Letters to the Editor
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Jeremiah Wright and the preaching tradition
Jeremiah Wright's "God damn America" sermon has perfectly standard Protestant themes:
1. He lists human empires (German, Japanese, French, and, in most detail, British).
2. He says that all failed to provide justice, because only God is just.
3. He says to the congregation that they shouldn't think that they are better than others, that their own country is no more just than the rest. (Hiroshima, internment of Japanese Americans, massacre of North American Indians...). In each case, he says "we" did these things, not separating black from white. He's not playing black victim here.
4. In this context, he brings up slavery and Jim Crow laws.
5. When he says "God damn America," he's being biblical enough. Consider the words of the prophet: "Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward" (Isaiah 1:4).
There's nothing remarkable here. It's got its loony side, but that looniness is straight from the Bible and from the religious tradition. I don't think it's at all surprising that McCain's preacher is just as loony.