Celebrating Jeremiah Wright

A Giant Among Us

The death of Reverend Jesse Jackson hit me very hard. He has been an inspiring icon since my teens, and for the last fifteen years he has been my friend. His homegoing services wonderfully reflected his multifaceted greatness. I am gratified that his many contributions to our nation are finally being given the acknowledgment they deserve. I only wish the celebrations of his life and work had occurred during his lifetime so he could have known how deeply he was loved and appreciated. Reverend Jackson’s death struck me in another way, too.

I began penning this tribute several days after Reverend Jackson’s February 17 death. Losing that great freedom fighter moved me to celebrate the life of another indefatigable freedom fighter still among us whose friendship, like that of Rev. Jackson, has honored and inspired me more than words can express: Reverend Doctor Jeremiah Wright. He has never been directly involved in electoral politics like Jesse Jackson, nor does he have the same degree of international name recognition, yet Reverend Wright has been a major source of progressive, even radical inspiration in churches of every size and denomination, especially black churches, for generations. It is with great love and admiration that I humbly offer him just a few of the flowers of recognition he so richly deserves while he is here to savor their fragrance.

Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright is the son of a respected old-line Philadelphia minister and a vice principal of the local high school. Yet, according to Wright, despite his respectable middle-class roots, in his youth he was a hard-headed rogue and rebel. (He is still hard-headed. That is one of his superpowers). He eventually enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as a trained cardiopulmonary technician for six years. On Reverend Wright’s office wall hangs a framed photograph of him monitoring the vital signs of President Lyndon Johnson during one of Johnson’s two heart surgeries while president. Beside that photograph hangs a personal post-operation note from Johnson thanking Wright for his role in Johnson’s successful medical care. After being honorably discharged from the Marines, as he endeavored to discern his next steps, Jeremiah Wright realized that his calling was to do as his father before him: to serve God as a minister of the Gospel dedicated to serving the needs of the people.

His realization was fortuitous for himself and for us, because for almost half a century the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., has been a giant of the African American church, the most important collective black institution in America. He has mentored and influenced some of black America’s most consequential black religious leaders and scholars, including deans and presidents of theological institutions, and a plethora of activist pastors and politicians, including the nation’s first black president. He has lectured at seminaries, colleges, and universities at home and abroad too numerous to name. He has been awarded eight honorary degrees, and has served as a trustee at several colleges and theological institutions. Jeremiah Wright is so widely respected that he was the only minister to be invited more than once to President Bill Clinton’s annual Interfaith Prayer Breakfast.

One marvels at Reverend Wright’s brilliance and the breadth of his erudition. He speaks seven languages, has published five books, and holds four earned academic degrees, including a doctorate in ministry. A gifted musician, he completed all the requirements for the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago Divinity School except his dissertation, which he put aside in 1975 to devote all his time to his pastorate of the Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago. Having begun his pastorate with 87 active members, by the time Wright retired in 2007 he had built a vibrant congregation of some 8,000 members, the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ denomination, with more than 60 ministries serving the church and its surrounding community. These included ministries for HIV/AIDS care, drug and alcohol recovery, hospice care, senior citizen health care and housing (two separate residences), a child care program (federally funded), a reading program for the poor, and 22 ministries for youths.

For the full 33 plus years of his Trinity pastorate, Reverend Wright was a dedicated servant leader. Unlike most megachurch pastors, he seemed to know by name all but a handful of his congregants. He made himself fully accessible to them, including sharing his personal email address with the entire congregation. Wright daily arose at 4:30 a.m. to respond to every one of his parishioners’ emailed questions, concerns and needs, no matter how small. If that was not enough, for years it was Reverend Wright’s practice to correspond with 30 incarcerated young men and young women per month. One of his prison correspondents was so inspired by Reverend Wright that after regaining his freedom, he returned to school, excelled as a student, and is now a practicing physician.

In addition, in 2003 he co-founded the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, one of the most radically progressive Christian organizations in America. Indeed, one of Wright’s closest devotees, the freedom fighting Dallas mega-pastor and current Chair of the Proctor Conference, Rev. Dr. Frederick Douglass “Freddie” Haynes III, recently captured the Democratic nomination to represent Texas District 30 in the US Congress. If Haynes’ general election campaign is successful, the influence of Wright’s uncompromisingly prophetic progressive vision of Christianity will be directly represented in congressional legislation negotiations.

I first many Rev. Wright in 1988, while a student at Princeton Theological Seminary. Arrogant wise-ass that I was (I said was!), thinking he was just another overrated preaching performer, I tried to stump him with a question I thought was profound at a dinner that black seminarians were holding in his honor. After he humiliated me with an effortlessly erudite response (my arrogance fully earned it!), I decided Jeremiah Wright would be a better friend than enemy. Despite that rough beginning, when I reached out to him a couple of years later, he graciously offered his hand in warm, generous friendship. In fact, at times his generosity has astounded me. One gesture in particular is emblematic of his profound generosity. When my first book, Living Water: A Biblical Novel, was published in 2001, I asked Jeremiah if I could begin the book tour at Trinity, which had come to feel like a second home to me. He graciously agreed, of course. I dutifully sent him a pre-publication copy a week before the event, not expecting him to have time to read it. But when I arrived at Trinity, I was astounded to find that not only had he read all 300-plus pages of the novel, he had actually culled from it a short, scripted play, which he enlisted several of Trinity’s teens to perform right there before the entire congregation! I am still in awe that in addition to his quite onerous church and community commitments, he made the time to craft such a special gift for me. For all my life I will never forget that gratuitously loving gesture. That is vintage Jeremiah Wright.

Yet to some degree his achievements, his loving generosity, his self-sacrificial service to church and community have been obscured since he became collateral damage in the right-wing’s preoccupation with vilifying any black person who challenges their political supremacy, Barack Obama in particular. There was no other plausible reason to attack with such malice a widely respected clergyman who has dedicated his life to serving others. Ferociously single-minded right-wing character assassins sifted through dozens of hours of Reverend Wright’s sermon tapes seeking anything they could use to discredit Obama by demonizing Wright. They settled on a sound bite that, when then violently wretched out of context, portrayed Wright, and Obama by extension, as racist and un-American. It is true that Wright is an uncompromising critic of white supremacy, as everyone who claims to follow the Gospel should be, and his sermonic offerings have passionately expressed this. Yet, this generous, loving man is neither hateful nor racist.

The Grammy Award-winning rapper and actor, Common, had been a member of Trinity UCC since childhood. The popular performer took umbrage at media portrayals of Wright as a hate-filled racist. He shared in a 2007 interview: “[Wright] never really was against white people or another race. It was more against an establishment that was oppressing people.” Indeed, those who knew Wright were baffled by the press’s portrayal of him as racist.

In fact, his denomination of choice, the United Church of Christ (UCC), is predominately white. Trinity has long welcomed white congregants. Significantly, during Rev. Wright’s tenure this included the presiding minister of the entire Illinois Conference of the UCC – a white woman. Wright is held in such high esteem by his ministerial colleagues that in March of 2008 a caravan of white UCC ministers from around the nation journeyed to Trinity to voice their support for him.

Jeremiah Wright was felled by a stroke several years ago. Although it limited his mobility and weakened his voice, he continued gifting the church world with his dazzling preaching and learned political commentary until a further decline in his health forced him to withdraw from public speaking. Yet his impressive intellect remains intact and luminous. And even though he no longer speaks publicly, his mere presence at events continues to inspire his many admirers.

The legacy of Jeremiah Wright’s courageous leadership, brilliant scholarship, and his archetype of a consummate servant pastor stands as an inspiring model for today’s ministers and for generations of church leaders to come. My own life has been immeasurably enriched by his presence in it.

Dr. Wright, as you relish the sweetness of the loving bouquet we lay at your feet, please know that the flowers you have planted will continue to bloom in untold lives for years to come, with a fragrance that is even sweeter.