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Wright Questions
What the national press should ask Barack Obama about his former pastor.
By Peter Wehner
Posted: Monday, March 31, 2008
ARTICLE
National Review Online
Publication Date: March 31, 2008
Here are a set of 22 questions political reporters and other journalists might want to press Barack Obama to answer about his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the former senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago:
1. In early March you said your church was not "particularly controversial." Later in the month, after video clips of Jeremiah Wright had been repeatedly played on television, you admitted that you had heard Wright make statements in church that qualified him as a "fierce critic" of U.S. domestic and foreign policy and that "could be considered controversial." You also said you "strongly disagree[d]" with some of Wright's political views. Can you tell us what you specifically heard Wright say that you considered fiercely critical of U.S. policy, controversial, and with which you strongly disagreed?
2. During the approximately 20 years you attended Trinity United Church of Christ, did you hear Wright make comments or read things published in the "Pastor's Page" of the church bulletin that could be fairly deemed to be anti-American, anti-Semitic, and/or a "profoundly distorted view of this country" (to quote from your speech on race)?
3. When did you first become aware of the fact that in 1984 Reverend Wright traveled to Libya with Louis Farrakhan to visit Muammar Qadhafi? Similarly, when did you become aware of Wright's role in giving Farrakhan a lifetime-achievement award and that Wright referred to the Nation of Islam leader as a man of "integrity and honesty?" Did those things trouble you when you learned of them?
4. Did you ever, even once, have a conversation with Reverend Wright in which you expressed your concern about his rhetoric and worldview? If not, do you now wish you had? What ought to have triggered that conversation with Wright?
5. In the speech on race you delivered a couple of weeks ago, you said you could "no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community." Does that mean you believe Wright is synonymous with the embodiment of the black community, that they are one in the same? Is it your view that to disown any person who is black means you would therefore disown the black community? If so, does that mean you would be unable to "disown" someone like Louis Farrakhan? Are there any grounds on which you would disown Wright? If so, wouldn't that (by your own logic) mean that you would disown the whole of the black community?
6. On ABC's The View you said "had the Reverend [Wright] not retired and had he not acknowledged what he had said had deeply offended people and [was] inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church." Had you done so, how would that be different from "disowning" Wright?
7. Can you cite a single public statement in which Reverend Wright acknowledges that what he said deeply offended people, and was both inappropriate and a mischaracterization of what you believe is the greatness of this country? To what evidence of Wright's public contrition can you point?
8. When you/those on your campaign cancelled Reverend Wright's delivery of the invocation when you formally announced your run for the presidency in February 2007, what were the grounds for the cancellation? What did you know about Wright then that moved you to cancel his appearance?
9. With which elements, if any, of black liberation theology -- as represented by Reverend Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ -- do you strongly disagree? Do you think any of the core tenets of black liberation theology are racist? Are they consistent with, or fundamentally at odds with, your expressed desire to end racial divisions in this country?
10. Is there anything Reverend Wright has said in your presence that you fear will be made public and that your campaign is working to keep from coming out?
11. You have complained that America has been presented with an incomplete picture of Reverend Wright. Would you therefore urge Wright and Trinity United to make public all the sermons of Wright, as well as things he has written in the church bulletin and elsewhere, so we can see the full body of his work? And will you let us know, to the best of your ability, the dates you attended church services during the last 20 years?
12. Since the Wright story broke there seems to have been a concerted effort to keep Reverend Wright from speaking to the press or in public. If he is the man you says he is -- if the soundbites we have all seen are anomalous and the portrait of him is a caricature -- then why not encourage him to do interviews in order to set the record straight?
13. Do you think it was surprising or out of character for Reverend Wright to reprint an oped by a leading Hamas figure, Mousa Abu Mazook, in the "Pastor's Page" of Trinity United's church bulletin?
14. Do you consider Reverend Wright, within context and based on his public comments, to be anti-Semitic? What more would he need to say to cross that threshold?
15. Do you consider Reverend Wright, within context and based on his public comments, to be anti-American? What more would he need to say to cross that threshold?
16. Do you consider Reverend Wright, within context and based on his public comments, to be racist? What more would he need to say to cross that threshold?
17. Whom do you consider to be a more admirable and impressive figure and whose public words do you more closely associate yourself with: Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. or Justice Clarence Thomas?
18. If the GOP candidate for president had a close, intimate relationship of almost two decades with a pastor whose church provided shelter to homeless people, provided day care and marriage counseling but who was himself a white supremacist, asked God to damn rather than bless America, said that the United States got what was coming to it on 9/11, advocated conspiracy theories about genocidal policies being promoted by the American government, said that Israel is a "dirty word," believed it was a terrorist state and promoted the views of Hamas leaders, would that trouble you? And would you accept the word of the GOP candidate if he insisted that he was not sitting in the pews when those things were said and therefore claimed he ought not be tarnished by the association?
19. Have you ever heard things contemporaneously said by Reverend Wright that you considered as offensive, or more offensive, than what Don Imus said about the Rutgers women's basketball team (something you considered to be a firing offense at the time)?
20. In looking back on this whole matter, do you think you have made any significant errors in judgment regarding your relationship with Reverend Wright? To what degree are you responsible for this controversy? And have you been completely forthcoming in telling Americans about what you heard from Wright and when you heard it?
21. When Reverend Wright told the New York Times last year that if you got past the primaries he thought you might have well have to publicly distance yourself from him -- and your reaction was that you agreed -- what did both of you know at the time?
22. Will you answer the questions posed above? If so, when? And if not, why?
-- Peter Wehner, former deputy assistant to the president, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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The Quotable Cromartie
Recent clippings of VP and Senior Fellow. Michael Cromartie
On the new generation of evangelicals: "This new generation has the same convictions but without the edge. They may believe all the same things, but ... they've learned how to present themselves." (Washington Post, 3/6/04)
On politics and religion: Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said that "too often, at least in religiously conservative communities ... there seems to be a concern that we must first of all get the whole culture converted to our theology before you can work for public good." Such a conversion is "not going to happen," he said, so that the question becomes: "How do you find a public grammar, a public language in order to work with people who actually agree with you on the policy but don't agree with you on the theology?" (Washington Post, 2/20/05)
On J. I. Packer's book Knowing God: "Conservative Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists could all look at it and say, 'This sums it all up for us.'" (Time, 2/7/05)
Michael Cromartie: "The large evangelical populace in this country will cut President Bush a lot of slack. It's the self-appointed leaders in the evangelical movement who won't. I think most evangelicals are more tolerant, and understand political reality more, than the heads of organizations who try to speak for these groups." (The Bakersfield Californian, 11/12/2004)
On politics and religion: "Sure, you have a lot of progressive religious people and, politically, they are going to vote for Kerry. Your problem is that you have a small but significant cohort in the Democratic Party that is really anti-religious and doesn't want to bring religious values and norms into the public arena. That makes it difficult for people from a more moderate to conservative bent religiously to be around the party. They feel excluded and unwanted." (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/10/04)
On politics and religion: "Michael Cromartie, director of the evangelical studies project of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, said the religious left is preaching to the liberal choir, not religious swing voters. 'They already have this [liberal] vote,' he said. 'This National Council of Churches crowd is not about to vote for Bush, anyway." (Washington Post, 9/4/04, p. B9)
On natural law: "Michael Cromartie, who directs projects involving evangelicals at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, invoked thinkers like John Calvin and concepts like 'common grace,' all with impeccable REformation credentials. 'A proper appropriation of the natural law tradition,' Mr. Cromartie wrote, 'can provide a public grammar for making appeals in the public arena to people who hold diverse philosophical worldviews and presuppositions." (New York Times, 8/21/04, p. A15)
Michael Cromartie: "The debate evangelicals are having among themselves today is not whether Christians should be concerned for justice, which we should, but what role and how large a role government should have in creating that justice. ... The debate we now need to have is whether certain policies have created more justice for the marginalized, or have they made matters worse? Many eminent social sicentists think the latter." (World, July 3/10, 2004)
Michael Cromartie: "People don't want a President to think that every important decision has a stamp of God's approval and that God is always on his side. ... [Americans] want their Presidents to be pious but not self-righteously so. So there's a paradox, isn't there? A President has to seem to be relying on God's wisdom but not acting like all his decisions are God's decisions." (Time, 6/21/04)
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What is an "Evangelical"?
A thoughtful look at a complicated notion
Mark Noll, professor at Wheaton College, delivered a lecture on "Understanding American Evangelicals" at EPPC's 2003 conference in Key West, Florida. He provides the history of evangelical movements, discusses the number of American evangelicals, and takes the measure of evangelical hymns. An elegant and eloquent presentation for those curious about what it means to be an evangelical.
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