There is still a nasty little residue lingering from the spiritual divorce between President Barack Obama and his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright.
Much like former presidential candidate Rev. Jesse Jackson did to former friend Min. Louis Farrakhan in 1984, Obama publicly excommunicated Wright in 2008 over his now famous proclamation “God d— America.” And Wright’s feelings, obviously bruised by the unceremonious dismissal from Obama’s inner circle, haven’t completely thawed out yet.
Speaking before the Turner Theological Seminary at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta recently, Wright took a subtle but undeniable swipe at the beleaguered president, who has been pelted relentlessly lately due to a variety of policy decisions.
In this case, Wright couched his discernable criticisms of the president within the theme of a speech based upon historical ignorance.
“I’ve spent 41 years of my life in the ministry — five years as an assistant pastor and 36 years as a pastor — our history and God in the centrality of that history while I was active in pastoral ministry. Why? Because I found out very early in my ministry that most of our children do not know our story,” he says. “They are not told our story. They are taught somebody else’s story. They are told his-story. His-story distorts our story. His-story destroys our story. His-story disses our story, cancels it out, makes it null and void, [and] makes it non-existent in the hearts, minds and souls of children of African descent. You end up with generations of children not knowing who they are, how they got here and what they are supposed to do, now that they have moved from being a Negro in the Big House to being a Negro in the White House.”
–terry shropshire
