Proverbs, where it is better to be quiet and 
be thought a fool than to open your mouth and 
remove all doubt. (Laughter.) The media was 
making a fool out of itself because it knew nothing about our tradition.

And so I decided to let them make a fool as long 
as they wanted to and then take the advice of 
Paul Laurence Dunbar in "'Lias, 'lias, bless de 
Lawd. Don' you know de day's abroad?" Don't make 
me come cross this room. I had to come cross the 
room because they started -- understand, when you 
talking about my mama, once again, and talking 
about my faith tradition, once again -- how long 
do you let somebody talk about your faith 
tradition before you speak up and say something 
in defense of -- this was not an attack on 
Jeremiah Wright. Once again, let me say it again, 
this was an attack on the black church.

And I cannot, as a minister of the gospel, allow 
the significant part of our history -- most 
African-Americans and most European- Americans, 
most Hispanic-Americans, half the names I called 
in my presentation have never heard it because 
they don't know anything at all about our 
tradition. And to lift up those -- they did not 
-- they would have died in vain had I just kept 
quiet longer and longer and longer and longer.

As I said, this was an attack on the black 
church. It was not about Obama, McCain, Hillary, 
Bill, Chelsea; this was about the black church. 
This was about Barbara Jordan. This was about 
Fannie Lou Hamer. This was about my grandmama. (Applause.)

Q Do you think it is God's will that Senator Obama be president?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No! Come on!

REV. WRIGHT: I said I would offer myself for 
candidacy for vice president. I have not offered 
myself for candidacy of God; I can't presume to know what God would want.

In my tradition, however, what everybody has been 
saying to me as it pertains to the candidacy is, 
what God has for you is for you. If God intends 
for Mr. Obama to be the president, then no white 
racist, no political pundit, no speech, nothing 
can get in the way, for God will do what God wants to do.

MS. LEINWAND: Okay. We are almost out of time. 
But before asking the last question, we have a 
couple of matters to take care of.

First of all, let me remind you of our future 
speakers. This afternoon we have Dan Glickman, 
chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture 
Association, who is discussing "Trading Up: 
Movies and the Global Marketplace." On May 2nd, 
Bobby Jindal, the governor of the state of 
Louisiana, will discuss "Bold Reform That Works." 
On May 7th we have Glenn Tilton, CEO, United 
Airlines, and board member of the American Transport Association.

Second, I would like to present our guest with 
the official centennial mug and -- brand new --

REV. WRIGHT: Thank you! Thank you. (Applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: You're welcome. And we've got one more question for you.

Chris -- we're going to end with a joke. Chris 
Rock joked, of course, "Of course Reverend 
Wright's an angry 75-year-old back man. All 
75-year-old black men are angry." Is that funny? 
Is that true? Is it unfortunate? What do you think?

REV. WRIGHT: I think it's just like the media: 
I'm not 75. (Laughter, applause.)

MS. LEINWAND: I'd like to thank you all for 
coming today. I'd also like to thank National 
Press Club staff members Melinda Cooke, Pat 
Nelson, Jo Anne Booze and Howard Rothman for 
organizing today's breakfast. Also, thanks to the NPC library for its research.

The video archive of today's luncheon is provided 
by National Press Club Broadcast Operations Center.

I'd ask you all to stay in your seats until the 
program ends and also to stay in your seats until 
Reverend Wright has a chance to leave the room.

The Press Club members can also access free 
transcripts of our luncheons at our website, 
www.press.org. Nonmembers may purchase 
transcripts, audio and video tapes by calling 1-888-343-1940.

For more information about joining the Press 
Club, please -- please, can I ask you to stay in 
your seats until the program ends? -- for more 
information about joining the Press Club, contact us at 202- 662-7511.

Thank you. We're adjourned.

END.

Copyright © 2008, <http://www.chicagotribune.com/>Chicago Tribune




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