Hypocrisy always involves the threat of embarrassment but, of course, that doesn't mean that Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama and the parishioners of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago are necessarily feeling caught today...despite Fox News' report that their church has received at least $15 million in taxpayer money....Records show this money supported a variety of outreach: everything from low income housing to nutritional programs for needy kids to money for HIV/AIDS education. Wright blames the government for intentionally infecting the African-American community with that deadly virus.
DePaul University journalism professor Laura Washington, who specializes in race and politics, said Wright is a hypocrite for taking money from the government. “On the one hand, he says, ‘God damn America’ and he says America is responsible for all the ills in the black community. On the other hand, he’s taking money from the same community he’s crucifying,” Washington said.
But another scholar who specializes in religion and politics says Wright never swore off government funding like ultra-nationalist Black Muslims have. Andrew Walsh, associate director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life with Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., said Wright’s practices fall in line with his preaching.
“Wright believes things like the government-funded programs are a necessary compensation for the legacy of white racism, part of what’s necessary to heal the wounds inflicted over four centuries on blacks. His niche is even more specialized– he does this sort of work in the context of white denominational mainline Protestantism, which, on the whole has welcomed both him and his message.”...
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