[Peace-discuss] Wright/Moyers transcript

[C. G. Estabrook]

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

Barack Obama's pastor was in the news again this week. North Carolina 
Republicans are preparing to run an ad tying Obama to some controversial sound 
bites lifted from Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons. And CBS and MSNBC led 
their broadcasts with reports about the ad.

DEAN REYNOLDS: In North Carolina the Republicans put their ad on the internet 
and say they're going to broadcast it as well.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Republican hit job the North Carolina GOP plans a Willie Horton 
style TV ad against Obama.

BILL MOYERS: Jeremiah Wright will be in Washington Monday for a news conference 
at the National Press Club -- his first since the controversy erupted over those 
incendiary sound bites. You've heard them; who hasn't heard them: Wright 
suggesting the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were payback for American policy; 
Wright repeating the canard heard often in black communities that the u.s. 
government spread HIV in those communities; Wright seemingly calling on God to 
damn America.

But just who is this man? That's the question I asked when those sound bites 
began popping up. I'd heard the name Jeremiah Wright -- his church in Chicago 
belongs to the fellowship of the United Church of Christ. I joined a UCC church 
on Long Island 40 years ago and attend Riverside Church in New York City, which 
is affiliated with American Baptists and the UCC. But I couldn't remember ever 
having met Reverend Wright. So I wanted to know more about the man, the 
ministry, and the church.

BILL MOYERS: In 1972, Jeremiah Wright became pastor of Trinity United Church of 
Christ in Chicago. He inherited a struggling congregation of just 9887 members.

REVEREND WRIGHT: I have a friend who every time you greet him, every time you 
ask him how you doing, he answers, just trying to make it man, just trying to 
make it.

BILL MOYERS: But by the mid 1980s, when PBS' Frontline shot this film about 
Wright, he'd grown the congregation to several thousand.

REVEREND WRIGHT: In our homes! Help us to be your church! In our private lives, 
help us to be your church! In our dealings one with another, help us to be your 
church Though our minds wander, our souls love only you. Let the church say 
Amen. Say Amen again.

BILL MOYERS: Trinity Church is located in a largely black neighborhood on the 
South Side of Chicago - a mixture of working class people and the poor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Unfortunately, most churches now are "status quo." And so that, 
to the extent that they're not trying to feed the poor, they're not trying to 
hook up jobs and people, they're not concerned about the lowest, the least, the 
left out. They're not concerned about the youth, they're concerned about "Let me 
come here on a Sunday, hear something that tells me I'm ok, and I'm going to 
back to where I've been going. Don't rock the boat…"

REVEREND WRIGHT: How about the fact that we have pledged to take what we've got 
as black people and put it back into the black community? That's what I want to 
ask you…

BILL MOYERS: He challenged his growing congregation not to lose sight of the 
needs of their neighbors.

YOUNG MAN: I want to be a vehicle designer.

BILL MOYERS: That meant soup kitchens, day care, drug and legal counseling, and 
mentoring for young people.

YOUNG MAN: I've watched TV and looked at lawyers in past years and I've 
basically like the feel of being a lawyer. It's like really exciting.

MENTOR: As a matter of fact, there are a couple lawyers here in the church that 
maybe we can just hook you up with

YOUNG MAN: I'd like to be a doctor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: You can't be whatcha ain't seen. And so many of our young boys 
haven't seen nothing but the gangs and the pimps and the brothers on the corner. 
They've never sat and talked to lawyers, they've never sat and talked to a man, 
a black man, with 2, 3 degrees! They've never had a chance, they've never had an 
option in terms of thinking I could do this? I can be this? They see a doctor 
when they're sick. They don't get to sit and talk-me go to med school? They 
don't talk to somebody who writes programs and analyzes systems and computers. A 
black guy? I can do this? I can-never have their horizons lifted.

BOYS: The commitment to the black community The commitment to the black family

BILL MOYERS: He spoke out about racism from segregation in America's cities to 
the racist apartheid regime of South Africa.

REVEREND WRIGHT: What the word says about racism comes through loud and clear! 
Botha is wrong! South Africa is wrong! Apartheid is wrong! Oppression is wrong! 
Anybody who feels white skin is superior to black skin is wrong!

BILL MOYERS: Around that time a young Barack Obama came to Chicago and went to 
work as a community organizer on the South Side. As he describes in his book, 
Obama was a religious skeptic at first, and sought out Pastor Wright for his 
knowledge of the neighborhood. But soon Obama began attending Sunday Services, 
and in 1988 was baptized there as a Christian.

Twenty years later, Trinity has built a new building for its burgeoning 
congregation: now over six thousand members. Its ministry has grown as well: 
including tutoring for kids, women's health programs, and a HIV/AIDS ministry.

Trinity has long had strong ties with the African roots of its faith. 
Parishoners are asked to respect what they call "the black value system:" to 
rededicate themselves to God, the black family and the black community. 
Reinforcing the motto that they are quote "Unashamedly Black and 
Unapologetically Christian."

You see the connection to Africa in the stained glass windows Wright installed 
in the new church. They depict many of the biblical stories that took place there.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: We wanted our stained-glass windows to tell the story 
of the centrality of Africans in the role of Christianity from its inception up 
until the present day. We play some interesting games educationally with the 
kids to help kids understand -- can you name the seven continents? As a kid, you 
learn that in school. All right, on what continent did everything in the Bible 
from Genesis to Malachi take place? And they'll give you an eighth continent: 
the Middle East. No, no, no, you just named seven continents. So, what continent 
do these things take place on in your Bible? It's that kind of biblical truth 
put in stain glass so kids can understand this is not something somebody made 
up. This is not something from black power "Oooh." This is actual biblical, 
historical fact that you have a central role in the Christian faith that is yours.

BILL MOYERS: Several years ago Jeremiah Wright and the church began the search 
for his successor, and after 36 years as pastor, he will be retiring at the end 
of next month.

REVEREND WRIGHT: In Genesis:2 it says God breathes into the nostrils of what God 
had formed from the dust. God donated some divinity to some dirt and we became 
living souls. That's God breath you have in you, that's God's breath that you 
just breathed. God is the giver of life. Let me tell you what that means. That 
means we have no right to take a life whether as a gang banger living the thug 
life, or as a President lying about leading a nation into war. We have no right 
to take a life! Whether through the immorality of a slave trade, or the 
immorality of refusing HIV/AIDS money to countries or agencies who do not tow 
your political line! We have no right to take a life! Turn to your neighbors and 
say we have no right to take a life!

BILL MOYERS: That was Jeremiah Wright three years ago, and he's with me here today.

Welcome to the JOURNAL.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Thank you for having me.

BILL MOYERS: Let's start with first things. When did you hear the call to 
ministry? How did it come?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I was a teenager when I heard the call to ministry. I grew up 
in a parsonage. I grew up a son of and grandson of a minister, which also gave 
me the advantage of knowing that there were more things to ministry than 
pastoring. I had no idea that I'd be preaching or pasturing a church at that 
teenage year. As a matter of fact I left Philadelphia going to Virginia Union 
University. And unfortunately, I was starting during the civil rights movement. 
And the civil rights movement showed me a side of Christianity that I had not 
seen in Philadelphia. I had not seen Christians who, as I saw in Richmond, 
Virginia, who loved the lord, who professed faith in Jesus Christ and who 
believed in segregation, saw nothing wrong with lynching, saw nothing wrong with 
Negroes staying in their places. I knew about hatred. I knew about prejudice. 
But I didn't know Christians participated in that, in that kind of thinking.

BILL MOYERS: So what did that do to you?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It made me question my call. It made me question whether or not 
I was doing the right thing. It made me pause in my educational pursuit. I 
stopped school in my last year, senior year, and went into the service.

BILL MOYERS: He served six years in the military: two as a marine, and four in 
the Navy as a cardiopulmonary technician. That's where our paths crossed for the 
only time.

That's Jeremiah Wright, behind the I.V. pole, monitoring President Lyndon 
Johnson's heart as he was recovering from gall bladder surgery at Bethesda Naval 
Hospital. And right behind him is a very young me. I was the President's Press 
Secretary.

REVEREND WRIGHT: As you know, the President had to be operated on and out of 
surgery by 9:00 when the stock market opened. And talking and wide awake. So, we 
scrubbed in, like, 3:00 in the morning.

When he awakened, unlike other patients, you did not move him to recovery. You 
didn't move him to ICU. They kept him right there for security reasons. Secret 
Service all around, there was secret service in the whole operating suite and 
nobody else allowed in the operating suite except Secret Service.

So, after about an hour and a half, I went to get some coffee. And as I was 
coming back from the lounge where the coffee was, going back to monitor, I saw 
the guys talkin' into their wristwatches and I was nodding, speaking to them. 
So, I turn to go into the room to check the pace. And secret service guys 
standing there grabbed me, knocked the coffee outta my hand, burned me with the 
hot coffee, twisted my arm up behind my neck and screams into his phone, "I got 
him." And I was, "Got him?" And I'm screamin' in pain. And my assistant comes 
running out of the booth. He sees me jacked up and he starts laughing. I said, 
"Joe, don't laugh. Tell him who I am." And he said, "He's been here all morning."

BILL MOYERS: Standing above the President.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Guy looked at me, pulled my mask up over face, "Oh, yeah." And 
that was it.

BILL MOYERS: After the military, Wright graduated from Howard University, then 
went to the University of Chicago Divinity School for a Masters in Religious 
History.

But his path took a turn back to his first calling - when he was asked by that 
struggling little church on the South Side of Chicago to become its pastor.

BILL MOYERS: So, when you looked out on that handful of worshippers that first 
Sunday morning, 87 members, I'm sure all of them weren't there--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Oh, yeah. They all knew they heard this new kid was there with 
a big natural. So, they came to see--

BILL MOYERS: They were there.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: So, what did you see and what did you think you had to do?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Well, actually a good friend of yours, I believe, and one of my 
professors, got me in the predicament I'm in today, Dr. Martin Marty, one of my 
professors at the University of Chicago--

BILL MOYERS: One of the great distinguished historians of religion in America.

REVEREND WRIGHT: He put a challenge to us in 1970, late '69, early '70, I'll 
never forget. He said, "You know, you come into the average church on a Sunday 
morning and you think you've stepped from the real world into a fantasy world. 
And what do I mean by that?" He said pick up the church bulletin. You leave a 
world, Vietnam, or today you leave a world, Iraq, over 4,000 dead, American boys 
and girls, 100,000, 200,000 depending on which count, Iraqi dead. Afghanistan, 
Darfur, rapes in the Congo, Katrina, Lower Ninth Ward, that's the world you 
leave. And you come in; you pick up your church bulletin. It says, there is a 
ladies tea on second Sunday. The children's choir will be doing. He said, "How 
come our bulletins, how come the faith preached in our churches does not relate 
to the world in which our church members leave at the benediction?" Well, it hit 
me. And it hit me several different ways. Number one, I know there's a church 
publication, the bulletin, the weekly bulletin. But what about the ministry? And 
what about the prophetic voice of the church that's not heard? We're talking 
about things that our members are wrestling with a whole bunch of other things. 
And the sermons and the ministries of the church don't touch those things.

So, when, I looked and said this church had said to me, in fact not just to me, 
the church, the congregation has said, "OK, we were started by a white 
denomination. We were started in this community to be an integrated church. Ten 
years, that hasn't happened. Are we gonna be a black church in this community? 
What are we doing for this community?" They put together a statement that shows 
all the candidates for the pulpit. I was one of the candidates. They said, "Can 
you lead us in this new direction? How do we minister to this community in which 
we sit?" Not just on Sunday, first you have to attract people to come-- or even 
be interested in our worship experiences on Sunday. But what do we do in 
ministry that speaks to the community and the world in which we sit? That's 
Martin Marty. That's Martin Marty.

BILL MOYERS: Marty told me that you launched a strenuous effort to help the 
members of that church overcome the shame, and I'm quoting him, "they had so 
long been conditioned to experience." What was the source of that shame?

REVEREND WRIGHT: What Carter G. Woodson calls the miseducation of the Negro. 
That Africa is ignorant, Africans are ignorant; there is no African history, 
there is no African music, there is no African culture, anything related to 
Africa is negative, therefore you are not African. Chinese come to the country, 
they're still Chinese-American. We have Chinatown. Koreans come, they're still 
Korean. They have Koreatown. Africans come, they're colored. They're Negro. 
They're anything but Africa. In fact, we don't even call them Ebbu, Ebibu, 
Fulani, Fanti, Ga, no, no, no -- they're all "Negro." Portuguese, "Negro" 
Spanish. They're all gettin' lumped into black, but we're not black, we are 
Negro with a capital N.

The shame of being a descendant of Africa, was a shame that had been pumped into 
the minds and hearts of Africans from the 1600s on, even aided and abetted by 
the benefit of those schools started by the missionaries, who simply carried 
their culture with them into the South and taught their cultures being 
synonymous with Christianity. So that to become a Christian, you had to let go 
of all vestiges of Africa and become European, become New Englanders and worship 
like New England, worship God properly and right. Well, that shame was a part of 
the shame that many Africans in the '60s and the '70s were feeling.

Dr Reuben Sheares is my predecessor -- he was the interim pastor at Trinity -- 
coined the phrase "unashamedly black," where blacks coming outta the '60s were 
no longer ashamed of being black people, nor did they have to apologize for 
being Christians. Because many persons in the African-American community were 
teasing us, Christians, of being a white man's religion. And no, we're not 
ashamed of Christianity. And we don't have to apologize for who we are as 
African-Americans. So that, I think, is what Marty was talking about.

BILL MOYERS: So, when Trinity Church says it is unashamedly black and 
unapologetically Christian, is it embracing a race-based theology?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No, it is not. It is embracing Christianity without giving up 
Africanity. A lotta the missionaries were going to other countries assuming that 
our culture is superior, that you have no culture. And to be a Christian, you 
must be like us. Right now, you can go to Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and see 
Christians in 140-degree weather. They have to have on a tie. Because that's 
what it means to be a Christian. Well, it's that kind of assuming that our 
culture, "We have the only sacred music. You must sing our music. You must use a 
pipe organ. You cannot use your instrument." It's that kind of assumption that 
in the field of missions, people say, "You know what? We're doing this wrong. We 
need to take Christ and leave culture at home. We need to learn the culture of 
people into which we're moving, and preach the methods of Jesus Christ using the 
culture that we are a part of." Well, the same thing happened with Christians in 
this country when they said, "You know what? Because those same missionaries who 
went south, they didn't let us sing gospel music." That was not sacred--

BILL MOYERS: They were singin' the great Anglican hymns.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct, correct. And make sure you use correct diction. Well, 
the-- Africans in the late-- African-Americans in the late '60s started saying, 
"You know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." Even-- I was in Virginia Union, I was 
soloist at Virginia Union in the college, in the concert choir. We were not 
allowed to sing anything but anthems and spirituals. The same thing with the 
Howard University concert choir. The same thing with all the historical black 
choirs until '68. When King got killed, black kids started saying wait a minute. 
We're not givin' up who we are as black people to become-- to show somebody else 
that we -- in fact, the music majors at Howard when I was-- teaching assistant 
at La Vern they said to the choir director there, "We're tired of singin' German 
Lieder and Italian aria to prove to you that we-- you know, we can sing foreign 
songs. But we have our own music tradition." Prior to '68, there was no gospel 
music at Howard University. Prior to '68, there was no jazz major. The white 
universities are giving Count Basie and Duke Ellington degrees. We don't even 
the jazz course. We don't have blues. We don't have any of our music on this 
black college campus. Because the missionaries had not allowed us to teach our 
own music.

And at that point in history, all across the country and all across 
denominational lines, the-- the college-age kids started saying, no more. No 
mas. Nada mas. We're gonna do our people. We're gonna do our culture. We're 
gonna do our history. And we're gonna embrace it and not put-- to say one is 
superior to the other. Because we are different. And different does not mean 
deficient, that we just different like snowflakes. We're different. We talk 
about God of diversity? God has diverse culture, God has -and we're proud of who 
we are because that's the statement the congregation was making, not a 
race-based theology.

BILL MOYERS: So, God is not, contrary to some of the rumors that have been 
circulated about Trinity, God is not exclusively or totally identified with just 
the black community?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Of course not. God-- I think Jesus said to Nicodemus, "God 
should love the world," not just the black community-- that we have our church 
is what some would call multicultural. We not only have Hispanic members, we not 
only have members--

BILL MOYERS: When you said, "No mas," I was gonna say that's not a spiritual. 
That's not out of the spirituals or the blues.

REVEREND WRIGHT: We have members from Cuba. We have members from Puerto Rico. We 
have members from Belize. We have members from all of the Caribbean islands. We 
have members from South Africa, from West Africa, and we have white members.

BILL MOYERS: What does the church service on Sunday morning mean in general to 
the black community?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It means many things. I think one of the things the church 
service means is hope. That tell me that there is hope in this life, almost like 
Psalm 27 when David said, "I would have fainted unless I lived to see the 
goodness of the right in this life." Don't tell me about heaven. What about in 
this life-- that there is a better way, that this is not in vain, that it is not 
Edward Albee or Camus' absurd, the theater of the absurd. It is not Shakespeare 
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That life has meaning and that God 
is still in control, and that God can, and God will, some people of goodwill 
working hard do something about the situation. We can change. We can do better. 
We can change policy. We can look back and say, "Well, 40 years ago when King 
was alive, we did not have right before his death, a civil rights act. We did 
not have a voting rights act." So, change is possible. But I'm getting my head 
whipped. The average member in the black church five days a week, "tell me that 
this is not all there is to this." So, they come looking for hope. And as we've 
tried to do, move a hurt. People who are marginalized, marginalized in the 
educational system, marginalized in the socioeconomic system -- to move them 
from hurt to healing, that there is really is a balm in Gilead.

BILL MOYERS: Are you saying that the members of Trinity leave the world of 
unemployment, leave the world of discrimination, leave the world of that daily 
struggle and come to church for-

REVEREND WRIGHT: For encouragement, to go back out and make a difference in 
their world. To go back out and change that world, to not just talk about heaven 
by and by, but to get equipped and to get to know that we are not alone in this 
struggle, and that the struggle can make a difference. Not to leave that world 
and pretend that we are now in some sort of fantasy land, as Martin Marty called 
it, but that we serve a God who comes into history on the side of the oppressed. 
That we serve a God who cares about the poor. That we serve a God who says that 
as much as you've done unto the least of these, my little ones, you've done unto 
me, so that we are not alone. Because that same God says I'm with you, and I'm 
with you in the struggle. Our United Church of Christ says courage and the 
struggle for justice and peace that is an ongoing struggle.

BILL MOYERS: Lots of controversy about black liberation theology. As I 
understand it, black liberation theology reads the bible through the experience 
of people who have suffered, and who then are able to say to themselves that we 
read the bible differently, because we have struggled, than those do who have 
not struggled. Is that a fair bumper sticker of liberation theology?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think that's a fair bumper sticker. I think that the terms 
"liberation theology" or "black liberation theology" cause more problems and red 
flags for people who don't understand it.

BILL MOYERS: When I hear the word "black liberation theology" being the 
interpretation of scripture from the oppressed, I think well, that's the Jewish 
story--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Exactly, exactly. From Genesis to Revelation. These are people 
who wrote the word of God that we honor and love under Egyptian oppression, 
Syrian oppression, Babylonian oppression, Persian oppression, Greek oppression, 
Roman oppression. So that their understanding of what God is saying is very 
different from the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians. And that's what prophetic 
theology of the African-American church is.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. But talk a little bit about that. The prophets loved Israel. 
But they hated the waywardness of Israel. And they were calling Israel out of 
love back to justice, not damning--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: Not damning Israel. Right?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Right. They were saying that God was-- in fact, if you look at 
the damning, condemning, if you look at Deuteronomy, it talks about blessings 
and curses, how God doesn't bless everything. God does not bless gang-bangers. 
God does not bless dope dealers. God does not bless young thugs that hit old 
women upside the head and snatch their purse. God does not bless that. God does 
not bless the killing of babies. God does not bless the killing of enemies. And 
when you look at blessings and curses out of that Hebrew tradition from the book 
of Deuteronomy, that's what the prophets were saying, that God is not blessing 
this. God does not bless it- bless us. And when we're calling them, the prophets 
call them to repentance and to come back to God. If my people who are called by 
my name, God says to Solomon, will humble themselves and pray, seek my faith and 
turn from their wicked ways. God says that wicked ways, not Jeremiah Wright, 
then will I hear from heaven.

BILL MOYERS: One of the most controversial sermons that you preach is the sermon 
you preach that ended up being that sound bite about Goddamn America.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where 
governments change, God does not change. And I'm through now. But let me leave 
you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised 
of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate - the Roman government failed. The British 
government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union 
Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong 
Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina 
in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government 
failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the 
United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of 
Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to 
treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in 
internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent 
fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave 
quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in 
inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific 
experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal 
protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher 
education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The 
government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike 
law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless 
America; God damn America! That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God 
damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as 
long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!

BILL MOYERS: What did you mean when you said that?

REVEREND WRIGHT: When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances 
to government -a particular government and not to God, that you're in serious 
trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments 
lie. And those three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I 
was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since 
biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie. And 
when we start talking about my government right or wrong, I don't think that 
goes. That is consistent with what the will of God says or the word of God says 
that governments don't say right or wrong. That governments that wanna kill 
innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the 
image of God, you're not made in the image of any particular government. We have 
the freedom here in this country to talk about that publicly, whereas some other 
places, you're dead if say the wrong thing about your government.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you can be almost crucified for saying what you've said here 
in this country.

REVEREND WRIGHT: That's true. That's true. But you can be crucified, you can be 
crucified publicly, you can be crucified by corporate-owned media. But I mean, 
what I just meant was, you can be killed in other countries by the government 
for saying that. Dr. King, of course, was vilified. And most of us forget that 
after he was assassinated, but the year before he was assassinated, April 4th, 
1967 at the Riverside Church, he talked about racism, militarism and capitalism. 
He became vilified. He got ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in 
the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped 
his bounds. He was no longer talking about civil rights and being able to sit 
down at lunch counters that he should not talk about things like the war in 
Vietnam. He preached--

BILL MOYERS: Lyndon Johnson was furious at that. As you know-

REVEREND WRIGHT: I'm sure he was.

BILL MOYERS: That's where they broke.

REVEREND WRIGHT: And that's where a lot of the African-American community broke 
with him, too. He was vilified by Roger Wilkins' daddy, Roy Wilkins. Jackie 
Robinson. He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he'd overstepped 
his bounds talking about an unjust war. And that part of King is not lifted up 
every year on January 15th. 1963, "I have a dream," was lifted up, and passages 
from that - sound bites if you will - from that march on Washington speech. But 
the King who preached the end of- "I've been to the mountaintop, I've looked 
over and I've seen the Promised Land, I might not get there with you,"- that 
part of the speech is talked about, not the fact that he was in Memphis siding 
with garbage collectors. Nothing about Resurrection City, nothing about the poor--

BILL MOYERS: Resurrection City was the march in Washington for the poor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: For the poor. That part of King is not talked about because we 
want to keep that away from the public eye, and the public memory, and it's been 
40 years now.

BILL MOYERS: What is your notion of why so many Americans seem not to want to 
hear the full Monty - they don't want to seem to acknowledge that a nation 
capable of greatness is also capable of cruelty?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think I come at that as a historian of religion. That we are 
miseducated as a people. Or because we're miseducated, you end up with the 
majority of the people not wanting to hear the truth. Because they would rather 
cling to what they are taught. James Washington, now a deceased church 
historian, says that after every revolution, the winners of that revolution 
write down what the revolution was about so that their children can learn it, 
whether it's true or not. They don't learn anything at all about the Arawak, 
they don't learn anything at all about the Seminole, the Cheek-Trail of Tears, 
the Cherokee. They don't learn anything. No, they don't learn that. What they 
learn is 1776, Crispus Attucks was the one black guy in there. Fight against the 
British, the- terrible. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men 
are created equal while we're holding slaves." No, keep that part out. They 
learn that. And they cling to that. And when you start trying to show them you 
only got a piece of the story, and lemme show you the rest of the story, you run 
into vitriolic hatred because you're desecrating our myth. You're desecrating 
what we hold sacred. And when you're holding sacred is a miseducational system 
that has not taught you the truth. I also think people don't understand condemn, 
D-E-M-N, D-A-M-N. They don't understand the root, the etymology of the word in 
terms of God condemning the practices that are against God's people. But again, 
what is happening is I talk a truth. Reading the scripture or the hermeneutic of 
a people who have-

BILL MOYERS: Hermeneutic?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Hermeneutic is an interpretation, it's the window from which 
you're looking is your hermeneutic. And when you don't realize that I've been 
framed- this whole thing has been framed through this window, there's another 
world out here that I'm not looking at or taking into account, it gives you a 
perspective that-- that is-- that is informed by and limited by your 
hermeneutic. Dr. James Cone put it this way. The God of the people who riding on 
the decks of the slave ship is not the God of the people who are riding 
underneath the decks as slaves in chains. If the God you're praying to, "Bless 
our slavery" is not the God to whom these people are praying, saying, "God, get 
us out of slavery." And it's not like Notre Dame playing Michigan. You're saying 
flip a coin; hope God blesses the winning team, no. That the perception of God 
who allows slavery, who allows rape, who allows misogyny, who allows sodomy, who 
allows murder of a people, lynching, that's not the God of the people being 
lynched and sodomized and raped, and carried away into a foreign country. Same 
thing you find in Psalm 137. That those people who are carried away into slavery 
have a very different concept of what it means to be the people of God than the 
ones who carried them away.

BILL MOYERS: And they say, "How can we sing the song of the Lord of a foreign land?"

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct.

BILL MOYERS: That chapter ends up with some very brutal words.

REVEREND WRIGHT: It does. And--

BILL MOYERS: You used them in one of your sermons--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes, I did. I was trying to show how people- how the anger- and 
we felt anger. I felt anger. I felt hurt. I felt pain. In fact, September 11th, 
I was in Newark. September 11th, I was trapped in Newark 'cause when they shut 
down the air system I couldn't get back to Chicago. September 11th, I looked out 
the window and saw the second plane hit from my hotel window. Alright, I had 
members who lost loved ones both at the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center. 
So, I know the pain. And I had to preach to them Sunday. I had to preach. They 
came to church wanting to know where is God in this. And so, I had to show them 
using that Psalm 137, how the people who were carried away into slavery were 
very angry, very bitter, moved and in their anger from wanting revenge against 
the armies that had carried them away to slavery, to the babies. That Psalm ends 
up sayin' "Let's kill the baby-let's bash their heads against the stone." So, 
now you move from revolt and revulsion as to what has happened to you, to you 
want revenge. You move from anger with the military to taking it out on the 
innocents. You wanna kill babies. That's what's going on in Psalm 137. And 
that's exactly where we are. We want revenge. They wanted revenge. God doesn't 
wanna leave you there, however. God wants redemption. God wants wholeness. And 
that's the context, the biblical context I used to try to get people sitting 
again, in that sanctuary on that Sunday following 9/11, who wanted to know where 
is God in this? What is God saying? What is God saying? Because I want revenge.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed 
enemies, these soldiers who captured the king, those soldiers who slaughtered 
his son and put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned the 
towns, burned the temples, burned the towers, and moved from the hatred for 
armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents, the babies, the babies . 
"Blessed are they who dash your baby's brains against a rock." And that my 
beloved is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are 
in 551 BC and that is where far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have 
moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We 
want revenge. We want paybacks and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.

I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or 
hear him? He was on Fox news. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox 
news commentators to no end. He pointed out. You see him John? A white man he 
pointed out -an Ambassador! He pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he got 
silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true. America's chickens are coming home 
to roost! We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the 
Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from 
their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in 
fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, 
non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with 
stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and 
hard-working fathers. We bombed Gadafi's home and killed his child. "Blessed are 
they who bash your children's head against a rock!" We bombed Iraq. We killed 
unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback 
for the attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers 
and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get 
back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than 
the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids 
playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians - 
not soldiers - people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state 
terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are 
indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back 
into our own front yards! America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence 
begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism. A White 
Ambassador said that y'all not a Black Militant. Not a Reverend who preaches 
about racism. An Ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and who's trying to get us 
to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now 
poised--

BILL MOYERS: You preached that sermon on the Sunday after 9-11 -- almost 7 years 
ago. When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they were upset because 
you seemed to be blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?

REVEREND WRIGHT: The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the 
communication perfectly. What is not the failure to communicate is when 
something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly 
over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That's not a failure to 
communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they wanna 
do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist 
from the New York Times called me, a "wack-a-doodle." It's to paint me as 
something. Something's wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with this country. 
There's -its policies. We're perfect. We-our hands are free. Our hands have no 
blood on them. That's not a failure to communicate. The message that is being 
communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites 
want to communicate.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think they wanted to communicate?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think they wanted to communicate that I am- unpatriotic, that 
I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at 
Trinity United Church of Christ. And, by the way, guess who goes to his church, 
hint, hint, hint? That's what they wanted to communicate. They know nothing 
about the church. They know nothing about our prison ministry. They know nothing 
about our food share ministry. They know nothing about our senior citizens home. 
They know nothing about all we try to do as a church and have tried to do, and 
still continue to do as a church that believes what Martin Marty said, that the 
two worlds have to be together-the world before church and the world after 
postlude. And that the gospel of Jesus Christ has to speak to those worlds, not 
only in terms of the preached message on a Sunday morning but in terms of the 
lived-out ministry throughout the week.

BILL MOYERS: What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound 
bites circulating as they did?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was 
untrue. I felt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very 
devious reasons.

BILL MOYERS: Such as?

REVEREND WRIGHT: To put an element of fear and hatred and to stir up the anxiety 
of American who still don't know the African-American church, know nothing about 
the prophetic theology of the African-American experience, who know nothing 
about the black church, who don't even know how we got a black church.

BILL MOYERS: What can you tell me about what's happened at the church since this 
controversy broke?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Well, the church members are very upset. Because they know it's 
a lie, the things that are being broadcast. Church members have been very 
supportive. The church members have been upset by behavior of some of the media; 
picking up church bulletins to get the names and addresses and phone numbers of 
the sick and shut-in, calling them to try to get stories. One lady they called 
in hospice. My members are very upset about that, our members are very upset 
about that. Our members are very upset about that. Our members know that this is 
what the media is doing. And our members know they're only doing it because of 
the political campaign. What have we gotten into here? People threatening, you 
know, Christians, some of 'em, threatening us, quoting scripture and telling us 
how they're going to wipe us off the face of the earth in the name of Jesus

BILL MOYERS: There had been death threats?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes, there have. At, both on myself and on Pastor Moss, and 
bomb threats at the church.

BILL MOYERS: Did you ever imagine that you would come to personify the black 
anger that so many whites fear?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No. I did not. I have been preaching as I've been preaching 
since I was ordained 41 years ago. I pointed out to some of the persons in 
Chicago who find all of this, new to them that the stance I took in standing 
against apartheid along with our denomination back in the '70s and putting a 
"Free South Africa" sign in front of the church put me at odds with the 
government. Our denomination's defense of the Wilmington Ten and Ben Chavis put 
me at odds with the establishment. So, being at odds with policies is nothing 
new to me. The blow up and the blowing up of sermons preached ten, fifteen, 
seven, six years ago and now becoming a media event, not the full sermon, but 
the snippets from the sermon and sound bite having made me the target of hatred. 
Yes, that is something very new and something very, very unsettling.

BILL MOYERS: I think of how important music is to your church at times like 
this, that's intentional isn't it?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It is. It's been a part of our tradition. And what I tried to 
do again in bringing together, how do you take a people who are hurting and 
bring healing? How do you take a people who are suffocating with hate and give 
them hope? Well, a part is through the musical tradition. One of the things in 
our tradition that I mentioned a moment ago that's so key is blues. The Blues. 
We learned how to sing the blues. That's why suicide rate wasn't much higher. 
'Cause we started singing the blues. Well people sittin' there every Sunday they 
know that tradition. Many of them, as they turn their keys off coming into 
church we're not listening to gospel music. They were listening to our music out 
of our tradition. Blues, Doo-wops, rock and roll. Anita Baker. Luther Vandross. 
That's our music tradition. That's a part of what helps us hold it together. So 
it's the same thing that helps them to hold it together out there. Helps them to 
hold it together in here

BILL MOYERS: What is it you said about suicide?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Blacks learn how to sing the blues rather than just giving up 
on life. A guy's wife walks out on him with his best friend. And he's crushed. 
So what does he say? Instead of going out and taking a gun and killing he sings 
a song. "I'm going down to the railroad to lay my poor head on the track. I'm 
going down to the railroad to lay my poor head on the track. "And when the 
locomotive comes I'm gonna pull my fool head back." I'm not giving up life over 
this. That life goes on beyond this. Pain is just for a moment. This whole 
notion about what we're going through is only a season. And this came to pass, 
didn't come to stay. That's what the blues do. And that's what the music 
tradition does. That's what the spirituals have done and that's what the gospel 
music has done, historically, in our church. So, yeah, trying to keep that as an 
integral part of worship is crucial for us.

BILL MOYERS: So what blues are you singing right now?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Don't know why they treat me so bad. I'm singing the sacred 
blues. The songs of our gospel tradition. That I'm so glad trouble don't last 
always. That, what man meant for evil, God meant for good. That what--

BILL MOYERS: What man meant for evil God meant for good.

REVEREND WRIGHT: That's a quote from Joseph, in the bible, the Book of Genesis.

BILL MOYERS: And what do you take that to mean?

REVEREND WRIGHT: That Human beings, many times, do things for nefarious 
purposes. And God can take that and turn something- make something good out of 
it. That, for instance, using that Joseph passage, when his brother sold him 
into slavery, and they thought, after daddy's gone, he's gonna get us. And 
Joseph reassured them by saying, "No, no, what you meant for evil, God has 
turned into something good. I'm not trying to do revenge or payback. In fact, 
restoration is what God is. And I restore you. As brothers, we're all brothers." 
That those sound bytes, those snippets were taken for nefarious purposes. That 
God can take that and do something very positive for it- with it. That, in 
Philadelphia, in response to the sound bytes, in response to the snippets, in 
Philadelphia Senator Obama made a very powerful speech in terms of our need as a 
nation to address the whole issue of race. That's something good that's already 
starting. That because of you guys playing these sound bytes now what's getting 
ready to happen as something very positive, and something very powerful that God 
can take what you meant to try to hurt somebody to help the nation come to grips 
with truth. To help a nation come to grips with miseducation. To help a nation 
come to grips with things we don't like to talk about. To help a nation--

BILL MOYERS: You know, you mentioned Senator Obama. In the 20 years that you've 
been your pastor, have you ever heard him repeat any of your controversial 
statements as his opinion?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No. No. No. Absolutely not. I don't talk to him about politics. 
And so here at a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he 
has to say as a politician. I continue to be a pastor who speaks to the people 
of god about the things of God.

BILL MOYERS: Here is a man who came to see you 20 years ago wanting to know 
about the neighborhood. Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion. He 
sought you out because he knew you knew about the community. You led him to the 
faith. You performed his wedding ceremony. You baptized his two children. You 
were, for 20 years, his spiritual counselor. He has said that. And, yet, he, in 
that speech at Philadelphia, had to say some hard things about you. How, how did 
it go down with you when you heard Barack Obama say those things?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We 
speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a 
politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different 
worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in 
Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded as a 
politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor.

BILL MOYERS: But even some of your admirers say it would be wrong to gloss over 
what Martin Marty himself called- who loves you- called your "abrasive edges." 
For example, you know, Louis Farrakhan lives in the south part of Chicago, 
doesn't he? You've had a long complicated relationship with him, right?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: And he, you know, he's expressed racist and anti-Semitic remarks. 
And, yet, last year-

REVEREND WRIGHT: Twenty years ago.

BILL MOYERS: Twenty years ago, but that's indefensible.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The Nation of Islam and Mr. Farrakhan have more 
African-American men off of drugs. More African-American men respecting 
themselves. More African-American men working for a living. Not gang banging. 
Not trying to get by. That's not indefensible in terms of how you make a 
difference in the prisons? Turning people's lives around. Giving people hope. 
Getting people off drugs. That we don't believe the same things in terms of our 
specific faiths. He's Muslim, I'm Christian. We don't believe the same things he 
said years ago. But that has nothing to do with what he has done in terms of 
helping people change their lives for the better. I said direct quote was what? 
"Louis Farrakhan is like E.F. Hutton. When Lewis Farrakhan speaks, black America 
listens. They may not agree with him, but they're listening.

BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that millions Americans, according to 
polls, still think Barack Obama is a Muslim?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It says to me that corporate media and miseducation or 
misinformation or disinformation, I think we started calling it during the Nixon 
years, still reigns supreme. Thirty some percent of Americans still think there 
are weapons of mass destruction. That you tell a lie long enough that people 
start believing it. What does the media do? "Barack Hussein Obama! Barack 
Hussein Obama! Barack Hussein. It sounds like Osama, Obama. That Arabic is a 
language. So that's why many people still think he's a Muslim. He went to a 
madrasah. What's a madrasah? I don't know, but I know it was one of those Muslim 
schools that teaches terrorism. The kind of I don't want to think, just tell me 
what to think mentality is why so many Americans still think that.

BILL MOYERS: Our denomination, the United Church of Christ has called for a 
sacred conversation on race in America. What are the steps that you think from 
all of your experience can be taken to move race relations forward?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think there are many - to start using Bill Jones' paradigm, 
about how one sees God. Your theology determines one's anthropology. And how you 
see humans determines your sociology. To look at how we've come to see race, and 
in others of other races, based on our understanding of God who sees others as 
less than important. Less than my people. And where in our religious traditions 
are there passages in our sacred scriptures that are racist? They're in the 
Vedas, the Babylonian Talmud, they're in the Koran, they're in the Bible. How do 
we grapple with these passages in our sacred texts? The same way you grapple 
with Judges:19, where it's alright for a preacher to have a concubine and cut 
her up into 12 pieces. We gotta argue with our texts that are, as we've been 
struggling with, battling with, wrestling with, anti-Semitic. The Christian, 
"The Jews killed Jesus." No, we gotta come to grips with, you know, these texts 
were written by certain people at certain times with certain racist 
understandings of others who are different. That different meant deficient. That 
doing that with adults and starting with kids. that begins the conversation that 
Senator Obama talked about that we need to have. And re-writing the curriculum 
in our schools to tell the truth in our schools.

BILL MOYERS: Jeremiah Wright, thank you very much for this opportunity.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Well, thank you for having me Bill. Thank you sir.


BILL MOYERS: That's it for the JOURNAL. We'll see you next week and on line.

I'm Bill Moyers.


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