So. This fine day finds the official website of the United Church
of Christ headlining “The
American Spectator Gets It Wrong.”
Really?
In the aftermath of the UCC’s Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s
much-noted statement that “them Jews” around President Obama
(this would presumably be White House chief of staff
Rahm Emanuel and advisor David Axelrod) were keeping Wright, the
President’s controversial former pastor, from speaking to the
President, the UCC’s Blogger-in-Chief the Reverend Chuck Currie
quickly put up a statement. As you can see, Currie pointedly and
quite correctly
condemned Wright.
Alas, the denomination president, the Rev. John Thomas, shimmied.
Instead of saying a word about Wright he issued a mushy
statement, quoted in full in Currie’s post, about the UCC and the
Jewish people. Clearly, as any reader of both statements can see,
the difference is quite vivid. I congratulated Currie for
speaking up forcefully on behalf of our common denomination,
observing that Thomas as church president should have said the
same.
This morning Currie denies there is any split between him and
Thomas on this -- yet, curiously, Thomas is still quieter than
the proverbial church mouse on the subject of Wright. It should
be noted that when l’affaire Wright surfaced last year, Thomas
hesitated not at all in showing up in Wright’s Chicago pulpit to
defend Wright. Indeed, the UCC website
headlined it this way “Church leaders defend Jeremiah Wright
against ‘character assassination.’”
Interestingly, Thomas was quickly out of the box with a statement
condemning the Holocaust Museum shooting. He rightly pulled no
punches: "This attack on the Holocaust Museum will only
heighten fears of increased anti-Semitic violence against Jews in
our country. This is why we must stand with people of the Jewish
faith in denouncing this brutal act." The UCC statement also
repeated support for hate crimes legislation, which, of course,
is predicated on the notion that a bigoted thought (hatred for a
group) should be prosecuted.
Wright expressed identically the kind of bigoted thought shared
by the Holocaust shooter, which spurs the felt-need for hate
crime legislation. And from the president of the UCC on such an
obvious moral issue inside his own denomination? Deafening
silence. No wonder Chuck Currie is antsy over there. The
American Spectator got Jeremiah Wright and John
Thomas exactly right.
