A modern-day prophet

Wow. I'm listening to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's interview with Bill Moyers, and highly recommend that everyone check it out. Seeing the controversy with his remarks and Obama in light of this interview makes me sad now. I suppose that's exactly how we would react to a modern-day prophet that tells us things that are difficult to hear. Granted, not all of Rev. Wright's statements have been factual, but I don't think that means we should rule out everything else he's said.

The interview is here. There are a lot things I'd like to post, but for now here's a quote from the beginning part of the interview:

Unfortunately, most churches now are "status quo." And so that, to the extent that they're not trying to feed the poor, they're not trying to hook up jobs and people, they're not concerned about the lowest, the least, the left out. They're not concerned about the youth, they're concerned about "Let me come here on a Sunday, hear something that tells me I'm ok, and I'm going to back to where I've been going. Don't rock the boat.”

[...}

[Martin Marty] put a challenge to us in 1970, late '69, early '70, I'll never forget. He said, "You know, you come into the average church on a Sunday morning and you think you've stepped from the real world into a fantasy world. And what do I mean by that?" He said pick up the church bulletin. You leave a world, Vietnam, or today you leave a world, Iraq, over 4,000 dead, American boys and girls, 100,000, 200,000 depending on which count, Iraqi dead. Afghanistan, Darfur, rapes in the Congo, Katrina, Lower Ninth Ward, that's the world you leave. And you come in; you pick up your church bulletin. It says, there is a ladies tea on second Sunday. The children's choir will be doing. He said, "How come our bulletins, how come the faith preached in our churches does not relate to the world in which our church members leave at the benediction?" Well, it hit me. And it hit me several different ways. Number one, I know there's a church publication, the bulletin, the weekly bulletin. But what about the ministry? And what about the prophetic voice of the church that's not heard? We're talking about things that our members are wrestling with a whole bunch of other things. And the sermons and the ministries of the church don't touch those things.

Streak shares his thoughts on the interview, as well, here: "I think I would take Jeremiah Wright any day."