[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.
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