Over and above the first Persian Gulf war, Wright is clearly opposed to America’s Middle East policy more broadly. In his sermon, “Ain’t Nobody Right but Us,” Wright equates Zionism with racism. More than this, Wright goes on to suggest that, while not literally racist, the Catholic practice of denying Holy Communion to non-Catholics is an overly exclusivist practice. (Wright hits Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists for too much exclusivism as well.) Here is the key passage:
But right on the heels of the ego issue there surfaces what I call the flip side of the coin and that is this whole notion of the “in crowd,” “our group,” or what I call the “our gang” mentality. If you’re not a part of our gang, then you’re not a part of anything, cause “ain’t nobody right but us.”...You can see that kind of circling of the wagons mind-set clearly when you look at the Dutch Afrikaaner Church and the white racism that is so open and blatant in the doctrines of apartheid or in Zionism. That’s ain’t nobody right but us kind of thinking.
We can see the “our gang” mentality clearly when there is racism involved, but there are other places where this same kind of thinking rears its ugly head. When, for instance, Catholicism teaches that Protestants and Catholics can work together, worship together, pray together, walk together, do everything together except take Holy Communion; when it teaches that Catholics can share only among themselves the body and blood of Jesus Christ, then what Catholicism in effect is saying is “ain’t nobody right but us.”
[What Makes You So Strong?, pp. 13-14.]
It’s already well known that Wright traveled to Libya with Louis Farrakhan in 1984 to meet with Qaddafi. In a sermon titled, “Full of the Holy Spirit,” Wright defends Farrakhan, and connects his refusal to repudiate Farrakhan with his refusal to repudiate Malcolm X. (This is also a major theme within black liberation theology — the determination to laud not only King, but also the more radical Malcolm X):
Don’t let anybody trick you into thinking Minister Louis Farrakhan is your enemy. He ain’t the enemy. Any African man who can clean folks up, get them off of dope, get them in school, get them reading instead of rapping, get them building each other up, is not the enemy. He isn’t the enemy. The enemy is the one bringing the drugs into your country, into your community, your block, and your house. Some folks are tricky. They will try to make you choose between Malcolm and Martin. Don’t you let them. No, no. If you have been helped by both, say “hallelujah!” for both of them.
And they are not going to make me choose between Minister Jackson and Minister Farrakhan. [What Makes You So Strong?, pp. 87-88.]
Political Themes
Although the version of “The Audacity to Hope” reprinted in the So Strong collection may not be precisely the same as the 1988 sermon heard by Barack Obama, it appears to contain many passages closer to that original than the supposedly complete text posted at PreachingToday.com. Although the most political passages in the 1991 sermon may have been either reworked, added, or both, to reflect the theme of honoring King, it’s clear from a broader reading of this sermon collection that the themes of the 1991 “Audacity to Hope” sermon are echoed throughout Wright’s broader corpus. If the 1988 sermon’s attacks on “the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House” have not yet been recovered with certainty, the general drift of Wright’s views on these subjects seems clear. It also seems most unlikely that Obama could have failed to pick up on these themes, which are echoed throughout Wright’s sermons.
It also appears highly likely that the version of the “Audacity” sermon posted at PreachingToday.com gives an unrepresentative and sanitized view of Wright’s sermons. Obama’s own account of the original “Audacity” sermon indicates significantly greater political content than what we see in the PreachingToday text. And again, even if it may not take us back to 1988 with complete precision, the So Strong collection makes the overall political character of Wright’s sermons of that era fairly obvious.
More discoveries remain to be made, no doubt. Yet the texts already uncovered raise serious questions about what Barack Obama heard, what he thought of it, and why he remained so close to Reverend Wright.
— Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an NRO contributing editor.
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