Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. | Life, Love, and Legacy : Moving from Theory to Praxis

A BREATH OF FREASH AIR!

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:02:00 +0000

The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference just held its annual church leaders conference in St. Petersburg, Florida last month and what we experienced there is what can be called “a breath of fresh air!” 120 seminarians from 16 different seminaries attended this year’s conference.

“The next generation” of church leaders, pastors, ministers, seminary professors and church administrators shared the responsibilities of conducting worship, speaking as panelists, delivering homilies, presenting in plenary sessions and serving as workshop facilitators.

Their invaluable input and participation at this year’s Proctor Conference was a “breath of fresh air!”

Hearing young people’s perspectives is in and of itself an invigorating experience. Hearing from young church leaders who are committed to social justice and who are not falling for the ‘bling-bling,” personal advancement “hype” which is passing itself off as the Gospel of Jesus Christ is an inspiring experience and truly a “breath of fresh air.”

The sermons by Dr. Claudette Copeland, Father Michael Pfleger, Rev. Martin Espinosa and Dr. Renita Weems-Espinosa were not only powerful and prophetic. They were also challenging and life changing.

The plenary presentations of Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas and Dr. Clifford Jones and the two plenary panel discussions on Reclaiming our Youth (featuring Susan Taylor and Lezli Baskerville) and Intergenerational Prophetic Responses to the Katrina and Haitian Quake disasters (featuring Rev. Violet Dease of Abyssinian Baptist in Harlem and Eustacia Moffett of C.N. Jenkins Presbyterian in Charlotte, N.C.) were absolutely incredible.

To dialogue with the next generation of those who will be leading the Church in the 21st century and to hear their commitment to the poor, their passion for justice and their intolerance for the “pap” of the popular TV preachers put the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference “over the top” for me. It was a “breath of fresh air” and yet another example of God’s “Grace Notes.”

To see and to hear from a generation of young African American, European American and Hispanic seminarians who are serious about social issues, social policies and social justice makes those of us who have been “on the battlefield” for decades know that “our living has not been in vain.”

To stand with and publicly honor giants of the faith such as Dr. Jim Lawson, William “Bill” Lucy, Dr. David Goatley and the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, while nurturing and admiring the “young warriors” who come behind us made us all feel the Presence and Power of God in a unique and awesome way.

For the breath of fresh air that blew through the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference’s annual gathering and blew on the conferees last month, I say “to God be the glory for the things God has done!”

Honoring Living Legends Educating 365 [Press Release]

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:36:54 +0000

MEDIA ADVISORY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 1, 2010

When it comes to issues of social justice and empowerment in the African American community, three names may readily come to mind, Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina and the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Each has made a tremendous impact on the Black community and in the Black church, locally, nationally and internationally, and each has been dedicated to education as the most effective way of changing the plight of those who live on life’s margins.

Because of their legacy of educating, they are being honored as Living Legends for their unfailing work and dedication. Minister Farrakhan has spent decades teaching and transforming the lives of young African American men and women who were seeking direction. Father Pfleger has worked tirelessly with gang members, teaching against gun violence and often taking to the streets with parishioners to protect the community’s youth. And Dr. Wright has spent a lifetime teaching about the intersection of one’s faith, one’s history and one’s personal obligation to serve “the least of these.” All three have built and supported institutions that have been the backbone of transformation for our future.

“We wanted to focus on the most important aspects of these legends lives– educating and education – as we raise money to support the efforts to which they are most dedicated,” said Jeri L. Wright, president and CEO of Grace of God, NFP. “Because of their commitment to the education of people of African descent and people worldwide, we wanted to find a way to keep their legacies alive by supporting the structures, the schools and the people of Haiti, that are near and dear to their hearts.”

The “Living Legends Educating 365” evening will include a concert performance by the Grammy-nominated musician, Kirk Whalum and a book signing by Dr. Wright. Dr. Wright has just released A Sankofa Moment: The History of Trinity United Church of Christ. It is his first book that is not a compilation of his powerful sermons and is the first of three that he will be completing over the next few years. In A Sankofa Moment, Dr. Wright not only talks about the vast ministries he helped create, but also the church’s commitment to Africa and education.

The proceeds from the evening’s events will benefit Kwame Nkrumah Academy, Trinity Child Care Centers, Inc., Saint Sabina Academy and Yele Haiti on behalf of Minister Farrakhan. Dr. Wright’s books will be available for purchase on the night of the event, but they also can also be purchased online at www.jeremiahwright.com.

COST: General admission, $40; preferred seating, $75; VIP, $100—purchase tickets online at, www.jeremiahwright.com, or Safari Marketplace, 1403 West 111^th Street

WHO:
Honoring the Lives and Legacies of:

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam, Chicago, IL

The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., Pastor Emeritus, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, IL

Father Michael Pfleger, the Community of St. Sabina, Chicago, IL

Featuring 8-time Grammy Nominated Jazz saxophonist, Kirk Whalum, and S4: The Soulful Sounds of Shannon Stevenson

WHEN:
March 5, 2010
6:00 p.m. Reception and Book Signing
7:30 p.m. Showtime, Hosted by Cliff Kelly

WHERE:
Regal Theater
1645 East 79^th Street
Chicago, IL. 60649

Media Note: Please contact Rhoda McKinney-Jones at rmjwriter@vzw.blackberry.net with any media inquiries.

My Life’s Greatest Accomplishment

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:18:03 +0000

Dr. Marcia Alesan Dawkins, the Assistant Professor of Human Communication at California State University, Fullerton, has been commissioned by Salem Press to write an encyclopedia entry about me for an upcoming volume entitled “Great Lives From History: African Americans.” She asked me to give her a brief quote as to what I thought my greatest accomplishment in life was.

Here is how I responded to Dr. Dawkins’ request:

Some would say that my building two worship centers was my life’s greatest accomplishment. The first worship center I built seated 900 and was too small the first Sunday we moved into it in 1978. We had to put chairs down the very first Sunday we worshipped in it! The second worship center cost over 16 million dollars and contains over 10,000 square feet of space for doing ministry.

Some would say that my building two senior citizens housing complexes was my life’s greatest accomplishment. One of those comples houses 70 familes. The second complex is home to 50 familes.

Some would say that building a church-owned Federally Chartered Credit Union from zero assets to over 2 million dollars in assets was my life’s greatest accomplishment. Getting African American Christians to save in their own black savings institution was a major accomplishment in the eyes of many.

Some have even said that my preaching which produced the first President of the United States of African Descent was my life’s greatest accomplishment. Dr. Gardner Taylor, the Dean of Black Preachers in America, has honored my pulpit work by saying that had it not been for me, Barack Obama would not have discovered what it meant to be a Black Christian man in America. Many consider that to be my life’s greatest accomplishment — especially after the media tried to trash my sermons, my ministry and my 36 years of work in the local church parish setting.

I would say, however, that my greatest life accomplishment has been my helping young people to achieve goals they never dreamed possible by showing them the unlimited potential and possibilities God had placed within them when God created them. In my 36 years as a pastor, I saw over 400 members of the church that I served complete college. I saw 275 of those members finish graduate school and professional school. I saw them become physicians, surgeons, lawyers, judges, marine biologists, therapists, educators and professors in college, seminaries and graduate schools.

I saw 55 members of the church I served go to seminary, finish seminary and become ordained ministers in the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, the Baptist Church and the United Methodist Church. I saw those young people “dream the impossible dream” and I saw God make their dreams possible!

Those young people achieved those goals because I taught them to believe in themselves and to believe in the God who made them in God’s image.

That has been my life’s greatest accomplishment.

During this month of African American celebration, I celebrate these young people who hold our future in their hands as they keep their hands in God’s hand!

Jeremiah Wright
2.15.10

Ash Wednesday

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:00:28 +0000

We observe Ash Wednesday this month. Christians all over this world from Cape May, New Jersey to Cape Town, South Africa will pause on Ash Wednesday to pray prayers of repentance and prayers of rededication as they begin a 40 day period of reflection and renewal during the Lenten Season.
I encourage the people of faith who support our ministry to reflect on the deeper meanings of “repentance” this year as you observe Ash Wednesday and the Lenten Season. By that I mean spend some quiet time with God, yes! Engage in personal devotions and repent privately and personally for those acts you have engaged in that mar the image of the One in whose image you are made, yes.
But I mean more than that. I also mean use Ash Wednesday as a starting point and use the Lenten Season as a 40 day period to reflect on (and repent for) the corporate acts we have engaged in that have hurt the heart of God.
We as a nation need to repent for what we have done to the people of Haiti.
Read Randall Robinson’s book, “An Unbroken Agony” during this Season of Lent to learn more about what is not taught to you (or your children) in school concerning the egregious crimes committed by us against the Africans on the Island of Haiti from 1804 to 2010!
We need to repent for causing the conditions of poverty with which, in which and through which Hatians live every day. The causes for their poverty and their pain is a corporate act we have engaged in as a nation and as a people — sometimes knowingly and sometimes unconsciously!
An example of our “unconscious” engagement in corporate acts that need repentance is this: Every cruise we have taken on a Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship that has stopped on the “man made” island of Labadee is a corporate act of sin. Ever been to Labadee? Ever been there and done that?
Ever seen pictures of that “Caribbean paradise” called Labadee? Well guess what?
Labadee is nothing more than a slice of land on the island of Haiti! Labadee is a piece of property on the island of Haiti owned by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. (Purchased at a “steal” — literally!– from the people of Haiti)
Labadee (the “Caribbean paradise”) is sealed off from the rest of Haiti by a high wall and security guards. It is cut off from the reality of the misery in which the citizens of Haiti live. That misery is kept away from the eyesight of those who can afford a cruise and who are vacationing on the other side of the wall.
The cost of a Caribbean cruise, incidentally, is more than the average citizen of Haiti makes in two years; and the food thrown overboard into the sea at the end of each Caribbean cruise is more food than the island of Haiti sees all year long!
We need to repent for our corporate acts that have hurt and that continue to hurt the heart of God.
Our government has engaged in outrageously evil behavior towards Haiti since the days of Thomas Jefferson, yes. But our contemporary greed — even as African Americans — has contributed to the conditions that cause the “Unbroken Agony” through which Haitians live; and we need to repent privately and corporately for causing those conditions.
Repentance in the Biblical tradition means more than saying, “I am sorry.” It also means engaging in Restorative Justice (or reparations) as the story of Zaccheus teaches us in Luke 19.
We need to restore the money we have stolen from the people of Haiti; but we need to do more than that. We need to restore to the people of Haiti the dignity which our greed stole from them.
We need to restore the $31 billion white supremacy took from them and demanded of them for their having the audacity to think they could defeat the French and get away with it. The white Western Governments made the poor black Africans pay their former slaveholders back for what the slaveowners lost in revenue when slavery ended. Revenue, please remember, that white slave holders received from the slave trade and from slave labor! (Does anybody besides me see anything wrong with this picture?)
We need to restore the possibility for an even playing field for the Haitians by forgiving their debt completly! The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (both white) need to lift the insane and sinful trade restrictions they have imposed on Haiti; and they need to forgive Haiti’s debt completely — while paying them back what was stolen from them through the machinations of so called “free market capitalism” (spelled G-R-E-E-D) in the process.
That kind of Restorative Justice is TRUE repentance…at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Restorative Justice is true repentance personally and corporately; and I encourage every believer to reflect on that kind of repentace from Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday.
And remember as you reflect that the message of Easter is that God not only has been watching what we do; but that God will ALWAYS have the last word in our lives — in spite of the things (including the evil) we do!
Jeremiah Wright

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:13:36 +0000

TELL YOUR CHILDREN OUR STORY!
“If you don’t know where you came from…if you don’t know where you started on this journey, you will forever be headed in the wrong direction as you continue on your journey!”
That paraphrase of the warning given to us by the Association of Black Psychologists, 50 years ago, is a principle I encourage every person of African descent to keep in mind during “Black History Month.” (It would really be helpful if Afircan Americans kept that principle in mind every day of the year!)
Dr. Bobby Wright, one of the founders of A.B. Psy., used to say to the members of the church where I served as Pastor for 36 years (as he would come and lecture to us): “When telling your children your story, if you keep starting that story in slavery, you will forever have a slave mentality! Worse yet? You will pass that slave mentality down to your children.”
Our story that is celebrated this month has a chapter in it called “slavery” or the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, but our story does not start there.
Chattel Slavery is a reality, yes. The enslavement of Africans is an ugly experience, yes! But it is an experience we came through; our story does not start with that ugly experience.
Our story has a chapter called “segregation,” or “Jim Crow.” Our story has a chapter called “The Civil Rights Movement.” Our story has another chapter called “The Fight for Human Rights and Equal Rights.”
Our story has several other chapters which many of us here in the United States have never heard of — much less studied. (We have never heard of these other chapters because of what Carter G. Woodson called our “Miseducation!”)
Our story has chapters such as “Africans in Cuba,” “Africans in Haiti,” “Africans in Brazil,” “The Music of Africans in the Black Atlantic Diaspora” and “The Religious Beliefs of Blacks in the West African Diaspora.”
Our story has countless fascinating chapters, exciting chapters, intriguing chapters, heartbreaking chapters and inspiring chapters; but the chapter called “slavery” is only one of those chapters and our story does not start with that chapter.
I challenge each reader during this year’s celebration of Black History Month to read at least one book on some segment of the history, heritage, culture, or religion of Africans before the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.
Learn about where our story starts so you will know where we came from (Africa) in addition to knowing what we came through (slavery). I challenge you to learn that not only so you will know where we came from on this journey. (”We have come over a way that with tears has been watered. We have come treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered!”)
I challenge you to learn where our story starts not only in order to stop going in the wrong direction as you continue on your journey.

I also challenge you to learn where our story starts so you can get our story straight! “If you don’t have the story straight, then you can’t tell the story right!”

Jeremiah Wright

Delayed Release Date

admin — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:35:23 +0000

My newest book, “A Sankofa Moment,” was supposed to be released on January 16th — both the print version and the CD (audio) version. On January 2nd, however, one of my play daughters, Vanessa Cosby, was found dead in her home! Vanessa and my daughter, Janet, went to school together. Vanessa was just 45 years old.
Vanessa’s mother works in our church’s Day Care Center. She, my daughter, Jeri, and the police broke into Vanessa’s home last Saturday (the 2nd) after they could not reach Vanessa by phone (and saw her car in her garage); and her mother and my daughter found the body!
Vanessa is Rev. Dr. Marcus Cosby’s sister! Her visitation is today, January 7th. Her funeral is tomorrow, January 8th and her remains will be buried on Saturday morning, January 9th.
Both of my oldest daughters and I have been dealing with the funeral arrangements since this past weekend. Rev. Cosby has asked me to do the eulogy; and as a result, all other work (like proofreading, readying manuscripts for publication and recording the audio version of the book) have stopped!

Right now we are shooting for a February 1st release date and I thank you for your understanding and your prayers during this very sad and painful season.
Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr

Happy New Year

admin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:54:36 +0000

God has given us another year and for that I am grateful. We start a new decade and we do not start it alone. Immanu-el (in Hebrew) means “God with us.” We start this decade with God.
We start the decade with God’s help, by God’s grace and because of God’s mercy.
As you walk daily with God it is my prayer that you will see God’s Providence each day and experience God’s presence each day.
We have many tasks and many challenges ahead of us in 2010, but the Good News is that we have God with us (Immanu-el) as we take on those tasks and face each challenge.
My prayers for you and yours in this new year (and decade) are the same as the Blessing of Aaron.
May the Lord bless you and keep you, cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you PEACE!
JW

“A Ray of Hope”

admin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:32:15 +0000

In the Christmas song, “O Holy Night,” the phrase “a Ray of Hope, the weary world rejoices” has particular meaning for me this year. My sister, Cynthia is confined to a wheelchair with Multiple Sclerosis. My sister, LaVerne is recovering from surgery with several pins in her arm from a fall she took two weeks ago. My daughter, Jeri, struggles with Graves’ disease.

My sister, Iva, has a son (Darnell) who is recovering from a grand mal epileptic siezure. My mother-in-law just buried her sister. My son, Freddy Haynes, just buried his aunt.

My cousin, Dennis Wiley, just buried his mother, his father (within a month) and his brother-in-law (the next month); and we as a nation are still bogged down in two wars we should not be in! Over 5,000 American boys and girls have lost their lives in those wars.

Yet the story of the birth of Jesus — God’s gift of Grace to this “weary world” — still sends a RAY OF HOPE through the murky mists of human misery. I thank God for that RAY OF HOPE and I offer it to you with the prayer that it might lighten your path as we head into a new year.