Barack Obama could have gotten Jeremiah Wright fired.
Lost in all the furor over Senator Barack Obama and his Trinity
United Church of Christ pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is the
fact of life in UCC churches that the members of each individual
church have the power to hire and fire their own minister.
Specifically, Article 5, Section 18 of the denomination’s
Constitution of the United Church of Christ specifies that each
individual congregation has the right “to call or dismiss its
pastor or pastors by such procedure as it shall determine.” If one
is a member of any UCC church, in this case Trinity UCC, this fact
is well known. The minister of the church is hired by the members
themselves.
Fired, too.
The Obama translation: For twenty years Obama sat in the pews,
and as friends of Wright’s told the New York Post’s Fred
Dicker, there was no question that Obama knew Wright’s views. In an
explosive new revelation in last Sunday’s New York Post,
the paper says Wright “stole” his wife by derailing
the marriage of a church member when the member sought marriage
counseling from Pastor Wright in the 1980s. Instead, says the
Post, Wright used the opportunity to wreck the member’s
marriage and take the wife as his own. The member in question,
Delmer Reed, “told The Post he and his ex-wife went to Wright’s
Trinity United Church of Christ for counseling when their marriage
hit the skids over his demanding work schedule.” It also reports
how Wright managed this:
“Jeremiah knew all the weaknesses of the couple, and he
started focusing on the wife, her vulnerabilities, and started
doing things she wanted Delmer to do — spending time with her,
taking her to the movies, that sort of thing,” said [Harold] Davis,
who heads the Chicago branch of football great Jim Brown’s
Amer-I-can youth program. “Everybody knew Jeremiah took the man’s
wife,” said Davis. “It was common knowledge.”
Wright’s actions, if true, could easily be a firing offense in a
church. As a member in good standing of Trinity, Obama had the real
time ability to lead a move to get his pastor dismissed for both
the content of his sermons and his actions with the married couple.
He did not do so.
Instead, in a classic deer-in-the-headlights moment, Obama
froze.
What clearly seems to have happened is one of two things: Obama
heard Wright’s sermons over and over and found nothing that was a
firing offense. Ditto with Wright making a move on a fellow
parishioner’s marriage, a marriage Wright was supposedly trying to
salvage with counseling. Or, Obama looked around at all the people
jumping to their feet and applauding at Wright’s sermons — and
decided he just didn’t want to make the fight to fire the guy,
whether over the issue of his sermons or his conduct as a pastoral
marriage counselor. Why do the unpopular thing?
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN a member wants a minister dismissed? Well, just
about every minister in every pulpit has friends and admirers in
the congregation. As a UCC church council president myself and a
lifelong denomination member, I can say with certainty that UCC
ministers frequently have a shelf life. Over time they develop
non-admirers in the congregation. People who for whatever reason —
the minister’s sermons, his or her visitation skills,
administrative abilities, personnel decisions, political beliefs or
more — feel its time for the pastor to be replaced. In Wright’s
case, if the Post is accurate, Wright had even moved on a
member’s wife, broke up the marriage and married her himself. Thus
making the wife of the angry member the pastor’s wife, a position
that is nothing if not highly visible in any community. There’s no
way something like that, a serious ethical problem in a church,
could be missed by Trinity member Obama. Indeed, Harold Davis says
flatly that what Wright did “was common knowledge.”
Sometimes questions are raised by members after a pastor has
been in the same pulpit for decades, sometimes for as little as a
few years. But come these questions quite frequently do. When this
moment is reached, the minister’s opponents let the church council
know that they have a problem, and the issue is placed on the
council’s agenda. In one fashion or another, if the unhappy members
can get a majority — the minister is, well, toast. Done.
Fired.
Did Obama ever do this? Did he ever say to himself what he said,
at long last, in public the other day? That what Jeremiah Wright
was preaching was simply unacceptable? Did he understand that the
new Mrs. Wright was now the minister’s wife because, again
according to the Post, one member’s marriage had been
targeted by the pastor under guise of counseling? Did Obama ever
believe Jeremiah Wright’s conduct was beyond the pale and as
someone in a leadership role in the community he, Obama, would have
to do something? Did he go to his fellow members and say, this is
wrong, I can’t agree with this, Reverend Wright has to go?
Obviously, the answer is no.
Instead, at a minimum, Obama froze. He acted by not acting. The
three o’clock in the morning moment of those Hillary Clinton
commercials was at hand right in his own church and Barack Obama
rolled over and went back to sleep while the phone rang and rang
and rang for — twenty years.
THE PATTERN DEMONSTRATED here is something we now understand he has
exhibited in Washington. While Obama talks a great game about a new
politics, the hard fact is, as has been noted in other quarters, it
is John McCain with the reputation for reaching across the aisle to
solve problems. This is, of course, precisely what has caused
McCain so many headaches with his conservative base.
McCain-Kennedy. McCain-Feingold. McCain-Lieberman. And so on — and
on. But where is Obama in this equation? The answer is he is
nowhere. Just as he did at Trinity UCC, when there was a time to
act, Obama was nowhere to be seen. He froze. He sat there in his
seat in the United States Senate just as he sat in the pews of
Trinity UCC — and went along with Majority Leader Harry Reid and
the crowd.
The pattern is seen yet again in Obama’s relationship with the
Weather Underground’s William Ayers, Obama’s friend, fellow Wood
Foundation board member and campaign supporter. Contrary to Obama’s
assertion that Ayers’ actions weren’t relevant because he did them
when Obama was “eight” (his words), the fact that Obama saw nothing
wrong with Ayers’ presence at all these occasions says exactly what
the same thing it does about Obama’s do-nothing role at Trinity and
in the Senate. For Obama to protest Ayers’ presence on the Wood
Board, or in his own campaign for the Illinois state senate would
require Obama to disagree and feel a need to speak up. Whether he
agreed or not, Obama, in what appears to be a pattern, chose to do
nothing.
Knowing he had the ability to get Wright fired, Obama did
nothing. Knowing he could have easily refused to have anything to
do with Ayers, Obama did nothing. Preaching change in Washington,
Obama did nothing.
The media, still in full Obama-swoon mode, is giving him a pass.
Unwilling to even look into the polity of the church to which Obama
famously belongs, they have simply shrugged their collective
shoulders and looked the other way. Even some conservatives have
contented themselves with asking why Obama didn’t leave Trinity UCC
over Wright’s behavior, which is completely the wrong question. It
ignores the power equation in the relationship of church member to
pastor.
In a UCC church, as clearly outlined in the denomination’s
Constitution, the members rule. In Trinity UCC, Barack Obama the
member had the ability to get Jeremiah Wright fired for his
behavior.
He didn’t. So the real question here is:
Why?
Jeffrey Lord is the creator, co-founder and CEO of
QubeTV, an online
conservative video site. A Reagan White House political director
and author, he writes from Pennsylvania, where he is a member of
the United Church of Christ.
