To the Editor:
Don’t you marvel how glibly the media’s stereotyping of a Democratic candidate can morph from “secular humanist who doesn’t go church” to “someone who goes to the wrong church”? Sadly, Joe Bialek’s letter of April 21 drinks from a tempest-in-a-teapot brewed with a pastor’s preaching and the fallacy of guilt by association. His assumption that “any reasonable person” who disagrees with a few sermons will leave a congregation shows he has no idea what church membership means. Sacraments, liturgy, music, education, fellowship, outreach and charitable works are all in the package. On campus some years ago, the director of the (secular) Boys’ Choir of Harlem praised churches as a major civilizing influence on the children of the district. Obama’s church does likewise for literally thousands in Chicago, and Mr. Bialek expects him to show upstanding citizenship by repudiating it? Who’s being unreasonable now? How many poor blacks attend Bialek’s church (if any)? Theology intensifies my outrage. Jeremiah Wright’s mentor, Dr. James Cone, spoke compellingly on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” on Mar. 31. Black liberation theology is so called not to liberate blacks only, but because their experience of four centuries’ oppression in this hemisphere highlights matters conveniently overlooked in much of so-called Christendom, things like the chosen people fleeing bondage in Egypt, the drumbeat from one end of the Bible to the other proclaiming God’s concern for the poor, and warning of divine wrath upon societies ignoring or exploiting the unfortunate. Fire up your web browser and hear Dr. Cone. I defy any Christian to disagree.
Dare we peek yet deeper? Upon graduation from Harvard Law School, the modern saint William Stringfellow decided to practice in a New York slum and, furthermore, to live alongside his clients. Scripture and observation convinced him that institutions are contemporary forms of the powers and principalities. That is, they are inherently demonic-idols extraordinarily dangerous to those involved with them, especially anyone serving them with blind loyalty. The more powerful an institution, the more emphatically this description applies.
Of course, most middle-class audiences hearing Stringfellow didn’t get it, but his neighbors certainly did. They’d spent their lives being chewed up and spit out by faceless, slithering corporations, agencies, cartels and bureaucracies. It explained their experience perfectly. I think Obama gets it, too.
Well might we pray, then, for the President of the United States. The temptations in this office are fearsome. Every Presidential candidate undertakes the responsibility to speak for all Americans-and actually for humanity–in the palace of Babylon. Will he or she remain our advocate, or turn traitor? The answer depends partly on whether one enters with eyes open. Christians have endured scorn like Bialek’s for two millennia, singing alleluias back. Barak Obama’s steadfastness only increases my confidence that he perceives the situation more clearly than any aspirant in decades.
Paul Emmons
Associate Professor of Library Administration