Highland Christian Center (United Church of Christ) will be hosting The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., the former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, during their worship service this Sunday, March 7th. 

As a minister in the United Church of Christ, I have great respect for the ministries offered by Portland’s Highland Christian Center and The Rev. Dr. Wilbert G. Hardy, Jr., the congregation’s senior minister. Dr. Hardy’s church is one of our city’s most important communities of faith. When we talk about building up the Kingdom of God it is easy to point to Highland’s ministries as an example of how Christians can come together to better a community. 

The same is true for Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. That congregation has been a leader in the fight for social justice and was built by Dr. Wright. Today the congregation is ably led by The Rev. Otis Moss III. 

Though I have been invited along with other clergy to attend the Sunday worship service with Dr. Wright, I will not attend. Dr. Wright’s efforts to build up Trinity United Church of Christ as a force for social change cannot and should not be forgotten. But his rhetoric and divisive actions during the past two years also cannot be ignored. During a time that our nation needs healing and reconciliation he has offered neither and in fact inflicted harm. 

Last summer, Dr. Wright made clearly anti-Semitic comments when he claimed “Jews” were keeping him from President Obama. Those comments led The Rev. John Thomas, the then-general minister and president of the United Church of Christ to say: 

"The General Synod of the United Church of Christ has consistently called on its members to speak and act in ways that honor God's enduring covenant with the Jewish people, that nurture deep relationships with the Jewish community, and that recognize how careless readings of our sacred texts, our own use of language, and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes can lend support to persistent anti-Semitism in our culture.” 

Other comments made by Dr. Wright in recent years have stirred controversy – and I have said clearly that some of those comments have been taken out of context for partisan political purposes – but some remarks, such as those about Jews keeping him from the president, cannot be swept under the rug. Neither can his 2008 claim that AIDS is a government plot (a message with damaging implications for the fight against HIV/AIDS). 

You can assume in a denomination as diverse as ours that some in the United Church of Christ will disagree with my opinion of Dr. Wright. Debate and dissent has always been a hallmark of the United Church of Christ and I welcome and value different opinions. Yet there are some statements that so cross the line that they should not be tolerated and those that say them need to be held accountable regardless of any good deeds they might have done. 

Obviously, I’m speaking in my own capacity as a UCC minister and not on behalf of the national offices of the UCC or the Central Pacific Conference of the United Church of Christ.