Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
President, Chicago Theological Seminary
Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is president of Chicago Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. She has been a professor of theology at the seminary for 20 years and director of its graduate degree center for five years. Her area of expertise is contextual theologies of liberation, specializing in issues of violence and violation. An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ since 1974, the “On Faith” panelist is the author or editor of thirteen books and has been a translator for two translations of the Bible.
Pfleger: Bully in the Pulpit
I preached the first service at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago last Sunday. Rev. Michael Pfleger preached later that day.
I preached a sermon about how a sacred conversation on race has to have Christ at the center.
Father Pfleger, as America now knows, preached a very different message on race, one I greatly resent.
We in the United Church of Christ are trying to have what we call “A Sacred Conversation on Race” and I did not find Pfleger’s sermon to represent what we in the UCC are trying to do in having a sacred conversation.
Instead, Pfleger’s sermon was a bullying rant that was disrespectful of the members of Trinity United Church of Christ, disrespectful of Senator Hillary Clinton and really also disrespectful of Senator Obama and his consistent message of finding common ground.
This political campaign season often seems to me to be a kind of cultural theater, where we are seeing the end of one kind of politics, the politics of polarization (and even the religion of polarization) coming to an end and a new politics and religion of unity trying to break through. I have been reading Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Rick Perlstein, and this excellent book describes this historical trajectory we have experienced since 1972.
The idea that you should inflame people’s hatred of one another as a way to mobilize voters has been dominant since 1972 and very powerful. But it has produced near paralysis in Washington and disastrous foreign policy. But hate dies hard and while people want to find unity, they can easily fall back into divisive rhetoric, especially when it is disguised as humor. This is bad at a dinner party; in the pulpit it is shameful and wrong.
As a woman, I was offended by Pfleger’s mocking of Senator Clinton for showing emotion. Women in leadership get this double-whammy all the time; you have to be strong and not show emotion to be seen as a leader and when you don’t show emotion people say you are cold and unfeeling. I had hoped that stereotype of women had died in the 1970’s, but apparently not for Pfleger.
It is clear that Pfleger belongs to the old politics and religion of division. This is not a matter of age, particularly, but of mindset. Apparently the way Pfleger understands race or gender is through conflict and opposition, not through unity, common ground and certainly not as “sacred”. Dr. Dwight Hopkins, a faculty member at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and member of Trinity UCC offered a similar analysis of Pfleger’s sermon last Sunday. The Catholic priest’s charged remarks reflect an old-school approach. "One of the hallmarks of preaching is the speaker is expected to combine their interpretation of current events with the divinely inspired message from above," he said.
In the sermon I preached last Sunday, I used Paul’s teaching from 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul instructs the Corinthian church that they are one body in Christ and have to overcome their divisions to “put on the mind of Christ.”
That is what the Bible teaches us about a sacred conversation on race, on gender, on any differences. When we are in Christ we have to love our differences and come together as one body. Father Pfleger’s sermon was pulpit bullying of the church and bullying of good people who are trying to run decent campaigns for President. It was anything but sacred and it was certainly not biblical.
The good news is that the politics and religion of division is the past and with a lot of work, the politics and religion of unity and cooperation can be our future.
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Posted by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite on May 30, 2008 12:16 PM
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_brooks_thistlethwaite/2008/05/pfleger_bully_in_the_pulpit.html
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