The Separation of Church and State
Writing by treason on Thursday, 13 of March , 2008 at 11:22 pm
“Words matter. Words mean something.”
– Rush Limbaugh
“Actions speak louder than words.”
– Author disputed
“Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.”
– John 3:17,18
“Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”
– Mark Twain
Ah, all The Great Debates revisited. Church v. State. Words v. Actions. God v. Man. Old Testament v. New Testament. Right v. Left. The Big Question: Is God – if he exists – a political animal? I think many people believe, as I do, that God is just this seasoned, hardworking conservative guy who produced a good-natured, long-haired, sandal-wearing hippie son. They might not see eye-to-eye on everything, and certainly they employ different methods, but their relationship still works.
I’m reminded of growing up in Chicago in the 1960s with my lapsed Roman Catholic Italian-American mother and my sister, the Conflicted Conservative. A misanthrope, who often made Florence King look like Mother Teresa, she was also the most generous, kind-hearted, least racist person I’d known. But what she said sometimes didn’t always jive with what she did or how she conducted herself. Uh, perhaps she was nuanced.
A “for instance.” I’ve mentioned we lived in Rogers Park – a “safe” neighborhood. I imagine, looking back now, that this was code for a neighborhood that was white. In truth, it was mixed, diverse even by today’s standards, yet predominantly Jewish. Mixed, yes, but not mixed with blacks. This was Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago, remember, where whites lived on the North Side and blacks lived on the South Side. An undisputed fact of life. That was Rogers Park in the mid-1960s. Times have changed and so has the neighborhood.
Shortly before we left Chicago for Prescott, Arizona, my mother flirted with the idea of moving us into one of those new apartment buildings the city was putting up for lower income families. Read: The Projects. I clearly remember her enthusiasm. My older sisters were married, my brother was off to an Air Force base in Texas, and it was just me, my sister, my mother, two cats and a raccoon. She had paperwork and glossy brochures.
“We could live on the 20th floor! Or the 22nd! Or the 24th! How exciting would that be?”
My sister, about fifteen at the time and always the voice of reason where my mother was concerned, looked at me – I was almost nine – then at my mother.
“You want her raped in the elevator?”
Again, the most generous, kind-hearted, least racist person I’d known until I met T. He was eighteen, wore heavy metal T-shirts and ringlets down to his waist, and he and his brother had been raised by their single mother on the Berkeley campus. Polar opposites? Not really. I observed him at work and thought to myself: This boy is conservative and doesn’t even know it. And the first person I’d known who truly evaluated each person he met on the content of his or her character and not skin color, economic status, or nationality. Eighteen years later, that hasn’t changed.
And so it was interesting to hear his assessment of Michelle Obama after a CNN profile that likened her to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: “She’s ghetto.”
This statement had little to do with the color of her skin. I’ve been watching Mrs. Obama for some time and every time I see or hear her I’m reminded of one of the more colorful expressions my mother learned from my father: “Her shit don’t stink, but her farts give her away.”
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama was born in 1964 and raised on the South Side of Chicago. I was born a few years earlier and raised on the North Side. On the surface, one might think Michelle could have been envious of me. I was a white girl with straight honey-colored hair and (then) blue eyes and I lived in an apartment on a tree-lined block just steps from Lake Michigan. On the surface, however, I believe I probably would have been more envious of her. She had what I didn’t have: two parents with dual incomes, fewer siblings, and – frankly – probably less competition in school. At my school, I was up against some real super-geniuses – not only the Jewish kids, but also the Asian kids and a lot of the European immigrants. The most super of the super-geniuses, in fact, was a quirky, high-strung Scots-Irish girl named Karen. That kid was Bill Buckley in Mary Janes.
My parents had been separated as long as I’d known them. Michelle’s parents were not. My mother waited tables to support us. Michelle’s dad had a good job with the city and her mom worked for Spiegel. (I just loved the Spiegel catalog when I was a kid.) And Michelle only had to share her parents’ affection with one sibling – a brother who was very close to her age. Gosh, her life sounded so normal. So different from what I had and so close to what I’d always wished for.
Which brings us to the current issue of the Obamas and Trinity United Church of Christ.
“Racism is so deeply ingrained in this country that he (Barack Obama) could be flawless in terms of his policies. But he’s still a black man in this country which has a sorry history in terms of how it sees African-American males. That’s my 65-year-old, jaded perception of where this country is.”
– Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., March 2007
Relatively tame stuff compared to the videos from the pulpit. My, the response to those sermons! Shocking? No, disheartening. Obviously the people who are so wide-eyed over this never listened to Ray Taliaferro during the Reagan-Bush years. This is old hat, folks. And disheartening because it’s a clear sign that a large segment of the black community has not progressed. Yes, there is racism. But racism is changing. The country has been changing. Hearts and minds have been changed. Well, some, anyway.
What caught my ear when listening to Reverend Wright was the part where he chastised blacks for killing other blacks. What should be asked is this: If blacks shouldn’t be killing blacks because blacks aren’t “the enemy,” then who exactly is “the enemy” and who should blacks be killing? The Obamas have been attending that church for twenty years; perhaps they have the answer.
This “controversy” reminds me of when I was in class with a middle-aged woman who suddenly snotted up in the middle of the session and confided that her life had been turned upside down because the pastor of her church where she’d been a member for most of her life said something about homosexuals that she just didn’t agree with. With tears in her eyes, she asked me what she should do. Torn to bits, she felt that the right thing was to leave her church, but she had a history there, had made dear friends, and loved and respected many of the parishioners. These people were family. But then this something was said, and it challenged her beliefs. Clearly a problem for this woman because it made her question her religion, herself, and everything she had believed about her world.
I never belonged to a church or a particular religion, I told her, so I probably wasn’t the person who should advise her. I belong to a political party and I don’t agree with everything every member of it says, but that’s politics and not religion. If what your pastor said is so offensive to you, perhaps you should find a pastor who believes what you believe. You chose your doctor, your dentist, your hairdresser, and your bank. You can choose another church and still maintain the relationships with those people you consider family. If they truly are your family, they’ll understand and accept your decision. And if they don’t, then maybe you’ll learn something. But what do I know? I subscribe to a political party and not a church. Politics isn’t religion, right?
One would think. As for Reverend Wright, the more I listen to him the less he sounds inspirational and the more he sounds like a run-of-the-mill politician. Coincidentally, the same can be said of his longtime parishioner, Senator Obama.
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