You Go Rev. Wright!!!!

UPDATE: Please note, this post was composed after watching Wright with Bill Moyers before the shall-we-say performances of Sunday and Monday, and the heartbreaking spectacle of the end of a long friendship. Note too: democracy is for grown-ups who fundamentally accept the prinicple that friends, even pastors and their parishoners, can disagree while loving and respecting each other. Democracy is a widening, an opening discipline. In case you wonder why we have an electoral college, pledge and super delegates: this (w)right here is the reason.

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Do Not be hoodwinked by soundbites. Rev. Wright on Bill Moyer's Journal last night aquitted himself quite well. Here's the interview, the whole hour. There is nothing to fear in this man that is not :

1. A legitimate and careful reading of scripture, and
2. That same reading informed by actual knowledge of history, and
3. A practice of his faith and ministry based on the premise that lived world outside the church and the lived world inside it must be thought and loved to together.

One of his main points last night boiled down to this: it is possible to know what is immoral in our history and still love this country. It is possible to condemn a government's deeds and still love its ideals. It is possible, necessary, to love your god, your family/friends/community, your country, in the full knowledge of their truth -- which is infinitely more complicated than any mythology you create for them or they create about themselves.

Related point: My fave quote of this past while is from the Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, "If you really live your live on the model of Christ, you will be in trouble most of the time."

Do Not Be Hoodwinked by the information chop shops.