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Chopping Otis Moss
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“Like thieves who steal a car and cut it up in order to sell the parts, the radical right is now chopping up the sermons of Rev. Otis Moss III, incoming Senior Pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ, and trying to peddle the parts to generate new controversy,” declared a column in the Washington Post on Monday.
The column’s author, Susan Thistlethwaite, is the President of Chicago Theological Seminary. “Right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity used those same spare parts this past weekend to attempt a further political spin,” she said, indicating a NewsMax article and a thread in the Hannity.com forums that posted links to YouTube clips of Moss’ sermons.
To be fair, even a friendly reading of the NewsMax article does invite some incredulity. But as Thistlethwaite spends 500 words defending Moss’ analogies to thugs, pimps, and Tupac, it seems the columnist-seminarian misses what all the fuss is about.
Just as the media was moving on from the Wright controversy, Moss made several in-sermon gaffes that stirred up another hornet’s nest. “We have listened and watched as the wonderful work of our church has been vilified this week,” said Moss. “I guess we know a little something about crucifixion. This is an attack on the legacy of the African-American church.”
In other sermons, Moss repeatedly returns to themes of racial competition, implying in a number of instances that whites intentionally suppress the black population by holding them to inferior schools, insufficient health service, and inadequate legal representation. In particular, critics of Moss accuse him of emphasizing “the skin issue” as a metaphor to spiritual dominance.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe also reported Rev. Moss’ comments as harmful to the Obama campaign. “He came out last night and defended the old pastor,” Joe said of Moss. “He compared what they did to the last pastor to a crucifixion, he basically said, it’s not us, it’s the white media who is attacking us.”
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Topic: Campaign 2008, Front Page, The Nation |  |
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Keywords: barack-obama, Jeremiah Wright, Otis Moss, Trinity United Church of Christ |  |
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Soul searching
That church has certainly earned our increased scrutiny. And I dare say that the increased attention they are receiving has given them a desperately needed new motive for toning down the extremely hateful and racist rhetoric that has made them so famous.
When it comes to taking comments or making points out of context, no one is more guilty of this than Jeremiah Wright whose rash and hysterical criticisms of the USA were severely ripped out of their historical context or just made up out of whole cloth. There was nothing fair-minded about his anecdotal vitriol for America, so his disingenuous cries for “context” do not move me at all. Besides, his sermons are far worse when taken “in context.”
The continual harping of racial competition themes is a relevant issue.
The biggest thing holding blacks back these days is cultural issues. Non-american blacks are doing well (moving up the economic ladder, taking up those Ivy League AA slots, and such). American blacks lag behind those from the Carribean or Africa because of cultural baggage. And the cultural baggage is being filled with bricks in places like this church.
That Obama would be an active member of a racialial divisive church - not just under Rev. Wright but still ongoing, is something to consider about this candidate who claims to be a uniter.
Having watched the youtube entirety of the sermon posted in this article, I can’t say I’d feel comfortable with a member of this church as the President of the US.
Moss goes on at length about God giving people with “a skin condition” blessings from the enemy’s camp. We know Moss’ “skin condition.” But who is Moss calling his enemy?
KRM, you identified a real trend in higher education: “outsourcing” of Affirmative Action. But at the same time, if native born African Americans will not or cannot qualify for those coveted slots in the top schools I dont hold anything against those from the Carribean or West Africa
Sawgunner - I don’t hold anything against those non-American blacks who make use of AA either. But the concept was to help the poor oppressed and downtrodden descendants of the slaves, not foriegners who were held back by the legacy of slavery here. Those foriegners do show that it is largely a culture failure here that holds our blacks back.
Moss is absolutely right.
#6 DCLAwyer,
Thanfully, lefty’s are always wrong, about everything worth having an opinion about.
Thanks for reminding us. Without your erroneous assumption as input, we would not be able to tell right from wrong and might injure ourselves