The Audacity of Hope

I'm not usually very good at hope. Indeed, I'm definitely a glass-is-half-empty kind of a gal. So today is the sort of day when I usually fall into despair.

There is so much to be unhappy about. Barack Obama's pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright is shown on a seemingly endless-loop video tape denouncing America, and providing fodder for the universe of people determined to hate Obama. Turns out there are a lot of them. The drumbeat sounds. It's so unpatriotic. So un-Christian. So easy to condemn. As I read through all the self-righteous denunciation, look at the gleeful celebration that Obama's candidacy might be sunk, it makes me really despair about the state of America.

It's not that I think Wright's words aren't problematic. Obviously they are. But a true patriot, it seems to me, is one who loves our country, but who loves our country enough to admit that there are problems. And a true Christian, it seems to me, is one who can listen to things that sound so alien and so frightening, with a desire to understand before judging.

Wright sounds off about how America created AIDS to destroy people. An off-base conspiracy theory, to be sure. Completely false. But our own government allowed black men infected with syphilis in Tuskegee Alabama to remain untreated, just to see what would happen to them. Can we be real patriots if we are unable to admit that sometimes we are ashamed of our country? Can we be real Christians if we aren't willing to acknowledge that a people who have been subjected to the history that Blacks in America have experienced just might be a bit angry?

Wright points out that our country rained down death on ordinary citizens in Japan. Yes, we were at war. But that doesn't erase the fact that our great country used weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations. TWICE. A true patriot has to recognize that our country's actions have not always been morally pristine. A true Christian has to repent of our nation's destruction of so much innocent human life.

It's true that our nation is more than just its sins. And it is sad that in the video clips, at least, Wright seems to be more concerned with what is wrong in our nation than with what is right. There is an anger in the African-American community. And while I might understand where it's coming from, it's also fair to say that it's part of what makes it more difficult for our nation to begin to heal from the wounds racism has inflicted on all of us. Life is more complicated than "us good, them bad" sorts of thought, no matter which way that sort of thought runs. At the end of the day that's what's so sad about so much of the reaction. Bloggers stand on a soap box to denounce Wright for standing on a soap box to denounce. And there's a part of me that wants to stand on a soap box and denounce the denouncers of the denouncer. So it goes.

But I've decided on this last Friday before Holy Week to work harder on hope. There are some reasons to be hopeful, I think. First, there have been some thoughtful responses out on the web. Hilzoy has two posts on the subject that are well-worth reading. Donkelphant suggests that maybe it would be better to respond with a bit of grace. And even Powerline holds back, at least a bit. (OK, just a very little bit – but we're doing hope here). And a shout out to Talkleft, a generally virulent pro-Clinton site that explicitly decided to hold fire on this subject.

Second, by the time he got over to CNN, Obama was clearly articulating the desire to open up a discussion in America about the legacy of racism AND our desire to unite and move beyond it. There is an opportunity for something healing here. An opportunity for us to be truer Patriots, and for the Christians among us to be truer Christians. It takes audacity to hope for such an outcome. Especially for a pessimist like myself. But it's Lent. And hope is a virtue.