The Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Republican Party (funny how those two organizations seem to fit together) have succeeded in characterizing the Pastor Jeremiah Wright as the new American BoogeyMan. By managing to decontextualize a few sound bits from a sermon he gave after September 11, 2001, in a nutshell they have managed to label him, and by association Barak Obama, as the voice of [both] Black Hatred of White America and Islamic Terrorism. By comparisons some of Dr. Kings speeches which castigate the Union for its racial inequality, its genocide of American Indians, and enslavement of Africans may be a bit tamer.

In short, the political strategy pursued by Clinton and the Republicans is to have this man condemned by playing on the fears of White America and disrupt the message of hope and change of Obama (which one hopes not to be a cynical hope). Two disclosures, I certainly am not a fan of the Christian hell fire and damnation sermons, that go on in either the White of Black Churches. I do not have any illusions that an Obama presidency would be significantly different than previous democratic failures, but since he takes less blame for supporting the politics of empire over the past eight years, by default [he] gets my vote.

The alarming fact is that in the age of Utube and FOX News that someone can edit and pervert ones words to the extent that nothing remains of the larger historical context in which they are embedded, and cause almost a whole nation to fear and hate a new boogyman. This should be a concern of any nation which calls itself a democracy; the failure of history. Here is Rev. Wright from an interview on 4/25/08 with Bill Moyers: ...    more »

Imho, this is an important article about the pluses and minuses of religion, an interview with a former nun who has had many deep experiences of what she writes. Highly recommended. ~ ronjon

Karen Armstrong is a one-woman publishing industry, the author of nearly 20 books on religion. When her breakthrough book "A History of God" appeared in 1993, this British writer quickly became known as one of the world's leading historians of spiritual matters. Her work displays a wide-ranging knowledge of religious traditions -- from the monotheistic religions to Buddhism. What's most remarkable is how she carved out this career for herself after rejecting a life in the church.

At 17, Armstrong became a Catholic nun. She left the convent after seven years of torment. "I had failed to make a gift of myself to God," she wrote in her recent memoir, "The Spiral Staircase." While she despaired over never managing to feel the presence of God, Armstrong also bristled at the restrictive life imposed by the convent, which she described in her first book, "Through the Narrow Gate." When she left in 1969, she had never heard of the Beatles or the Vietnam War, and she'd lost her faith in God. ...   more »