Is Wright Wrong? Part 3

For now at least, the mainstream media and the blogging world have, for the most part, left the Jeremiah Wright controversy behind. That's too bad in a way and it showcases the problem with what has become not a twenty-four hour news cycle, but a constant assault of headlines, sound bites, video clips, and rapid fire stereotyping often devoid of context or real analysis.

Before 1980, when TV network news was established as part of a pantheon of journalistic outlets, joining newspapers and radio, supplanting the latter and in some ways, supplementing the former, there was time to develop stories responsibly, covering multiple aspects. There was even a place for a dispassionate analyst to give nightly commentary, as was true of Eric Sevareid five nights a week on CBS News, his wise words treated almost like wisdom from Mount Sinai.

I'm grateful for the Internet. It allows for an increased public dialog and has made it possible for even someone like me, a preacher in a small Ohio town, to reach an audience I could not have otherwise reached. (And every writer wants people to read what they have written, no matter what other motives they may have.)

But the Internet of today is a bit like the media landscape of Europe in the 1500s, after Gutenberg's presses had started to make their presence and potential apparent, or of the young united colonies, then United States, immediately before and after the Revolution. In both contexts, pamphleteering, those eras' equivalents of blogs and YouTube videos, became major sources of information and ideas.

In the case of early-16th.-century Europe, the printing press and the wide distribution of his essays made Martin Luther, the Reformer of whose movement I am a part today, the very first media superstar, as others have pointed out. (That was also an era when copyright laws and royalties did not exist, proof that Luther cared not a fig about wealth, but simply wanted people to know that we are made right with God not by what we do, but by who we know.)

The Internet is a wild and woolly world. The conventional media, which includes the cable TV networks, feel a need to respond to and carry items making the news on the web in order to keep up.

But at times, this causes all of the media players--conventional and otherwise--to express opinions and pass judgments before facts have been established.

As I have delved into some of Jeremiah's Wright's thinking, my first impressions have been somewhat changed. I still think that Wright is a polarizing figure and that some of his opinions are indefensible. But, as I think my sharing of the actual content of his post-September 11, 2001 sermon demonstrates, that sermon, in any case, no matter what one thinks of the data he marshalls or the conclusions he draws, is well within the mainstream of Christian thinking, with no hint prejudices of any kind.

Even in saying that the 9/11 attacks exemplified our country's chickens coming home to roost, the military veteran who volunteered for several tours of duty in Vietnam, was not disparaging the United States, as he clearly was elsewhere.

In his comments on the first installment of this series, my colleague, Pastor Jeff, provides links to several communiques from Jeremiah Wright. They are disturbing and I will take a look at those in the next installment. As will become apparent, I abhor some of the things Wright said there and in other places. So much do I abhor them, in fact, that I cannot imagine being a member of any church pastored by Wright.

But I do hope that what I've written and will write about him, about preaching, and about the Biblical tradition of prophetic preaching, will serve as a reminder, at least to anyone who shows up here, that the best thing we can do when an Internet tempest cranks up, it's best to bide our time, bit our tongues, pray, research, and reflect.

The Internet gives us access to all sorts of information and ideas. It also gives an unprecedented capacity to put in our own two-cents' worth. But we shouldn't allow the low cost of admission to cheapen our discourse. Even Jeremiah Wright deserves a fair shake.