On Black Churches

I don't know what type of churches the various black commentators have been attending but to suggest that the words of Obama's minister are the norm is highly offensive. In the majority of black churches I have been to what is discussed from the pulpit is God, if anyone has any doubt there are a wide variety of ministers speaking on the religious channels. These TV ministers are what most black church goers would consider the least conservative of most ministers. I have attended church at a store front church in San Francisco led by a black minister with a black congregation who I would seriously doubt never had a racial thought ever, though older I think he and his wife would concede that the United States had been good to them. I have attended a church for pure research, where I was tasked with learning about it's history and why it was established. In this church I was the darkest black there, many of the blacks looked like they could pass for white, but they were not and the soloist who was much darker than I sang like Marion Anderson. Race was not discussed here but the bible was. I have attended black church's in small town Virginia where the only thing discussed was the bible. I suppose the most radical thing I ever saw was the funeral of my Grandmother who was partially Indian and primitive Baptist and I watched what resembled a rain dance performed at her final rites, but white people were not discussed here. Our family was. I spent a lot of summers in black churches in rural Virginia and white people were not ever discussed except maybe one who gave my grandmother 10,000 dollars for her church building fund. I went on trips to amusement parks, and attended bible studies which I loved and these churches were no different from the military church I sometimes attended as a child of a military father which was largely mixed. The experience that Barack Obama is defining as the black church experience is just not a realistic portrayal of black religious life in America. I have also attended Urban churches in various parts of Atlanta, Nashville, and D.C. and the majority of them were biblical. I do know of a church that espouses the views of Jeriamiah Wright but people refer to it as a cult, not even a part of the Christian religion.

I heard the clips of Jerimiah Wright but I honestly don't consider him a spiritual leader, philospher yes, a man to lead my soul to glory no! I really don't think that Obama should tell American's that Jerimiah Wright reflects what goies on in black churches because what occurs in black churches is largely what occurs in white churches and I have been to white churches also and up until this poin tin history what I heard them talking about was the bible. However with the rise of evangelism and conservatism I have been hearing a loud discord of individuals representing white americans that I am not familiar with and never heard before first hand. It's like the folks came down from the hills with all of their rhetoric which is not bibical but divisive.

Finally in closing I was always taught that we are one body in christ regardless of our race.