Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.
From Metapedia
Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. (born September 22, 1941) is the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), an Afrocentric church located in Chicago. He retired as pastor on Sunday, February 10th, 2008. Reverend Wright is closely associated with the family of Senator Barack Obama.
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[edit] Background
Wright was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Jeremiah Wright, Sr, was a Baptist minister. In 1959, Wright entered Virginia Union University, a historically black seminary, but became disenchanted and left in 1961 to join the US Navy. Wright then enrolled at Howard University where he received a bachelor's degree in 1968 and a Master’s degree in English in 1969. In 1975, Wright earned an additional Master’s degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School with a focus on Islam. [1] He received a Doctor of Ministry Degree from United Theological Seminary in 1990 (where he studied under Samuel DeWitt Proctor).
[edit] Trinity United Church of Christ
In 1972, Wright was accepted as pastor to Trinity United Church of Christ after several Baptist churches rejected him. [2] At that time, the church's membership totaled 87. Under his leadership, Trinity adopted the motto "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian" and has set out to make activism within and on behalf of the African American community a key aspect of the church's mission. It now has the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ with over 8,000 members. In 1993, Wright was named among Ebony Magazine's top 15 black preachers.
In 2007, Wright announced his retirement from TUCC, which will become effective in May of 2008. He held his last sermon on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 and will be on a sabbatical leave from the church from March until May. He is succeeded by the Rev. Otis Moss III.
Elizabeth Payne, 37, claims she had sexual affair with Wright in April of 2008 while she was an executive assistant at a church headed by Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a longtime Wright disciple snd protégé. When news relationship got our she lost her job, at Friendship-West Baptist Church, and her husband divorced her.[3]
[edit] Other work
Wright has written 4 books: What Makes You So Strong? (1993), Africans Who Shaped Our Faith (1995), Good News!: Sermons of Hope for Today's Families (1995, and What Can Happen When We Pray (2002). Wright is featured on Wynton Marsalis' album "The Majesty of the Blues" where he recites a spoken word piece written by Stanley Crouch entitled "Premature Autopsies".
[edit] Relationship with Barack Obama
The title of Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope was taken from a sermon written by Wright. Obama first met Wright and joined his church while he was working as a community organizer prior to attending Harvard Law School. Obama's connection to Wright first drew attention in a February 2007 Rolling Stone article which described a speech in which Wright forcefully spoke about racism against Blacks. Citing the article and fears that any further controversy would harm the church, Obama scrapped plans of having Wright introduce him at his Presidential announcement.
This only drew further interest into Wright's preaching of Black liberation theology which some critics say promotes "a sort of racial exclusivity". During the course of the campaign, Wright has also attracted controversy for his association with Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. Wright travelled to Libya with Farrakhan in the 1980s. In 2007, Wright addressed this by saying "When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit Colonel Gadaffi with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell." In 2007, Trumpet Magazine (published and edited by Wright's daughter) presented the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to Farrakhan, whom it said "truly epitomized greatness." Wright is quoted in the magazine offering praise of Farrakhan "as one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African American religious experience" and also praised Farrakhan's "integrity and honesty." In response, Obama noted his disagreement with the decision to give the award to Farrakhan; his statement was praised by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.
In addition, Wright has said that Zionism has an element of "white racism", and that the attacks on 9/11 were a consequence of violent American policies and proved that "people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."
[edit] See Also
[edit] External links
- Biography from Trinity UCC
- Biography from Corinthian Baptist Church
- Biography from The HistoryMakers
- SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH BARACK OBAMA'S PASTOR
- Rev. Wright on YouTube
- Rev. Wright preaches his last sermon
