Acting White: Who’s Your Baby-Pastor???

Barack Obama’s ‘pastor disaster’ has me recalling the reverends I have known and how decisions to attend a particular church are inherently imperfect. First off, I have difficulty trusting pastors because I can count, on one hand, those who could come close to walking a straight path. Black, white, Catholic or Protestant, they are better at chasing skirts and money than keeping the devil away from the flock.

My favorite minister was a Japanese Presbyterian, Rev. Ichishita. He was a terrible orator, but I liked him mostly because my folks let me ditch school on some Mondays to go skiing with him, and he had no roving eye. There was a ‘white Jamaican’, Rev. Mullings who thought his light skin made him better, in my father’s opinion. My favorite priest was Father Verdieck S.J. a white, chain-smoking theologist who said I could make something of myself. I liked him, but he was exactly the kind of guy the church might send to some backward land to muscle the locals into seeing the Lord their way, or else.

Most people stick with a church, because members become family, warts and all, if only for one or two hours a week. Obama no more agrees with Wright than we agree with the people we marry, work for, vote for, associate with, or fight and die for. We ignore differences until we can no longer stand it. Everyone has their breaking point. I always wondered how non-racist whites could belong to racist country clubs. Sometimes the imperfect answer is that they just like golf - more than they care about certain racial inequality. Not pretty, but true.

For many, enduring insufferable ministers is part of the penance we choose to show God we are team players. But it is not only bad pastors, it can be bad singing, butt-aching pews, poor ventilation, misbehaving kids, dueling cheap perfumes, hypocritical doctrine or the constant haranguing for more money in the collection plate. All in exchange for the salvation of our mortal souls.

I think leaders choose churches to get leverage to lead, including when they are looking to break into politics. The bigger the church, the more votes in the bank. When people keep asking Obama why he stayed so long with Rev. ‘Wrongway’ Wright, I understand. You tune out the pulpit nonsense, you reprogram your kids on the drive home, you smile and enjoy the extended family-ness, you network those members who offer and/or want help, if just for that moment. During this time you are hopefully figuring out who you really are, because once the service is over you are back in the jungle, to eat or be eaten, walking that fine line.

People should give Barack a break - they know exactly why he stayed in Wright's church. That church helped him greatly. We all make these trade-offs every day of our lives. Some deals with the devil sink us, and should. Other's are just part of living and paint us as human. I won't go into Hillary's Bill dilemma, except to say that she would be nowhere without him. Meanwhile, the country crators. We need to move on.

James C. Collier

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