Not everyone agrees with their minister

By Patricia Hunt
Published: May 9, 2008

The reasoning goes like this: Barack Obama joined a church whose minister, for a while, was Jeremiah Wright. Therefore Barack Obama agrees with Wright’s political and theological points of view. Huh?
I have been a minister for more than 30 years. I was minister of four churches in my first assignment, and I started a church for my second assignment. Most of the people in churches I served did not agree with me on a vast number of issues both political and theological. I counted many of them as friends. A lot of my Christmas cards go to members of churches I once served. They do not think like me or vote like me.
How many times have you said in the car on the way home from church, “Well, I certainly didn’t agree with what the preacher said today!” Early in my pastorate in West Virginia, I was doing a Bible study on the gospel of Luke. I had set forth in good, Presbyterian fashion what the author of Luke believed about something or other. One of my parishioners said rather emphatically, “I don’t care if that is what Luke thought. I don’t agree!” I was astonished. Can you do that? Can you disagree with an actual gospel writer? Apparently you can. A good Presbyterian did so on that day. I guess if you can disagree with Luke, you can disagree with your minister. Most people do.
What is disturbing to me about Jeremiah Wright is not what he said from the pulpit; it is the role he has decided to play in this presidential campaign.
I have a clergy friend in another denomination who had told me about one of his colleagues who had written a couple of books. I was at a conference hanging out by the cheese and crackers as usual when I spotted a name tag with this author’s name on it. I approached him and said we had a mutual friend. Did he know Cliff? “Oh, yes, Cliff. He is the only minister I know whose ego is the same size as the day he was ordained.”
It was true. Thirty years as minister of a large congregation had not inflated Cliff’s ego. And it is also true that Cliff is a rare bird indeed.
Jeremiah Wright is retired. He had his day in the sun, his years in the pulpit. He rose very high in his chosen calling. The church he served is large and has important people in it. One of those people is running for president. He could have simply stated that Barack Obama is a fine man, and he was fortunate to have had him as a member of his congregation. He could have said that the congregation of the church is enormously diverse, and it would be foolish to assume that any member’s viewpoints mirrored his own. But Jeremiah Wright could not resist the lure of national media coverage. He is willing to do damage to a young man’s aspirations to see himself on television.
Barack Obama is a Chicago politician. I am sure that he has liberal friends and conservative friends. He probably has friends who are crooks and friends who are saints. He has Christian friends and Jewish friends and friends who are neither.
The young people who have gotten excited about his candidacy have friends all across the spectrum too. They get this. They also profoundly disagree with a lot that goes on in their churches. I know because they tell me about it.
Older Americans are much more likely to have friends who are very much like them in race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, politics and religion, but most Americans cross over those lines to some extent. Americans have crossed over those lines better than any nation on earth. It is our glory.
I don’t know what kind of president Barack Obama might make, but I do know that assuming that the views of an egotistical old preacher are identical to his is just stupid. 
Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.