Moyers & Wright: Beyond the Soundbite

I left The Space (see post below) to rush home through our big thunder and lightening storm…headed for Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS…featuring an interview with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and looking for insights into… Black Churches, Black Theology and American History

James H. Cone’s quotation set the tone of Rev. Wright’s conversation with Moyers:

Black churches are very powerful forces in the African American community and always have been. Because religion has been that one place where you have an imagination that no one can control. And so, as long as you know that you are a human being and nobody can take that away from you, then God is that reality in your life that enables you to know that.

Moyers showed the entire sermon that has created such a firestorm and clipped to death. In context, it means something different from what the soundbiters would have us believe.

People, let’s use our critical intelligence here. Cultural critiques can come in passionate forms, but let us not condemn the messenger nor the message. Let’s examine what’s being said. Let’s examine the rhetorical history of the vehicle that delivers the message. Let’s drop our search for drama, spectacle, and sensationalism.