Why did Obama choose Trinity?
Posted by: McQ
Obama has again repudiated the words of Jeremiah Wright, this time in much stronger words that before. But, as usual, the questions about the previous extent of the relationship remain.
Noam Scheiber at TNR's "The Stump" begins to peck at one of the questions, on a deeper look at the Wright/Obama relationship, which needs to be answered and to this point hasn't.
"Why'd Obama Join Trinity in the First Place?"
We know, having read some accounts that part of it had to do with gaining street cred with his work as a community organizer among churches. It only makes sense, and he was advised by a pastor to pick church if he wanted to be truly effective.
And there's a second theory which Scheiber points to as well:
Obama, as the product of a racially-mixed marriage, in which the black father was almost entirely absent, had spent his whole life groping for an authentic identity. Wright offered Obama both the father and the identity he never had.
In fact, I'd guess it was a combination of both - but there's more, and here's where it gets interesting. Scheiber quotes a passage from David Mendell's Obama biography that is revealing. First about Wright:
Wright earned bachelor's and master's degrees in sacred music from Howard University and initially pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago Divinity School before interrupting his studies to minister full-time. His intellectualism and black militancy put him at odds with some Baptist ministers around Chicago, with whom he often sparred publicly, and he finally accepted a position at Trinity. ...
So the aspect of black militancy, as we've seen it reflected in his words and, as he's admitted, is based in James Cone's "black liberation theology", was well known from the beginning. It is nothing new, just nothing talked about. Very few if any news outlets talk about this even while Wright continually touts the connection with Cone's theology.
Also note the claim to "intellectualism". Although for most, a pastor who continues to claim that AIDS was a government introduced disease meant to kill blacks, would hardly fall in the realm of an intellectual, apparently at the time he was considered more of one than most Chicago area black pastors. As you'll see in this next passage, that is one of the primary reasons Obama was attracted to the church:
Wright remains a maverick among Chicago's vast assortment of black preachers. He will question Scripture when he feels it forsakes common sense; he is an ardent foe of mandatory school prayer; and he is a staunch advocate for homosexual rights, which is almost unheard-of among African-American ministers. Gay and lesbian couples, with hands clasped, can be spotted in Trinity's pews each Sunday. Even if some blacks consider Wright's church serving only the bourgeois set, his ministry attracts a broad cross section of Chicago's black community. Obama first noticed the church because Wright had placed a "Free Africa" sign out front to protest continuing apartheid. The liberal, Columbia-educated Obama was attracted to Wright's cerebral and inclusive nature, as opposed to the more socially conservative and less educated ministers around Chicago. Wright developed into a counselor and mentor to Obama as Obama sought to understand the power of Christianity in the lives of black Americans, and as he grappled with the complex vagaries of Chicago's black political scene. "Trying to hold a conversation with a guy like Barack, and him trying to hold a conversation with some ministers, it's like you are dating someone and she wants to talk to you about Rosie and what she saw on Oprah, and that's it," Wright explained. "But here I was, able to stay with him lockstep as we moved from topic to topic. . . . He felt comfortable asking me questions that were postmodern, post-Enlightenment and that college-educated and graduate school-trained people wrestle with when it comes to the faith. We talked about race and politics. I was not threatened by those questions." ...
But more than that, Trinity's less doctrinal approach to the Bible intrigued and attracted Obama. "Faith to him is how he sees the human condition," Wright said. "Faith to him is not . . . litmus test, mouth-spouting, quoting Scripture. It's what you do with your life, how you live your life. That's far more important than beating someone over the head with Scripture that says women shouldn't wear pants or if you drink, you're going to hell. That's just not who Barack is."
So, per Mendell, having decided he needed the street cred, Obama was faced with picking a church which he would be most comfortable with. I.e. a church which would fit his liberal beliefs and, as Wright admits, most comfortably address his "postmodern, post-Enlightenment" questions.
Now I'll leave it to you to decide if this is "elitist", but it certainly is telling. It certainly confirms Billy Hollis's contention about where the left is today:
I have severe disagreements with conservatives, but I can at least find room for argument because we are both children of the Enlightenment. Today's left springs from post-modernism, and contains the internal contradictions of that philosophy as an integral component. You can't even argue with the left in a way they will accept unless you already accept the preposterous assertions of post-modernism.
That is the man described by the reverend he now denounces and claims isn't the "same man" he knew previously.
Says Scheiber:
So, if you buy Wright's account—and it rings pretty true to me—it was his intellectualism and social progressivism that won Obama over. Certainly it's hard to imagine that someone like Obama, who came from a progressive, secular background, would have felt genuinely comfortable in a socially conservative, anti-intellectual church. The problem for Obama is that the flip-side of these virtues was a minister with a radical worldview and a penchant for advertising it loudly.
Which, put another way, means that Obama's decision to join Trinity was probably the opposite of cynical. Trinity was the place where, despite the potential pitfalls—and he must have noticed them early on—Obama felt most true to himself.
Scheiber, apparently taking flak in the comment section, then tries to weasel out of it in an update:
Update: Just to clarify, by "felt most true to himself" I mean "most true to himself as a worshipper." The point is that the pastor who made him feel most welcome as a worshipper probably also made him pretty uncomfortable politically.
To which I say - nonsense. It was a fit in both areas at least at the time he joined. It is going to be extremely difficult, given Mendell's passages, for anyone to believe the fit wasn't almost perfect in both the spiritual and political areas. Because, in the beginning, Obama was exploring the spiritual, however, on the political side, he'd been acting on his beliefs for years. Wright, as anyone can see, comes as a whole package, and if Wright was indeed a father figure as well as a mentor, he pressed both the spiritual and political (again, look at the social concerns which attracted Obama to the church to begin with) with equal fervor.
He didn't show up at Trinity as a 'worshipper'. He showed up there initially to gain street cred to help him with his job. He chose a church that most comfortably fit his political beliefs before he ever began his religious journey. And that is why people continue to question his denials about not believing the things espoused by Wright when it is clear that what Wright is espousing isn't at all recent, but instead an integral part of the church Obama joined from the beginning.
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