{"id":74417,"date":"2008-12-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2008\/12\/08\/religion-and-race-a-historical-and-contemporary-perspective\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:13:54","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:13:54","slug":"religion-and-race-a-historical-and-contemporary-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2008\/12\/08\/religion-and-race-a-historical-and-contemporary-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion and Race: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2008 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference<\/a> on religion, politics and public life.<\/p>\n\n

Eddie S.Glaude Jr., author of In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America<\/a><\/em>, discussed religion and race in America. Specifically, he described historical and contemporary appeals for religious pluralism and explored the ways these efforts have been undermined, particularly when they relate to race. Professor Glaude also examined the 2008 presidential campaign controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and spoke to the challenges President-elect Barack Obama might face when he takes office in January.<\/p>\n\n

Speaker: <\/strong>\nEddie S. Glaude Jr.<\/a>, Professor of Religion and African-American Studies, Princeton University<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Moderator:<\/strong>\nMichael Cromartie<\/a>, Vice President, Ethics & Public Policy Center; Senior Advisor, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life<\/p>\n\n

Navigate this Transcript:<\/strong>\nPresident-elect Obama’s religious tolerance speech<\/a>\nGovernor Romney’s religious tolerance speech<\/a>\nNeuhaus’ case for making religious commitments accessible to public reason<\/a>\nThe limiting nature of public arguments for faith communities<\/a>\nOverview of religious intolerance in American history<\/a>\nBlack power and black liberation theology<\/a>\nQ & A with participants<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Event Transcript<\/h2>\n\n
\n

MICHAEL CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 We are very fortunate to have Professor Eddie Glaude with us. I have a friend, a colleague, a professor of religion at Princeton who Eddie works with. When I called him and asked him if would Eddie be a good speaker in Key West, you\u2019d be glad to know, Eric raved on about you. So you owe him one.<\/p>\n

Professor Glaude is a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University. He did his Ph.D. at Princeton under Cornel West<\/a>, with whom he now team-teaches several courses. His most recent book is In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America<\/em>. We asked Professor Glaude to speak to this whole question of religion and race, put it in historical perspective and obviously bring it around to contemporary significance of our recent years in politics; and he readily agreed to do so. If you want to know more about Eddie, his bio is in your packet. Eddie, we\u2019re delighted you could be with us; thank you for coming to Key West. I know you are in the middle of exams at this time. He was able to work out something to be here, and I\u2019m grateful for that.<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/figure>\n

EDDIE GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. Thank you. This has been great, it\u2019s been wonderful, and it\u2019s going to be difficult to follow Brother Vali and that extraordinary conversation. It\u2019s kind of daunting to be in the room with the fourth estate. Or at least, as E.J. told me, a representation of the fourth estate. So my thanks.<\/p>\n

Let me give you a little backdrop to my remarks and in some ways, what drives what I\u2019m going to say. That has a lot to do with trying to figure out President-elect Obama\u2019s<\/a> appeal to religious liberty as he talks about religion and religious tolerance against the backdrop of a history of American intolerance to religious difference. How that intolerance played itself out: specifically in relation to race, or more specifically in relation to Jeremiah Wright<\/a>, and now in relation to this pressing question about which church will President-elect Obama attend.<\/p>\n

And so what I want to do is to tell a story \u2013 or, it\u2019s not quite a story. The talk is divided into three parts; I am a philosopher after all. I\u2019m not a historian, so I\u2019ve got to tell you what I\u2019m going to do, and then I\u2019ll do it. I\u2019ll tell you what I did, and then you tell me whether or not I did it well or not. So the first part is kind of philosophical. I\u2019m trying to think about appeals to religious tolerance or religious pluralism in relation to some notion of public reason and how such religious commitments play themselves out in the public domain. The subject of that section will be Obama\u2019stalk in June of 2006 and Governor Romney\u2019s<\/a> talk; both of whom appealed, although in very different ways, to the tradition of religious liberty.<\/p>\n

Then I\u2019m going to tell a brief story historically. A brief historical account about how this has \u2013 this notion of religious pluralism and the distinct ways we undermine it \u2013 how this has always been the case since our inception as a nation, particularly when it comes to race. At the end I\u2019ll glance at the difficult case of Jeremiah Wright<\/a> and the question of which church<\/a> will President-elect Obama attend. Is that okay? Now, I\u2019m also in the Baptist tradition, although I was raised Catholic and went to Morehouse<\/a>, so we\u2019re going to have to have dialogue. I\u2019m a professor, this is kind of like a seminar room, and we can talk back to one another, okay? So I\u2019ll have to get used to you typing as I talk.<\/p>\n

So let me direct your attention to two important moments during the presidential primaries. One involved President-elect Obama\u2019s fascinating talk<\/a> at the Call to Renewal<\/a> conference in June of 2006. The other is Mitt Romney\u2019s important speech<\/a> about religion in December of 2007. Both candidates sought to address the incredibly difficult topic of the role of religion in the public square. Obama\u2019s remarks served as a call of sorts to Democrats to take seriously religious commitments. He asserted the claim that folks like Alan Keyes<\/a>, or more generally the religious right, do not hold a monopoly on religion. It was okay, particularly for progressives, to declare one\u2019s Christian commitments in the public domain. His Christian commitments were even further specified in terms of the central and prophetic role of historically black churches.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Obama noted, \u201cI still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities.\u201d This is 2006; this is pre-Jeremiah Wright. \u201cBecause of its past, and in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man,\u201d Barack Obama goes on to say, \u201cI was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active hope palpable, an active palpable agent in the world as a source of hope.\u201d I won\u2019t linger here for the moment, but you can imagine where I will go with this quotation a bit later. Jeremiah Wright is coming soon.<\/p>\n

So Obama recognizes the power of religious belief in the lives of persons and grants that those beliefs animate, and in some cases ought to animate, public deliberation. But he insisted in this talk, which is really interesting, \u201cDemocracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values.\u201d So you could hold your commitments as long as those commitments are translatable into something that\u2019s more universal, that\u2019s not sectarian. In other words, religious adherents cannot retreat behind the inerrancy of their faith \u2013 the inerrancy of their truth claims in public. Those claims, like all reasons according to Obama, must be subjected to public scrutiny. And here Obama appeals to a grand tradition of religious pluralism that requires, in some significant way, a deliberative language that allows us to talk across sectarian differences. So even as President-elect Obama insists on the role of religious beliefs in the public square, he circumscribes how appeals to those beliefs must work in democratic conversation. I\u2019m not quite sure what he resolves in this move.<\/p>\n

Now, interestingly enough, Governor Romney made a similar move. Romney of course struggled mightily during the primary to shake off a standing suspicion, particularly among the base of the Republican Party, about his Mormonism. For many, Romney\u2019s candidacy was shrouded in the mystery of his religious commitments. Is Mormonism a cult? Will Romney be beholden to the religious leaders of his church? We\u2019ve heard these questions before. Many of you have covered them. He sought to allay any concerns about his faith by appealing to the legacy of religious liberty and pluralism in the United States. He insisted on the centrality of his faith to how he understands himself and the world, but that faith was consonant, in his view, with a commonly shared creed of moral convictions that define the nation.<\/p>\n

<\/a>As he noted, \u201cEach religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle,\u201d Romney goes on to say, \u201cIndeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it\u2019s usually a sound rule to focus on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition or civil rights or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.\u201d But that \u201cspeaking\u201d must exemplify a commitment to religious liberty and democratic value. So in similar ways, he makes a similar move to Obama. Now, I\u2019m not so convinced that either move \u2013 that President-elect Obama\u2019s take on the role of religious commitments in public deliberation clarifies much. In fact, his position \u2013 I\u2019m sorry that this is so academic, but I wanted to go through this. Is this all right?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 We\u2019re handling it fine.<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/figure>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Y\u2019all follow? All right, because you\u2019re looking at me like I\u2019m, like \u2013 well, anyway. All right, you go, brother? Okay, all right, there you go. Yeah, I feel better now. All right, good. All right, now. (Laughter.) His position sounds a lot like that of Father Richard Neuhaus<\/a>\u2019 in his classic or infamous work, The Naked Public Square<\/a><\/em> \u2013 classic.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Classic.<\/p>\n

<\/a>GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Infamous for some \u2013 in which Father Neuhaus argues, among other things, that we Christians have an obligation to translate our commitments into terms accessible as far as possible to our fellows who happen not to hold those commitments. Now, of course, there are different kinds of religious claims: those that reason is fully competent to justify and those that derive their force, at least in part, from revelation. So there are obviously enough, even among those faith communities that unite in resisting liberalism, different theological reasons for their positions. There may even be, in the end, substantive disagreement about policy outcomes based in those theological differences that many appeal, for example, to different sorts of authority to justify their public acts. For example, the authority of revelation ought to be singled out. So there\u2019s a sense in which Neuhaus and, if I\u2019m right, President-elect Obama insist that religious claims, or more specifically Christian claims that have public implications, must be accessible to public reason.<\/p>\n

Now, this may be a bit worrisome because it runs up against the stated commitment to religious tolerance and plurality that supposedly frame the discussion in the first place. Such a view denies an important plurality and the possible conflicts that might emerge from that among religious believers, who are themselves critical of liberalism. Now, what do I mean by that? That is to say, there are only certain kinds of religious commitments \u2013 those that can be justified by natural lawyers that can gain access to the public space. But those folk who justify their political positions in light of certain kinds of religious claims that are not subject to public reason \u2013 the authority of revelation according to Neuhaus and I believe according to Obama \u2013 they have to engage in some kind of translation or otherwise, they can\u2019t speak. This doesn\u2019t resolve anything. In fact, this is the exact spur in the side of certain religious communities to mobilize in light of liberalism\u2019s attack against it. Lauren, you had your hand up.<\/p>\n

\"Lauren<\/figure>\n

LAUREN GREEN, FOX NEWS:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh, that\u2019s fast.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, no, no, no, no, she was just getting in line.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh, she was just getting in line. Okay. See, it\u2019s a seminar kind of context. Okay, all right. She was like, that\u2019s a fast talk.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 You want to take interjections?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Sure, of course.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 On that one point, Lauren?<\/p>\n

GREEN:\u00a0<\/strong> I want to make sure this is clear what you\u2019re saying: You can\u2019t bring your religious beliefs to the public square unless you can translate it to an understanding of reason.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Public reason. But it has to be subject \u2013<\/p>\n

GREEN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Public reason, but there are many people in the public square that say that religion has no reason, so you can\u2019t bring your beliefs to the public square. And that debate is not yet happening.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, part of what I\u2019m trying to say here is that Senator Obama \u2013 then Senator Obama, now President-elect Obama, took himself to be making an intervention. And that intervention had everything to do with saying that Democrats can be believers too. The Christian right doesn\u2019t hold a monopoly on what it means to be a professed believer in public. And so he urges Democrats to take up faith claims. But then he says, you must take them up in a particular sort of way. That particular sort of way means that it has to be subject to a certain kind of public scrutiny. So I can\u2019t just simply say that X is wrong because the Bible tells me so. That\u2019s not enough. Yes?<\/p>\n

KIRSTEN POWERS, NEW YORK POST<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think what he\u2019s saying is that you can say X is wrong in your own life, you just can\u2019t say X is wrong for the government. We live in a secular society, we don\u2019t live in a theocracy.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> See, now we\u2019re getting to the point.<\/p>\n

POWERS:\u00a0<\/strong> So I think that I actually disagree. I think most things, at least as a Christian, in the Bible can be explained by reason. For example if you oppose abortion, I think you could make a scientific argument against it. You don\u2019t have to say it\u2019s because God says it, and I think that that\u2019s what Obama was appealing to.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Let me finish the argument, and then you\u2019ll see what I\u2019m doing. What I\u2019m trying to suggest here is that there\u2019s a way in which this appeal to public reason actually does a certain kind of work vis-\u00e0-vis a certain kind of religious expression. So if we begin to take, for example \u2013 and I\u2019m getting a little off track here \u2013 but if we begin to take the role of a certain kind of fundamentalist voice in the public domain, what footing might it have on Obama\u2019s view? Or has Obama in interesting sorts of ways, like Neuhaus, said that they can only talk to those who are similarly committed. As opposed to them talking to us in the public space. But we\u2019ll get to that so we can talk.<\/p>\n

<\/a>So it seems to me in the end that, like the political theorist William Galston<\/a>, Obama seems to argue that, \u201cIf religion is to shape public life, including public law, through the exercise of public reason, then it would seem that the content of public reason is in principle accessible to adherents of all faiths equally and to those who espouse no religious faith at all. If so, then it is hard to see how religion, as opposed to philosophical natural law, is playing a distinctive public role. On the other hand, if the content of specific revelation is to play that role, it can only be by breaching the boundaries of public reason as Father Neuhaus defines it.\u201d Given Obama\u2019s commitment to pluralism, he argues that we can only justify coercive public law across the boundary of diverse faith communities through public reason. Those who offer claims based, on revelation however, those claims are only relevant and institutionally binding to those who share in the commitment. Propositions based on revelation matter only within the relevant communities.<\/p>\n

So, in the end, only those Christians who can offer public arguments for their positions are allowed a public role. Others are relegated to their own communities, to talking with those, at least when they are invoking revelation or making certain kinds of faith claims, who share their commitment. And I think we should remember Father Neuhaus\u2019 words here, because they ironically informed President-elect Obama\u2019s position. \u201cA public argument is not derived from sources of revelation or disposition that are essentially private\u201d \u2013 Kirsten \u2013 \u201cessentially private and arbitrary. The perplexity of fundamentalism,\u201d Father Neuhaus writes, \u201cin public is that its self-understanding is premised upon a view of religion that is emphatically not public in character.\u201d Fundamentalist leaders rail against secular humanists for creating what Father Neuhaus has called \u201cthe naked public square.\u201d \u201cIn fact,\u201d he goes on to write, \u201cfundamentalism is an indispensable collaborator in that creation.\u201d So even though Obama and Romney assert the value of religious toleration and pluralism, they do so in a way that, in my view, constrains certain expressions of religious faith. And we have to talk about that constraint. Yes, Lauren?<\/p>\n

GREEN:<\/strong>\u00a0 I just wanted to add \u2013 (inaudible, off mic) \u2013 months ago about religion in the public square is that many people don\u2019t understand \u2013 are trying to say that some people have religious faith and other people don\u2019t. And what the discussion has never gotten to, which is what the religious right \u2013 I think religious people in general are cutting themselves off and shortchanging themselves and saying, wait a second, don\u2019t tell me not to bring my religious beliefs into the public square, because you\u2019re doing the same thing. We understand religious beliefs to mean a set of beliefs, whether you believe in a god or this or whatever, it is the same thing. So aren\u2019t religious people shortchanging themselves, and even Father Neuhaus doing the same thing, saying, we have to make it so that our religious beliefs translate into some kind of accessibility in the secular world?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Let me just say this. Time out, time out, time out. Could we do this? I think I know where the argument\u2019s going, I think we should let Professor finish the argument.<\/p>\n

GREEN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 And then at the end of the argument, have these interventions, if I may. I think we might have opened it up a little bit when you said it was a seminar, but \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh, my bad.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I want to hear you go ahead and \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 My bad.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> I want to go ahead and hear you finish the argument, because it\u2019s very intriguing and I think I know where you\u2019re going and \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay, let\u2019s see where we go. Let\u2019s see what we can do.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> And then I\u2019ll fit you all in, okay?<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/figure>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> You got it. You\u2019re the veteran. The last sentence I read was that even though Obama and Romney assert the value of religious toleration and pluralism, they do so in a way that constrains certain expressions of religious faith. Now, in fact, one could go as far as to question the distinctiveness of religious claims that are in fact accessible to public reason. It becomes very hard. And this is kind of muddled, but I just wanted to throw this out to be provocative. It becomes very hard, for example, to distinguish what kind of public work religious claims are doing if someone who happens not to hold those commitments still has access to them. So if as a Christian the beatitudes inform how I think about certain policy initiatives, and those commitments result in my support of policies that are compelling to my left-leaning, atheist, secular friend, it is difficult to see how religion is playing a distinctive role here. I\u2019m not quite sure what work religion is doing in this public sense.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s insistence on public accessibility results, again, if I\u2019m right, in religion doing very little work or certain kinds of religious claims doing very little work in the public domain, even as he\u2019s opening it up. Now, let me wrap this up really quickly, because I\u2019m beginning to ramble. In the end, appeals to public reason or universal value as a response to the diversity of religious claims \u2013 those who appeal to revelation, again, are relegated to the remainder of social space filled by diverse communities attending to their internal affairs \u2013 limit, it seems to me, religious voices. This is contrary to the stated aim in such a way that fails to address the dissatisfaction with public life of many members of faith communities; and it results in, it seems to me, oftentimes in an anemic conception of the public good. Beyond this, I worry that these attempts to tidy up the mess of democratic conversation \u2013 because this accessibility is an attempt to tidy up the mess of democratic conversation, especially when it comes to religious claims \u2013 might result in bad faith on the part of many who hold religious beliefs based on revelation and who nevertheless want to impact public life beyond their specific communities. I worry that the Christian, like my evangelical sister who believes that homosexuality is a sin and is prohibited by scripture, will not offer that as the reason for her opposition against same-sex marriage. But who instead will appeal to some notion of the sanctity of marriage. I worry that it will lead folk \u2013 decent folk with commitments that we may or may not agree with \u2013 to mislead in order to secure their desired ends. And to my mind, that would be a terribly unchristian result.<\/p>\n

So I direct your attention here because both President-elect Obama and Governor Romney appeal to a certain story about America\u2019s religious history in order to put forward this value of toleration and pluralism. I believe, like the scholar Robert Orsi<\/a>, I am convinced that American religious history is American political history and American political history is American religious history. They\u2019re intertwined. So this story is grounded in the toleration of religious differences; let\u2019s take this up for a moment. What is the typical story of America\u2019s religious beginnings? Now, as my good friend, the religious historian David Wills<\/a> writes, \u201cThe most common way of telling the story of the United States\u2019 religious past is to center it on the theme of pluralism and toleration, the existence of religious variety in America and the degree to which it has or has not been tolerated and even affirmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, there are several versions of this story. One version is that religious liberty was placed at the center of our nation\u2019s religious life the moment the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. Another is that the adoption of the Constitution and the passage of the First Amendment instantiated a normative religious pluralism in our nation; or the story goes that the Constitutional separation of church and state initiated a process in which the nation would come to embrace genuine religious plurality, and perhaps this embrace was made in the 1960s, \u201cwhen we were all feeling good about ourselves.\u201d But I must say that at no point in our nation\u2019s history, no matter how the story is written \u2013 and I\u2019ve tried to show this even in President-elect Obama\u2019s case \u2013 has the mere fact of religious plurality yielded an uncontested normative vision of pluralism. Rather, as Wills writes, \u201cAt every point, normative conceptions of religious plurality, which inevitably embrace some forms of religious belief and practice while excluding others, have been a central point of contestation.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>To be sure, in our nation\u2019s early history, Protestants had come to accept doctrinal differences among themselves as a kind of acceptable diversity, but rarely was this tolerance extended to others, like Catholics or Jews or Mormons on the same basis. When George Washington<\/a>, for example, assumed the presidency in 1789, many worried about the nation\u2019s commitment to genuine religious liberty. Could such a commitment survive the realities of politics? Roman Catholics were keenly aware of \u201cthe force of laws against potpourri and against receiving immigrants from Catholic countries.\u201d Some even wrote President Washington congratulating him on his election and inquiring concerning their status under a new form of government. Washington replied on March 1, 1790, that he hoped to see \u201cAmerica among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality.\u201d In response to Newport\u2019s Hebrew congregation, who wondered if the nation would continue to \u201coffer an asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every nation and religion,\u201d Washington replied, \u201cWe no longer speak of toleration but rather of inherent rights.\u201d And that \u201chappily, the government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.\u201d It\u2019s kind of funny, when you think about the moment.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s belief that an old age of intolerance had passed away, however, betrayed a na\u00efve optimism about this fragile democracy. I\u2019m reminded here of a powerful remark by the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth<\/a>. She said, \u201cI take hold of this Constitution and it looks mighty big. And I feel for my rights, but there ain\u2019t any there.\u201d So obviously, Washington knew of the many forms of religious bigotry in the new nation. Perhaps, like Jefferson and Madison, he hoped that enlightened persons would eventually shed such prejudices and be satisfied to practice their religion in private.<\/p>\n

But we know this isn\u2019t or wasn\u2019t the case. In many states, some form of establishment continued well into the 19th century. Connecticut and Massachusetts, for example, continued to encourage local governments to make suitable provision \u201cfor the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality.\u201d For these Congregationalists, the idea of a religious grounding in our public living was central to how they imagine the relationship between religion and the state. A holy commonwealth is the phrase that comes to mind.<\/p>\n

So what I\u2019m suggesting here, however clumsily, is that when we situate the discussion of religious pluralism within the larger context of American religious history, at least two themes emerge: First, we see the difficulties surrounding religious and cultural difference. Difference is not managed \u201cby a narrative of American triumphalism.\u201d We have difference erupting, disrupting a certain kind of American imagery. And second, we see religiously-informed efforts \u2013 I suppose this is part of our Puritan inheritance \u2013 to define and achieve some exemplary state of public morality. Now, one can immediately see that efforts to define public morality in terms of a specific religious tradition militate against affirming religious pluralism. In fact, such efforts often work to solidify the status of \u201cOther,\u201d capital \u201cO,\u201d for those from different traditions.<\/p>\n

But let me quickly mention a third theme that might emerge. What can be called, as David Wills, the historian at Amherst, says, \u201cthe encounter between black and white.\u201d Now you can begin to see, I\u2019m beginning to turn back to that body that Obama inhabits. Here we have a group of Christians \u2013 and we\u2019re talking about a particular religious tradition, obviously. We have a group of Christians who are for the most part within the dominant religious traditions of the nation. They are, at least religiously, a part of us. Yet because of their color, status as slaves and subsequently second-class citizens, they are often viewed as wholly other. What is interesting is how these peculiar modern folk to whom religious freedom was neither offered nor given seized upon the idea of religious liberty and forged an independent church movement. As the historian Will Gravely<\/a> notes, they \u201cappeal successfully and unsuccessfully in court for their rights to religious independence. The legal structures within which they worked were newly enacted so that they tested and expanded the state\u2019s role in religious litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The presence of black Christians in American religious history indeed complicates the story of our nation\u2019s religious past and present. That history, that religious history on the part of these black folk is crucial to how we tell our political history. All we need to do is think about, for example, that extraordinary moment in November of 1787<\/a> in St. George\u2019s Church in Philadelphia. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones \u2013 and these guys are literally praying at the altar \u2013 are snatched from their knees in the middle of prayer and told to go to what was called \u201cthe n\u2014 pews.\u201d They walk out, and as a result we see formed by 1794 the first African-American congregation in the city, St. Thomas Episcopal. Later on, we see the African-Methodist Episcopal Church<\/a> founded in the early part of the 19th century. Then later on we see African-Methodist Episcopal Zion formed in New York with James Varick<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Part of what we see here are the very ways in which race over-determined how one understands one\u2019s relationship to God and how that over-determination then impacted the very ways in which these particular Christians could articulate their commitments in public \u2013 precisely because race impacted the very ways in which they were understood to be Christian. There\u2019s a wonderful phrase by Howard Thurman<\/a> in which he says, \u201cThe slaves dared to redeem a religion profaned in their midst.\u201d And so Stanley Hauerwas<\/a>, the great theologian, was constantly looking back to first-century Christians to find a kind of authentic expression of Christianity when he could just simply look to these American slaves: the folks who were trying to reclaim, in interesting sorts of ways, the essence of the faith. And this tradition, in some significant way \u2013 remember, we have to understand African-American religion or African-American Christian churches in some substantive way as the site of black civil society because they are locked out politically, locked out economically, locked out demographically. African-American religious institutions become the site whereby the infrastructure of black communities begins to take shape, the germ of them.<\/p>\n

So education institutions \u2013 my own beloved Morehouse was founded in a Baptist church<\/a> in Augusta. We begin to think about voluntary associations, burial societies<\/a>: black folk who attended predominantly white churches could not bury their dead in the same burial grounds. So white supremacy cuts so deep that it even went to the grave. So part of this tradition of African-American Christian expression involves an institutional space that\u2019s reflective of a kind of marginal status. That institutional space bearing the imprimatur of a kind of evangelical tradition \u2013 there\u2019s this wonderful image, if you look at it \u2013 wish I had it with me \u2013 of the Great Awakening<\/a>. There is this interesting kind of interracial religious fervor that\u2019s being expressed, and you see white fellow brothers and sisters engaged in ecstatic worship. Right behind the picture of the pastor at the pulpit, or the preacher, are these African-Americans engaged in ecstatic worship as well.<\/p>\n

And so there\u2019s this intimate relationship that\u2019s kind of, shall we say, partitioned by the realities of race. Even though they are seen, they are not known. Even though they\u2019re seen, they\u2019re not known. They\u2019re wholly other. There\u2019s this tradition of Christianity within the United States, the African-American tradition that has this prophetic wing. It proceeds on the assumption that white Christianity is idolatry. The adjectives matter. There is an investment in whiteness that over-determines one\u2019s commitment to God. This tradition begins to define in interesting sorts of ways the African-American church that was once an invisible institution and in post-Reconstruction<\/a> becomes a visible institution. It is then transformed with the Great Migration<\/a> as these folks move from rural countrysides to urban spaces in the south: going from country-rural side of Mississippi to Mobile, Alabama and then moving from Mobile to places like Chicago, to places like New York \u2013 and having a different sound, a different timber. It was becoming in interesting sorts of ways this unique American expression. What\u2019s striking about the 1970s \u2013 I\u2019m skipping, trying to get to something here. What\u2019s striking about the 1960s and \u201970s, of course, is that this religious backdrop \u2013 the prophetic black church of the 19th century \u2013 takes on a much more pronounced role.<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/figure>\n

<\/a>And we see African-American religion informing African-American struggle in interesting sorts of ways. But there\u2019s a moment in the context of black power in which African-American Christianity is characterized as the religion of white folks, that it\u2019s conservative. And what do you see? You see people like James Cone<\/a> in 1969 beginning to translate the prophetic black church tradition into the idiom of black power. So he publishes a text in 1969 entitled Black Theology and Black Power<\/a><\/em>. He publishes it a year before Gutierrez publishes A Theology of Liberation.<\/a><\/em>This is really important, because everyone wants to say that black liberation theology is derivative of Latin-American liberation theologies, and that\u2019s not true historically.<\/p>\n

And what happens is that Cone takes the prophetic dimensions of black Christianity, and he places it in the language of black power where God is on the side of black people. Jesus is on the side of the oppressed; and wherever there is evil, wherever there are oppressed people, that\u2019s where we find Jesus. Jesus is not locked into some distant past; he\u2019s present in the lives of those who suffer. And so there is this interesting kind of a reinterpretation of the Bible \u2013 there\u2019s a high Christology in black liberation theology. There is a sense that this particular iteration of the black church tradition takes on a particular kind of life in light of the kind of register of African-American politics at the moment. Jeremiah Wright comes out of this tradition, and so I want to make a turn to him for a brief moment.<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s Christianity for some served as a proxy for the claim about Obama\u2019s otherness. So I\u2019m really struck. The argument is kind of loose; it\u2019s not really tight. Obama appeals to pluralism as a way to allow for religious belief, but then he sanctions, he cordons it off. He constrains it by appeal to public reason. You tell a story about religious toleration and pluralism in the United States; that story reveals a highly racialized religious landscape in which blackness and Christianity are disciplined in particular sorts of ways. We tell a story about how that particular form of Christianity erupts in the public domain to challenge the state in light of the second-class status of black folks. And then it gets rearticulated in a particular sort of way, let\u2019s call it black liberation theology. And so here we have Obama claiming in the beginning the power of the black church, and then here we have Jeremiah Wright coming back on the backside. I can\u2019t wait until we talk about this.<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s version of African-American Christianity bore the imprimatur not of Martin Luther King\u2019s<\/a> message of love but of the fiery rhetoric of black power \u2013 the effort on the part of black theologians to translate the African-American church tradition into the idiom of black power. And it\u2019s precisely in Obama\u2019s connection to the so-called \u201crabid sectarian voices of black power\u201d that potentially undermined for some his claims to universality. Remember Patrick Buchanan\u2019s<\/a> blog, \u201cA Brief for Whitey,\u201d<\/a> which said that we\u2019ve seen this before. This is just simply the shakedown politics of black power. He, that is Obama, unlike his marketed image, is really black. And is therefore a candidate only for them, because black candidates can only be niche candidates. We can only represent black people, right?<\/p>\n

In this instance, the theological orientation of Wright stands in for African-American Christian communities as such. How many times did we see, not only on the part of Wright \u2013 I\u2019m defending the black church \u2013 that the press represented in interesting sorts of ways Jeremiah Wright as a stand-in for African-American churches. And what is obscured by such broad strokes, it seems to me, is the amazing religious diversity of African-American communities. Part of \u2013 what we\u2019ve talked about last time, nuance and complexity \u2013 part of what we have to do is begin to tell a story about African-American religion that\u2019s not reducible to King. There\u2019s a story of African-American religion that actually accounts for people like T.D. Jakes<\/a>, that accounts for folks like Creflo Dollar<\/a> \u2013 people you might not know\u2013 for example, Carlton Pearson<\/a>. Some of you might know him. Or let\u2019s talk about someone like Reverend Ike<\/a> of the \u201960s and \u201970s. Reverend Ike actually lifted particular dimensions of his biography from Oral Roberts.<\/a><\/p>\n

There is an interesting cross-fertilization between certain expressions of African-American Christianity, particularly African-American religious fundamentalism, a story that hasn\u2019t been told, with mainstream white fundamentalism that goes all the way back to the \u201920s and \u201930s. But we can\u2019t tell that story because of the hegemony of a certain vision of what African-American Christianity is. That is, it\u2019s always already tied to a certain understanding of King, that prophetic tradition. There is much more diversity, even in the story that I told earlier. There is much more diversity there. And this becomes really interesting when you think about \u2013 just yesterday, I was reading an op-ed piece in The New York Times<\/em> by Caitlin Flanagan and Benjamin Schwarz. It was about the \u201cShowdown in the Big Tent,\u201d<\/a> about Proposition 8<\/a>. And folk are trying to figure out how could these black folk vote for Proposition 8 given this particular understanding of black Christianity? And we saw in the data, the Pew data<\/a>, how mainline black denominations are as conservative as Mormons<\/a> and Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses<\/a>. But there\u2019s a tendency to think that mainline black Christians are, by definition, progressive and prophetic.<\/p>\n

So we have to begin to disrupt a certain kind of narrative. Now, we see, I think a similar logic \u2013 and of course, all of this kind of just gestures to what we should talk about. We see a similar logic at work in the rather crazed attention \u2013 I\u2019m shifting \u2013 given to the question about which church will President Obama and his family attend? Will he join a black church or not, and what might it suggest if he does or does not? Such questions, I believe are freighted with the weight of our current national malaise, not just our economic woes. But there is the fact \u2013 and a dangerous fact it is \u2013 that we can no longer without fear of recrimination talk about race explicitly, at least when it comes to President-elect Obama. So the choice of place of worship, its cultural locus, becomes a critical site for the continued interrogation of his identification. Is he really black after all? And what better way to signal his true identity than his presence in a place, during the \u201cmost segregated hour\u201d<\/a> in American life. But if he decides not to attend a black church, learning the so-called lessons of his Trinity experience, is this an indication that we have truly arrived at a post-racial moment?<\/p>\n

The somewhat manic character of this hand wringing bears the burden of a historic neurosis: the fantasy of a black-less America. As Ralph Ellison<\/a> noted, not with a hint of the vitriol of Jeremiah Wright, \u201cIt is a fantasy<\/a> borne not merely of racism but of petulance, of exasperation, of moral fatigue. It is like a boil bursting forth from impurities in the bloodstream of democracy.\u201d This wishful fantasy of absolving our national sins by getting shut of blackness has reached a crescendo with Obama\u2019s ascendance, only to be snatched back to the ground by the ever-present realities of race in our daily doings, and, in this case, our worshipping. But as Ellison noted, and as I believe with all my heart in this most critical of moments, that the nation could not survive \u2013 I think this is true \u2013 the nation could not survive, \u201cdeprived of their presence because, by the irony implicit in the dynamics of American democracy, they, black folk, symbolize both its most stringent testing and the possibility of its greatest human freedom.\u201d And it\u2019s precisely within this paradox that we find ourselves at this moment; and once again as it has always been, or often been, religion stands as a primary space where the mess gets worked out.<\/p>\n

(Applause.)<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Thank you, doctor. Thank you.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Well, we have \u2013 that\u2019s a lot, and we\u2019re looking forward to getting into it here. And we\u2019ll start with Kevin; you\u2019re up first. Pull the mic and I\u2019ll point.<\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/figure>\n

<\/a>KEVIN ECKSTROM, RELIGION NEWS SERVICE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Just to follow up on what you were just talking about: about Obama and Prop. 8 and homophobia within the black church. Obama himself has been a little skittish on the gay question, and he doesn\u2019t want to get into it very much. But at the same time, he\u2019s also talked about when he addresses black clergy, he says that they need to get over their own homophobia. And they need to \u2013 there\u2019s work to do there in the black church. But if you look at the exit polls from Prop. 8, it was black churchgoers who really voted for this in whole heart. So I guess my question is, do you see any of that changing under Obama? Will he be able to move the black church on these issues at all? Will he even want to or try to? I\u2019m just sort of curious, with him in the bully pulpit, if any of this is going to change?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Given his skittishness, I don\u2019t think so. I think part of what needs to happen \u2013 and I\u2019ve said this publicly \u2013 is that there needs to be a much more vibrant conversation among progressive black Christians with other Christians who hold positions that lead them to vote for Proposition 8. We have a conversation within the black community that\u2019s driven by two extremes: revulsion or indifference. That frames how the discussion takes place in interesting sorts of ways within African-American religious communities. And this is particularly dangerous given the AIDS epidemic that\u2019s destroying communities across the nation \u2013 not to identify AIDS with gay communities. But there is a sense that unless we begin to have a much more vibrant conversation within black churches about sexuality, more broadly, we can\u2019t muster up the resources to respond to the epidemic or the crisis that\u2019s really consuming our communities.<\/p>\n

So that said, I don\u2019t know if President-elect or President Obama will lead the way in this conversation precisely because I think he\u2019s a bit skittish, not only on the gay issue. I think he\u2019s a bit skittish in terms of being identified with a certain, particular kind of cultural locus. That is to say, if he finds himself in the middle of that discussion, he\u2019s going to find himself in the middle of a much broader discussion about race. I think there\u2019s a kind of general evasiveness vis-\u00e0-vis this issue. This is why the issue of which church he\u2019s going to attend is so freighted, it seems to me.<\/p>\n

Part of what I\u2019m suggesting here is that I don\u2019t want to suggest to someone like my sister that she cannot hold the position that she holds, and she cannot make the argument in the way that she wants to make the argument about the position she wants to hold. I think I can make a counterargument on Christian grounds to her as to why she ought not to hold that position. That\u2019s a different kind of move to say \u2013 in order for her to put forward her position in public space, she must translate it in the way that it\u2019s publicly accessible. That\u2019s a different kind of move to me. So, but \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Mike Allen, you\u2019re up next, Mike Allen, and then I think Lauren and Kirsten \u2013 I don\u2019t know, maybe you got your questions in earlier but Mike Allen\u2019s up.<\/p>\n

\"Mike<\/figure>\n

MIKE ALLEN, POLITICO<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 Professor, thank you for challenging us. And you seem to be skeptical of the idea that it\u2019s still true that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week and I was just hoping you could just talk a little bit about how true or untrue that still is.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Well, I was just trying to hedge my \u2013 my instinct \u2013 my intuition is that it\u2019s still \u2013 Friday night\u2019s probably as segregated too; Saturday night too. I just don\u2019t have the exact figures so I didn\u2019t want to just state it, you know.<\/p>\n

ALLEN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay, thank you. And I was \u2013 I was very intrigued by what you said about the former customs about burials. And I wonder if you could talk about other \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry, I didn\u2019t hear that one.<\/p>\n

ALLEN:<\/strong>\u00a0 You pointed out that it used to be that African-Americans would not be buried in white \u2013 by white congregations. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about other remnants that we still see of practices like that.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Well, I mean, there are remnants of it \u2013 there are senses in which burial grounds are often associated with particular religious institutions, yes? And those institutions bear the characteristics of a legacy of racial segregation. And so the very ways in which Americans, to this day, recognize their dead \u2013 the various rituals that we engage in \u2013 are often rituals that take place within very segregated physical spaces. And that\u2019s still today.<\/p>\n

ALLEN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right. And then, more broadly, are there other customs like that, other practices where we still see the remnants of segregation \u2013 the customs and practices of our churches?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I suspect that there probably are but I would say less so. I have to think a little bit more about so I can give you an example. It will come to me in a minute.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay, Rachel Martin is next.<\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/figure>\n

RACHEL MARTIN, ABC NEWS:\u00a0<\/strong> I have a couple of questions. The first \u2013 you\u2019ll forgive me as I try to talk through I think what you were saying. I hear you saying \u2013 and that\u2019s more a statement of my inability to grasp, not your clarity. I hear you saying \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> That was nice of you.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 if religion shapes or informs your opinion about an issue like abortion, then you owe it to your religion to make that argument in the public sphere in that way using that language and basing it on those religious tenets.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Absolutely.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:<\/strong>\u00a0 If you don\u2019t, you are somehow being un-Christian, A, and number two, you\u2019re actually never going to resolve the differences because you haven\u2019t argued it in an authentic way that truly represents your opinion. And if I\u2019m hearing that correctly, how does \u2013 and I think this is speaking to what you were saying as well, Kirsten, earlier \u2013 how does that work in a secular society?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s just challenge the premise.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 In 25 words or less.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah. In 25 words or less?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\ufffd\ufffd I\u2019m just kidding.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE: <\/strong>\u00a0We have to challenge the premise that it\u2019s actually secular, that\u2019s the first thing. We know that \u201cgod talk\u201d organizes much of our deliberations \u2013 even though there is a kind of presumption of methodical atheism informing public deliberation. We know \u201cgod talk\u201d circulates throughout. So I want to challenge the notion that we live in a secular society that requires, in some significant way, the disciplining of \u201cnon-secular commitments.\u201d Part of what I\u2019m trying to suggest is that if we are going to create a space for genuine democratic deliberation, people need to be explicit about the reasons that they actually hold for the positions that they are taking. And we need to be able to engage in a kind of conversation about those reasons. It is incumbent upon me, or me as a kind of \u201csecularist\u201d to make an effort to understand the position of the non-secularist who is putting forward a view that same-sex marriage is evil or homosexuality is an abomination.<\/p>\n

And I think there are resources available to folks who are not Christian and folks who are Christian. For example, to engage them on the grounds in which they\u2019re putting forth the argument. I don\u2019t think it resolves much if you ban those sorts of claims from the public domain. We just have to deal with it, it seems to me.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:\u00a0<\/strong> And then, I have second question that\u2019s about the role of \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Sure \u2013 that\u2019s not satisfying, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:\u00a0<\/strong> No, but we\u2019ll take it up later. (Chuckles.) I wanted to ask you about the role of black churches, understanding that there\u2019s a lot of diversity when I say that. If this country is to ever get to a point where it has made peace with its past and its present, when it comes to racial divides, what is the role of religion and in particular the black church. Can we have segregated churches at all and be in a country where racism doesn\u2019t exist. In order for racism to not exist, can the black church exist, if it is premised upon this division. If it came about as a result of white supremacy, does it need to go away before we can become something different and better hopefully.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s an interesting question. So the same holds for white churches?<\/p>\n

MARTIN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> It just seems to me that part of what we have to be very careful of as we aspire to a genuine post-racial moment, is that we not lose sight of the cultural differences that matter. I am African-American, I\u2019ve been raised in a particular tradition; there\u2019s a particular tradition of struggle that\u2019s crucial to how I understand myself. It offers me a certain set of moral vocabularies in order to understand the world and my interactions with my fellows. And I don\u2019t think that tradition is reducible to racism. It might be an outgrowth \u2013 it might be an outcome of racist practices but it\u2019s not reducible to it. So I could still make the case for culturally specific institutions that are valuable \u2013 that are treasures \u2013 but are not reproductions of a certain kind of racist logic.<\/p>\n

If we can do that, then I could be black and proud without that being interpreted in a particular sort of way. Does that make sense? All right? Because what worries me is that folk are constantly wanting \u2013 how can I put this, and I\u2019m going to put this in as visceral a way that I can. Folks are constantly urging \u2013 and I\u2019ll just say \u201cMe,\u201d and that\u2019s a big \u201cMe\u201d, capital \u201cM,\u201d \u2013 that in order for us to get to where we need to be, I need to give up \u201cMe.\u201d In order for President Obama to be president of the United States, he has to evade the body he inhabits, which is impossible. We have to \u2013 this is the fantasy of a black-less America that Ellison was talking about. And if that\u2019s the precondition for us being released from the sins of our past, then we are doomed to Dante\u2019s hell.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Let me tell you where we are real quickly because there are a lot of you that have got your hands up: Carl Cannon, Kirsten, Lauren, Matt, Jacqui, Mark, Sally, David, Cathy, Barbara.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Wow!<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> And so I\u2019m going to \u2013 I\u2019m going to \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m leaving now, so \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 No, I\u2019m not \u2013 and there comes E.J., Richard. Here comes everybody. And so I\u2019m going to play my role as moderator to interrupt some a little bit to keep us moving along. I want to get everybody in, and I know a lot of people have got a lot to ask, so \u2013 yeah, meaning interrupt the speaker. But also the long-winded questions too, if they get that way. Go ahead, Carl, you\u2019re up next.<\/p>\n

\"Carl<\/figure>\n

CARL CANNON, READER\u2019S DIGEST<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 I have a long-winded question. (Laughter.) Eddie, I\u2019d like to contrast two statements of President Bush<\/a>: one when he was running for president and the other when he\u2019s leaving office \u2013 to try and amplify this unease that Kirsten and Rachel and I have with \u201cgod talk\u201d that risks sounding exclusive. The first one was December \u201999. It\u2019s a debate in Iowa<\/a>; some of us were there. Bush is asked for the political philosopher or thinker he most identified with.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 (Chuckles.) Yeah, I remember that.<\/p>\n

CANNON:<\/strong>\u00a0 He says Christ because he changed my heart. Now \u2013 parenthetically \u2013 the next day in The Des Moines Register, he said,<\/span><\/a><\/em> I thought who had had the most influence on my life \u2013 that\u2019s what he heard. Apparently in these debates, they do some wool-gathering. But I\u2019ll give him that. The point is, then the moderator, John Bachman, came back and said, you know, that really wasn\u2019t an answer. He said, well, what do you mean? And Bush said, when you turn your heart and your life over to Christ and you accept Christ as your Savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life and that\u2019s what happened to me. It\u2019s like, you know, it\u2019s a white thing, you wouldn\u2019t understand that kind of answer, you know. (Laughter.) But this electrified evangelical Christians \u2013 they talked about it. But it alienated Libertarian conservatives and mainstream Protestants and alarmed Jews because it seemed exclusive.<\/p>\n

Now, real quick, last week, Michael and I went to an event<\/a>, Rick Warren<\/a> gave President Bush a medal<\/a>. And he was extolled by Bono<\/a> and former President Clinton<\/a> and by Barack Obama in these testimonials for saving or extending the lives of 2 or 3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. And then he was asked why he did it. And he was asked by Rick Warren of all \u2013 isn\u2019t there a national security component to all this money in AIDS and HIV\/AIDS? And Bush allows that there was: that if terrorism takes root when there\u2019s no hope and in these communities there could be no hope. Bush said, there\u2019s an economic thing too. He said, having these thriving African economies would help our country and theirs. But then the third reason he said, the biggest is morality. And he started to \u2013 he sort of did this flight of fancy that Bush does. He said, you know, there\u2019s a higher government. And he realized that didn\u2019t sound quite right. He said a higher calling, and then he just goes \u2013 God. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n

Nobody would be offended by that. And he\u2019d given these other two reasons. I submit to you that in the public square, the Bush in 2008 has this about right and the Bush in 1999 alarmed people. But I\u2019d like you to respond.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right, part of the question I would have to ask is how \u2013 what are we to do with the earlier Bush. What are we to say to him? You can\u2019t say that? And on what grounds can we say that? And then what happens when we make that move? So I\u2019ll give you an example. There is an interesting way in which the religious right coalesced around how it was characterized. What it began to \u2013 or shall we saw form it\u2019s claims and complaints in a way that bore resemblance to civil rights claims. Our exclusion constitutes a violation on the lines of civil rights exclusions. I can\u2019t be who I am in this particular space because you won\u2019t allow me to. What follows from that for the meaning of democracy?<\/p>\n

Interestingly enough, some of them are anti-liberal at their heart \u2013 aren\u2019t necessarily committed to a liberal project in any specific sense.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> You mean liberal, small \u201cl\u201d \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Small \u201cl.\u201d Yeah, small \u201cl,\u201d not liberal in terms of \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> So part of what I\u2019m thinking \u2013 no. No, I\u2019m talking about anti-liberal in terms of liberalism.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 That\u2019s what I mean.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, okay, all right. Great \u2013 I just wanted to make sure. The question becomes now, what do we do? I\u2019m asking it again, what do we do with fellow citizens whose genuine reason, for not necessarily not answering the question \u2013 direct question, but giving you an expression of what motivates her to act in the public domain. What then do we do? Could it be necessary at that point to ask a subsequent question to begin to get \u2013 I\u2019m sorry, go ahead.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 No, no \u2013 you \u2013 I\u2019ve just got about four people doing this to me \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>Well, that\u2019s good! (Inaudible) \u2013 them out.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 and that means they want to \u2013 they want to \u2013 and I\u2019m \u2013 Rachel and Cathy and then others are waiting.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Does the president, though, as the president, abdicate his right to do that? It\u2019s one thing for \u201cJoe Six-Pack\u201d to say \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> He wasn\u2019t the president then \u2013 at the moment though.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 He was a candidate.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:<\/strong>\u00a0 In general, I would put to you, as the president, do you \u2013 maybe \u2013 you don\u2019t get to do that anymore. You don\u2019t get to make arguments with that language because you represent something bigger.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Don\u2019t answer yet, I\u2019m going to get a few people in.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:\u00a0<\/strong> Sorry.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 No, no \u2013 Kirsten and then Cathy I\u2019ve got you down. You\u2019re on the list. I\u2019ve got about six people saying they have little point.<\/p>\n

POWERS:<\/strong> I\u2019ll be brief. I just keep hearing you say that people are being kept from saying something. I just don\u2019t think people are being kept from saying anything. I think Christians are free to say whatever they want. Muslims are free to say whatever they want. The idea that they don\u2019t have to offer any other reason I think is problematic. For example, let\u2019s take gay marriage. They can say, well, the Bible says that it shouldn\u2019t be allowed and therefore it shouldn\u2019t be allowed. The Bible also says that you shouldn\u2019t get divorced except under very narrow circumstances, and we don\u2019t change our laws to reflect that. In fact, we have no-fault divorce throughout the country. I could go through a lot of other things that happen in the Bible. I find it a little disingenuous, frankly, when people do come out \u2013 and I\u2019m very serious Christian, so I\u2019m not saying this being judgmental against Christians \u2013 but I have a problem when people cherry-pick issues. They come out and just announce, we have to have laws against this; we have change the constitution because I believe this.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> This is precisely the kind of response I think is requisite. I want to disagree with your initial claim because how I framed it was the very ways in which Senator \u2013 then Senator Obama, now President-elect Obama\u2019s arguments around how religious claims make their way into public deliberation. He put some constraints on it. He said that in order to make a certain kind of claim that\u2019s informed by religious reasoning, that religious reasoning has to be publicly accessible \u2013 it has to be universalizable. That\u2019s what he said. To that extent, he\u2019s just like Neuhaus. Neuhaus says very clearly that one cannot rely on the authority of revelation as a way of making certain kinds of public claims.<\/p>\n

POWERS:\u00a0<\/strong> And do you disagree with that or agree with it?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to say that that move doesn\u2019t resolve the initial problem. The initial problem is religious difference \u2013 religious plurality, religious claims bumping up against each other. You don\u2019t tidy up the mess by excluding certain kinds of claims from bumping up against each other. We have to create a much more vibrant deliberative space so that we can begin to interrogate those sorts of claims to ask for further reasoning. What I don\u2019t want are folk retreating to their private domains and then entering the public domain stealthily \u2013 doing things under the guise of different kinds of reasons as opposed for the reasons that they actually hold.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong> I know Father Neuhaus\u2019 work very well also, and I just want to make clarification that Neuhaus was saying the fundamentalists bring public arguments, not just biblical arguments. I thought I heard then-Senator Obama say the same thing. You\u2019re disagreeing with both of those.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, I\u2019m just saying it\u2019s not sufficient.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay, it\u2019s not sufficient.<\/p>\n

\"Jacob<\/figure>\n

JACOB WEISBERG, SLATE GROUP:\u00a0<\/strong> (Inaudible) \u2013 brought up a point here \u2013 if you hope to be persuasive to people who don\u2019t share a religious view \u2013 if you have to figure out a way to generalize the claim, which is not the same thing as saying it\u2019s inadmissible or unacceptable \u2013 you know that speech better than I do, but I vaguely remember it from the time. He was speaking to a group of liberal religious leaders and he was saying, what is the place of your views? He was saying, if you hope to have a bigger voice, you have to be able to speak to people who don\u2019t share them. And the way to do that is to generalize the plan.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I thought it was a stronger version of the claim.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> I think you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> That weaker claim was there but I think a stronger version of the claim was actually in the \u2013 (inaudible, cross talk).<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Let me get a few more people in here before we get too deeply philosophical, which is fine with me, but I just got about 12 hands up and everybody\u2019s doing like this, so.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I might quit.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 My next person is Lauren and then Matt and Jacqui and Sally and Mark and others. But Lauren Green.<\/p>\n

GREEN:\u00a0<\/strong> Let\u2019s go to the black church. Are the black churches \u2013 are black people black first or are they Christian first? And I pose that even to the white churches. Are they white first or are they Christians first? Is their main vent to preach the gospel or is their main vent to preach the gospel of whiteness or blackness?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think it\u2019s important to understand any witness historically and contextually. I tried to make the argument that the adjectives matter \u2013in the sense that there is something called African-American or black Christianity. It, in its particulars, stands as a refutation of white Christianity. It\u2019s a claim that white Christianity is idolatrous, at its root. To the extent to which we can begin to flesh out theological positions, to begin to flesh out liturgical kinds of differences and the like, we could. But the basic claim is that historically, African-American Christianity emerges within the context in which they are literally expelled from the ecclesia of white Christianity \u2013 of white Christian institutions.<\/p>\n

GREEN:\u00a0<\/strong> But do the blacks just run the risk of doing the same thing, of creating \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>I don\u2019t think so, absolutely not. No, I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Matt? Matt is next and then Jackie.<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/figure>\n

MATTHEW CONTINETTI, THE WEEKLY STANDARD<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 I find it a little bit hard to believe that Christ wasn\u2019t adopted or appropriated to \u2013 on behalf of the oppressed up until James Cone wrote his book. I\u2019m a little bit worried \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I didn\u2019t make that claim.<\/p>\n

CONTINETTI:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, you said that this was the first time that this happened, that that\u2019s what he\u2019s expressing. What are some of the precedents leading into black liberation theology? What else was in the political mix when he wrote his book in the middle of the 20th century? Then, speak to the larger black church today, besides the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He\u2019s clearly descended from that line of theological thinking, but clearly, he\u2019s not the only option. So what are some of the alternative options? Those are my two questions.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE: <\/strong>So the first point was that Cone writes in 1969 Black Theology and Black Power<\/em>, and it\u2019s an effort to translate, as I said, the prophetic black church tradition into the idiom of black power. It\u2019s a response, in interesting sorts of ways, to the secularization of black public space. And what I mean by secularization is not the privatization of religious belief, but the kind of pluralization of belief. One of the interesting references in that text is to Ron Karenga\u2019s<\/a> \u201cUs Movement\u201d and the kinds of new pieties of black power that were emerging \u2013 Kwanzaa<\/a>, a certain kind of indebtedness to the sources of one\u2019s being. So these new rituals of blackness that were emerging at the time that, in some significant way, called into question the relevance of a certain kind of Christian witness \u2013 black preachers as hucksters, as hustlers and the like. We saw that visual representation throughout the time \u2013 just think about Richard Pryor\u2019s representation of the preacher in Car Wash<\/em><\/a>. I hope you remember that.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Oh, yeah. I can do the scene.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh good, well, I can, too. (Laughter.) What\u2019s interesting about that moment when Daddy Rich sits on the shoeshine box \u2013 on his right shoulder is a picture of King and on his left shoulder is a picture of Daddy Rich. So there are these different kinds of traditions of black Christianity that are coming. I think the context is this really interesting moment where we have to begin to ask where black Christianity is being de-centered.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> What\u2019s the center? What\u2019s it being de-centered from?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> It\u2019s being de-centered from being the center of black life \u2013 it\u2019s being pushed aside; it\u2019s competing with other dimensions of black life.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Like politics.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Exactly. The second question was, what are some of the alternatives? Remember, I said that one of the interesting things about the Jeremiah Wright instance is that not only did he say that he was defending the black church, in which there was an identity established between him and the black church as such, he became a stand-in for the black church \u2013 a shorthand among those of us who were writing about this moment. What happened as a result was a kind of a flattening of all of the differences within black church life. So the fact is that we have black televangelism, the black electronic church \u2013 folk like T.D. Jakes, folk like Creflo Dollar, folk like Bishop Eddie Long<\/a> \u2013 a kind of interesting development within black religious life that\u2019s not reducible to some kind of socially charged, liberal, Christian orientation.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 The point was, Senator Obama was a member of one church, not all those churches. So that\u2019s why there was this utter preoccupation with Jeremiah Wright.<\/p>\n

CONTINETTI:\u00a0<\/strong> And it\u2019s Wright who was saying he was the black church.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m saying. In both instances, his claim led to a flattening. Remember, I said, you see, but \u2013 you don\u2019t know. Part of it was, listen to what he\u2019s saying but, more importantly, look at them! They\u2019re shouting! There was this, in terms of the framing, of just how the worship service was taking place and how that was then characterized in interesting sort of ways: this is a site where something very strange is going on. And it\u2019s interesting, too, the same kind of reaction \u2013 not same \u2013 but a similar kind of reaction was taking place around Sarah Palin\u2019s<\/a> Pentecostalism. We didn\u2019t know what to make of that. These folks are speaking tongues and doing all this other stuff \u2013<\/p>\n

CONTINETTI:<\/strong>\u00a0 But I think it really was what they were saying, and I\u2019ll give you an example. Father Pflager<\/a>, for example, was just as controversial \u2013 he\u2019s white, and he\u2019s saying exactly \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Depending on who you talk to.<\/p>\n

CONTINETTI:<\/strong>\u00a0 (Chuckles.) But he\u2019s saying the same things and equally offensive to wide swaths of America. So it\u2019s not necessarily \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> In the black church tradition, I mean, Father Pflager in Chicago is a specific \u2013 even though he\u2019s represented in a particular sort of way \u2013 when that footage shows him doing that and crying and then they cut \u2013<\/p>\n

CONTINETTI:<\/strong>\u00a0 But you would agree that if Obama had been a member of Reverend Jake\u2019s congregation, that controversy would have \u2013 there would have been no controversy. It was \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> More than \u2013 yeah, probably, because you wouldn\u2019t have had the loop.<\/p>\n

CONTINETTI:\u00a0 <\/strong>Wouldn\u2019t have had what?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> You wouldn\u2019t have had those sermons, more than likely. It\u2019s just different \u2013<\/p>\n

CONTINETTI:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah, but it was what was being said that was the \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 But it\u2019s not reducible to what is being said, in my view. You think it\u2019s simply that; I\u2019m trying to suggest to you that it became much more than that. Maybe I\u2019m wrong, but I \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay, let\u2019s get some other in here. Jacqui, you\u2019re next and then Mark and Sally. What\u2019s that? Yeah, you\u2019re on there. And others are on there, I promise \u2013 Cathy, Barbara, E.J., Richard \u2013 David\u2019s in there.<\/p>\n

\"Jacqui<\/figure>\n

JACQUI SALMON, THE WASHINGTON POST<\/em>:\u00a0<\/strong> I wanted to circle back around to your discussion of the stories that were done about what church Obama was going to go to. As someone who wrote one of those stories, I was curious about something.<\/p>\n

We called \u2013 we must have called probably 16 or 18 churches in Washington, D.C., and talked to them. The white churches responded. They showed us the letters they were sending him; they really wanted him to come to their church, made a pitch. Black churches wouldn\u2019t play. They did not return our phone calls. When they did, they said they hadn\u2019t written those letters, didn\u2019t want anything to do with this. They didn\u2019t want to go anywhere near this. And I don\u2019t mean to appoint you the spokesman for Washington area black churches \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Thank you.<\/p>\n

SALMON:\u00a0<\/strong> But I wanted to know, given your background, whether you had any insights on this. Why were they uncomfortable with this?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I can\u2019t say anything definitive about why they were uncomfortable. My intuition is a kind of suspicion about the motivation driving the question.<\/p>\n

SALMON:\u00a0<\/strong> Of us? The motivation of us?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah. Especially given what happened at Trinity.<\/p>\n

SALMON:\u00a0<\/strong> In other words, unpack that a little bit. What do you mean?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>That is to say there is a certain characterization of black church practice that can \u2013 that could have easily fallen into a certain characterization, of President-elect Obama, of the church itself, and black communities generally.<\/p>\n

SALMON:\u00a0<\/strong> They didn\u2019t trust us?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>No, not at all. That\u2019s my intuition.<\/p>\n

UNIDENTIFIED:\u00a0<\/strong> We\u2019d go through their tapes. We\u2019d sit through their service.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right. And then you\u2019ll just start showing up to the church.<\/p>\n

UNIDENTIFIED<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> And start, you know, looking at, you know the bulletin and showing up to funerals. Yeah, you know, these sorts of things. So, I think there\u2019s just a general hermeneutic of suspicion.<\/p>\n

UNIDENTIFIED<\/strong>:\u00a0<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> A healthy hermeneutic of suspicion in this regard. (Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay. Mark? Mark\u2019s next and then Sally Quinn.<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/figure>\n

MARK KATKOV, CBS NEWS:\u00a0<\/strong> If I could get back to the beginning of your talk, when you were presenting Romney and Obama in the same group \u2013 this notion that religiosity and revelation can be separated in the public sphere. During the campaign, I talked to a lot of both liberal and conservative evangelicals after those speeches. And, the liberal evangelicals said, yes absolutely right. The conservative evangelicals, by and large, were very cynical about both of them. They said, no, what they\u2019re really saying is that their revelation is not our revelation.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Hmm.<\/p>\n

KATKOV:\u00a0<\/strong> It\u2019s a false claim, and it\u2019s unsustainable. I guess we\u2019ll find out tomorrow from John whether \u2013 how that played out in the actual vote. How would you respond to their response? Are they right?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, I\u2019m not frowning. I never frown in Key West.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> (Chuckles.) You see how I\u2019m beginning to answer the question, or am I evading it? Those moments of marking hard differences for me become moments for democratic deliberation, not moments to shut down democratic deliberation \u2013 even though our typical response is that those moments are actually shutting down deliberation. Right? I want to say it\u2019s precisely at that moment that the hard work of democratic conversation begins.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 And let me just make an advertisement for strong democratic deliberation. If you go to pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion<\/a> \u2013 (laughter) \u2013 you can read the deliberation that we had here a couple of years ago with the leading authority on Mormonism in America, Richard Bushman<\/a> \u2013 for three hours on Mormonism. That was a very civil moment of democratic deliberation. I do want to say that we did a whole session on Mormonism with Bushman. It was outstanding. But anyway, Sally, I\u2019m sorry did \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Did that get at the answer to your question or no?<\/p>\n

KATKOV:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yeah, at this point. At lot of the folks I spoke to said it was really just a play for votes. And they were deeply cynical about it.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Oh, yeah. And you know, on a certain level, you have to say that perhaps they\u2019re right. But for me \u2013 I said this at lunch today \u2013 if your interest is not about who wins the White House but rather about democracy as such. My interest has always been throughout this process: \u00a0how do we talk about the civic energies, civic democratic energies, requisite to take \u2013 to keep us from falling over the precipice? How can we begin to talk about everyday, ordinary folk engaging in a democratic process in such a way where they not only feel invested, but they\u2019re making meaningful decisions and engaged in meaningful exchange about their well-being? And part of what I want to say is that my sister \u2013 she would be so angry with me right now \u2013 but my sister and I have heated discussions \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 On the record?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 On the record. We have heated discussions, and I think many of us have those sorts of discussions in our families, in our personal relationships. I can see how those can be modeled more broadly so that we don\u2019t have what we have in California right now around Proposition 8.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Sally Quinn is next.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> But maybe that\u2019s \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> And then Richard Starr and Cathy Grossman.<\/p>\n

\"Sally<\/figure>\n

SALLY QUINN, THE WASHINGTON POST<\/em>: <\/strong>\u00a0I want to get back to your opening statement about Obama\u2019s speech because, again, I\u2019m not totally sure I understand what you were talking about. I read that speech a lot. I read it again about two weeks ago. I read it because I thought it was at the time pitch-perfect. I\u2019m speaking as someone who was an atheist until about two or three years ago, and so I\u2019m always \u2013 I\u2019ve got my ear out always for any kind of \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Pitch-perfect speeches?<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah. (Laughter.) What he did was \u2013 first of all, the point he was making which I thought was brilliant to a group of Democrats \u2013 say we\u2019re not going to let the Republicans own this. We\u2019re going to take it back in the same way that he took back the flag. It was like the Republicans owned religion and the flag. Excuse me, but you don\u2019t own it. We\u2019re going to take it back. It seemed to me that that was more or less the simple message. But the other message is that this is a country that\u2019s founded on freedom of religion, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re here for. We will accept everybody, and he specifically talked about believers and non-believers. I didn\u2019t feel that there was any exclusion in any way. I also didn\u2019t feel that it was tolerant because I think tolerant is a bad word. I think tolerant is sort of an arrogant word: we will tolerate you but not totally accept you.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> I thought it was completely embracing of everyone and totally pluralistic in a way that I have never heard anybody speak about religion \u2013 any sort of public personality speak about religion in this country. Compared to Romney\u2019s speech, which I thought essentially disenfranchised anybody in this country who basically was not a Christian \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Really?<\/p>\n

QUINN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Certainly \u2013 I felt that way when I listened to it. That was my perception. Not only that, but certainly not people who were secular in any way. Did he not make a statement that there is no \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Now, that \u2013<\/p>\n

QUINN:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 freedom without religion, there is no religion without freedom.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> I thought that was appalling. I couldn\u2019t believe that anybody had said that. That\u2019s what I mean about disenfranchising a huge number of people because of \u2013 there are probably 13 percent of this country who are non-believers<\/a> and a lot more who are non-believers who won\u2019t admit it.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> By the way, I would say quickly, Sally. Governor Romney did come out about three months ago and say, I made a big mistake in that speech.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> One thing I did was \u2013 I didn\u2019t say you\u2019re also free not to believe.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> Right. It was a big mistake.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yup.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> And it was \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Big mistake.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> But I \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> If he\u2019d come to this seminar, he wouldn\u2019t have made that mistake.<\/p>\n

(Laughter.)<\/p>\n

QUINN:<\/strong>\u00a0 I don\u2019t think you can \u2013 I couldn\u2019t compare the two but also because I didn\u2019t feel anything that was at all exclusive about Obama\u2019s speech \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Wow.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> \u2013 even if I had been a devout Christian from any denomination. Also, I just want to ask you one more question. Where do you think Obama should go to church?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Let me answer the \u2013 the latter one is easier.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> Answer the first one and then \u2013 yeah.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Whatever, wherever is best for his babies.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> What?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 His children.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Wherever, whatever is best for his children.<\/p>\n

QUINN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I know he\u2019s a politician, but I\u2019m a religious naturalist in the great tradition of George Santayana<\/a>.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> What does that mean?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I don\u2019t necessarily need a transcendent god in order to understand the beauty of the world, but I like these stories. These stories mean so much to me.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 They orient me to the world. They become the source of what I take to be the beautiful. They allow me to understand myself as an ethical and moral agent as well. But I understand how religious vocabularies provide us with the languages requisite to weather the storms. As he\u2019s raising these babies, I hope he takes that as the paramount consideration as opposed to the political question. But that\u2019s, again, me being na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

In terms of the first question, I can concede this claim that Obama\u2019s speech was pitched perfectly and Romney\u2019s was off-key. I can concede that. But I think there are elements of exclusion in the strong version \u2013 I\u2019ll take Jacob\u2019s point, at its face, if you don\u2019t mind me calling \u2013<\/p>\n

WEISBERG:\u00a0<\/strong> (Inaudible.)<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> (Chuckles.) If there was a weaker claim, that it was about persuasiveness, I\u2019ll grant that. But my thinking is that the stronger claim is that religious claims in public spaces must be subjected \u2013 must be accessible to public reason. To the extent that he\u2019s making that claim, a certain kind of fundamentalist belief will have a hard time being expressed in the public space, and that\u2019s an exclusion.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m just interested in Jacob\u2019s and E.J.\u2019s and Jeffrey\u2019s view of that. I mean, both of you being Jewish and E.J. being Catholic.<\/p>\n

(Laughter.)<\/p>\n

WEISBERG:<\/strong>\u00a0 I remember thinking about that \u2013 (inaudible) \u2013 speech was brilliant for a bunch of reasons. I mean, it was \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Pull the mic over please, Jacob.<\/p>\n

WEISBERG:\u00a0<\/strong> It was one of Obama\u2019s greatest speeches, but it \u2013 two things \u2013 did what you said. It took back the political ground that liberals have conceded to conservatives, and it \u2013 the point of it as I understood \u2013 was trying to give liberals a way to talk about religion and politics. I thought it did that very effectively. But I also thought, as someone who identifies more as an atheist and a secularist than as someone who\u2019s Jewish \u2013 although I am, that it was the first thing I\u2019d read in a long time that articulated a way that religious people could talk to me. You know, in a way that I would find persuasive, that we could enter into a dialogue on sort of neutral terms as it were.<\/p>\n

E.J. DIONNE, THE WASHINGTON POST<\/em>:\u00a0<\/strong> Can I just for the sake of the record \u2013 I found this relevant passage in Obama\u2019s speech. What he says is, \u201cThis brings to me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God\u2019s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> Right, right.<\/p>\n

DIONNE:\u00a0<\/strong> So it\u2019s a strong claim he makes. I agree with what Jacob said about his speech. I think it\u2019s certainly the best speech any Democrat has given on this since I can remember.<\/p>\n

WEISBERG: <\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, I grant that.<\/p>\n

DIONNE:\u00a0<\/strong> I thought that the problem with Romney\u2019s speech is he was trying to do two things at the same time that were incompatible: He didn\u2019t want people to judge him on his Mormonism, but he couldn\u2019t give Kennedy\u2019s speech<\/a> and say religion is a private thing because the evangelical conservatives whose votes he was seeking in Iowa do not believe that. And so there was a contradiction at the heart of Romney\u2019s speech that he never resolved. That\u2019s why I think even if he had come to our sessions, he still would have said the same thing. Because what was on his mind was, how do I get through the Iowa caucuses? And he was right \u2013 as it turned out \u2013 he was right to worry about getting through the Iowa caucuses.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay, back to \u2013 did we finish? I think we got an answer out of Sally\u2019s question.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I hope so.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019ll keep moving with Richard Starr and then David and Cathy.<\/p>\n

\"Richard<\/figure>\n

RICHARD STARR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 I have a short-winded question.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Oh good, good.<\/p>\n

STARR:\u00a0<\/strong> It may complicate the discussion, but it is short-winded. Is it not the case that the strong claim is not simply something that pastor Neuhaus and candidate Obama are making but is in fact embedded in modern jurisprudence? Such that if your sister came forth and won that argument with you, basing it on scripture, and persuaded millions like her, this is an invitation to a judge to say, I\u2019m overturning this because this is an improper basis on which to make public policy.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Your answer is yes? Well, that\u2019s one of the shortest questions and the shortest answers we\u2019ve ever had. Thank you, Richard.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Nevertheless, though, folks still give those sorts of reasons, yes?<\/p>\n

STARR:\u00a0 <\/strong>Sure, I actually am sympathetic to your point about believers coming clean on the reasons for their arguments. But by doing so, they may in fact be guaranteeing that they will lose the argument in the public square. They may win it democratically. They may persuade a majority of their fellow citizens, but they may have guaranteed a public policy loss by winning it in that way. I think that may have been part of the motivation for \u2013 certainly for Neuhaus and his book.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Mm-hmm. It\u2019s clear that we need to do another session for those who are staying after Tuesday afternoon on natural law and the history of Christian understanding of the natural law, both Protestant and Catholic. We\u2019ll do that next May, a session on understanding public reason, natural law, in the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish tradition \u2013 and Islamic tradition also. We\u2019ll cover everybody. David, you\u2019re next and then Cathy Grossman.<\/p>\n

\"David<\/figure>\n

DAVID KUHN, POLITICO<\/em>:\u00a0<\/strong> How you doing? We actually got into some of this last night.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Last night.<\/p>\n

And the reason I say that is that there seems to be this \u2013 and I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re saying on this front \u2013 but there seems to be odd point if you\u2019re \u2013 obviously the black church eventually rose out of the fact they couldn\u2019t worship with whites. But there was also immediately a cultural component. It wasn\u2019t simply segregation: like the call and response comes from indigenous African religious, like modern Christianity or Judaism. They have vestiges of early pagan religions that they formed out of, like Easter has it, Passover.<\/p>\n

These \u2013 and by pagan I should say animist or polytheistic. My question for you is that you would argue though today that these traditions aren\u2019t simply racially based, but they\u2019re in fact a form \u2013 or would you argue this \u2013 but they\u2019re a form of cultural \u2013 they\u2019re almost a branch of Christianity themselves in a very small sense. And therefore, as we become more integrated and if a white person goes to these churches. Just because a white person would go to these churches, it\u2019ll still maybe be a different form of Christianity in practice in how the church service goes than the white Methodist service occurring two miles away. And I\u2019m sorry if this is confusing but \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 No, no. I thought my answer to Rachel in some ways echoed this point, when she said that should we see the disappearance of \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Would you mind speaking up?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 would we see the disappearance of the black church if we reached this particular moment in our history? And I said no, I still think of it as a cultural institution that bears the imprint of a certain kind of history that has meanings that aren\u2019t reducible to racist practices. I thought that\u2019s what I was saying there. And so there\u2019s also a story that \u2013 and I didn\u2019t quite emphasize it but I do so in my work \u2013 there is of course a way to talk about the emergence of black denominationalism as being an outgrowth of racist practices within white-American churches.<\/p>\n

But those denominations are also reflective of an increasing maturation of black communities within the United States. When we begin to think about black churches as the site for the formation of the beginnings of black civil society, they\u2019re not reducible to racist practices but they cannot be talked about apart from them. Because in fact it is that context which calls it all into being. So black churches provide in interesting sorts of ways the first public space for African-Americans to engage in the kind of deliberations around the circumstances of their conditions of living.<\/p>\n

And to that extent it becomes a site for a certain kind of exercise of citizenship, a certain kind of democratic participation.<\/p>\n

KUHN:\u00a0<\/strong> So let me just very quickly then, and I\u2019ll then let go of the questions \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n

KUHN:\u00a0<\/strong> If you accept that there is a cultural component to these churches certainly that came out of racial segregation, they are not that today. Though visually they are, as you point out \u2013 the most segregated hour. And so that\u2019s the question: Do you think it\u2019s incumbent on Barack Obama to not attend a mostly African-American church because of the visual symbolism it gives out at a superficial level certainly? And if it\u2019s not, isn\u2019t this a question that any minority group in any way faces when they assume the presidency \u2013 it has to deal with a \u201cmajority.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, are political reasons \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n

KUHN:\u00a0<\/strong> \u2013 he\u2019s now a politician, he\u2019s the president-elect then soon president. And so \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right.<\/p>\n

KUHN:\u00a0<\/strong> \u2013 symbolism matters, no?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right, it \u2013 absolutely. But couldn\u2019t it very well be as symbolically meaningful for Obama to say I\u2019m attending a black church and it shouldn\u2019t matter to you?<\/p>\n

KUHN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Certainly. I guess I\u2019m curious what you think.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>Well, I think \u2013<\/p>\n

KUHN:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think that that\u2019s a \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 that would be a great gesture.<\/p>\n

KUHN:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m going to go to this black church, we\u2019re going to worship and you know what America? It doesn\u2019t mean that much.<\/p>\n

KUHN:<\/strong>\u00a0 But would you prefer that he did that?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I would prefer that he did that. But I would also prefer that he goes to \u2013 attends a church, whether it\u2019s black, white, green, purple or yellow, that fills his soul; that fills his needs. Because he\u2019s the most powerful man in the world, and he\u2019s going to need some soul-filling \u2013 some soul tender-care \u2013 (laughter) \u2013 some tender care of his soul.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a second part of your question where you talked about \u2013 you wanted to make a hard distinction between black liberation theology and this other tradition. That hard distinction has to be called into question. It\u2019s not that hard. It\u2019s just like we make a hard distinction between black power and the civil rights movement when most of the participants in black power were veterans of the civil rights movement. So we have to begin to see this as much more continuous, as opposed to discontinuous. It\u2019s just a particular iteration of it that\u2019s really, really fascinating.<\/p>\n

\"Cathy<\/figure>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Cathy Grossman is next.<\/p>\n

CATHY GROSSMAN, USA TODAY<\/em>:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay, first I\u2019m going to deal with what was my short follow-up question to an earlier question, where I think it was Carl who brought up \u2013 was it Carl or Rachel \u2013 who brought up the \u2013 when George Bush \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Carl.<\/p>\n

GROSSMAN:\u00a0 <\/strong>\u2013 talked about Jesus Christ and then later on \u2013 recently \u2013 attributed things to God. And I actually think and I wonder if you agree or disagree, that people react very differently when a politician says Jesus Christ than they do when they say God.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n

GROSSMAN:\u00a0<\/strong> Because virtually 90-something-plus America<\/a> has some idea of God, but not everybody agrees about Jesus.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I agree.<\/p>\n

GROSSMAN:<\/strong>\u00a0 People react very differently to those terms. I\u2019ll go to my original question, which was: The people who opposed Proposition 8<\/a>, the people who did not want to see Proposition 8 pass, and did not manage to recognize with the clear onrush of black vote, Hispanic vote, Mormon vote in various corners that there needed to be some communication with those communities \u2013 was their failure to reach out to these communities just ignorance? They just thought, well, black people are going to vote for this and we don\u2019t have to worry about it. Or was it racism or just incompetence on their part that they did not speak to these concerns and make their case to the evangelical block and Hispanic communities?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE: <\/strong>I don\u2019t think it was racism \u2013 to remove the second issue. I think there was a sense in which the proponents for Proposition 8 out-organized the opponents. I can\u2019t remember \u2013 as I recall there was a last-minute effort that recast the initiative in such a way that inclined people to vote for it. In other words, I thought that what\u2019s at the heart of it is that they were outspent and they were out-mobilized. Thirdly, there was and there remains a decidedly conservative dimension to African-American evangelicals and African-American churchgoers who came out in dramatic numbers in support of Obama and that extended to their position on Proposition 8.<\/p>\n

Part of what needs to happen, of course, is a kind of vibrant debate among African-American Christians who opposed Proposition 8 and their friends, with their fellow citizens on this issue. That\u2019s how I would begin to answer that question. I think they were out-organized.<\/p>\n

\"Barbara<\/figure>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 We\u2019re about to go on a break in a moment but we have Barbara Bradley Hagerty and then Byron York and E.J. \u2013 did you get your \u2013<\/p>\n

DIONNE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Go ahead and kick me over the break, I\u2019ll \u2013 (inaudible).<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> I might kick you over the break but no, I \u2013 (laughter) \u2013 we\u2019ll see if we can get Barbara and Byron in and then we\u2019ll take a break.<\/p>\n

BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:<\/strong>\u00a0 Really, really interesting talk \u2013 thank you so much.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Thank you.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m going to ask two brief questions.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Sure.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> Well, they may or not \u2013 they may be brief and they may not. But let me just \u2013 when I was thinking about the race speech<\/a>, you know, what then-Senator Obama said was Jeremiah Wright\u2019s mistake was basically that he didn\u2019t acknowledge the progress that\u2019s occurred.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right \u2013 (Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m wondering what kind of percentage of the black church would side with Wright or would agree with Wright versus Obama. You know, Obama casts himself<\/a> as kind of a Joshua generation. So how big is the Joshua generation versus the more liberation theology Moses generation? Go ahead \u2013 and do you mind if I follow up after that?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Go ahead and give the follow-up now.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> And that\u2019s a powerful question.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> The second one is \u2013 and maybe it\u2019s just I\u2019m over interpreting \u2013 I\u2019d love to know if my colleagues think I\u2019m right \u2013 but I really did notice something fundamentally different in this election. That was something I thought would never really happen, except in the mind of Jim Wallace<\/a>, which was the rise of the religious left<\/a>. You heard about the Matthew 25 Network<\/a> and you saw white Protestants, many of them white evangelicals, organizing around this notion of social gospel \u2013 which is huge in the black church. Then on the other side we have seen in the last couple elections conservative black leaders, religious leaders, siding with more of the evangelicals \u2013 mainly on the gay rights issue<\/a> and on abortion<\/a>. What I\u2019m wondering is: Are we actually seeing a kind of realignment or a more powerful knitting together of progressive black and progressive whites \u2013 motivated by social gospel ideas on the one side \u2013 and then the knitting together of conservatives on the other?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Before you answer that, let me say that I think that John Green will have the data on that for us, won\u2019t we, John?<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> My sense is that like 90 percent of blacks voted<\/a> for Obama, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s because of religion. I think there were other issues there, but maybe I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> (Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:<\/strong>\u00a0 So but \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Yep.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> But a lot of the data on your question is one of the things that we\u2019re discussing in your session tomorrow, am I right John? Okay.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Just really quickly I think, you know, in just a shameless plug for my book In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America<\/em>, the last chapter of that \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Say the title again?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong>In a Shade of Blue<\/em> \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> (Laughter.) In a Shade of Blue<\/em> \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong>Pragmatism<\/em> \u2013 that\u2019s shameless, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0 <\/strong>No, that\u2019s me doing that, not you.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Oh, okay.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong>In a Shade of Blue<\/em>, is that what you said?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah, In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism<\/em> \u2013 (laughter) \u2013and the Politics of Black America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I have a chapter in there \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 University of Chicago Press? (Laughter.) Got it.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> The book actually came about as a result of my work with Tavis Smiley<\/a> on the Covenant with Black America<\/a><\/em>. I went around the country \u2013 really having town-hall meetings with folk all around the country trying to create a deliberative space for African-Americans to reflect on their condition. It was a really fascinating moment. The last chapter of that book is titled \u201cThe Eclipse of a Black Public\u201d, where I take on John Dewey\u2019s<\/a> notion of The Public and Its Problems<\/a><\/em> as a kind of framework to describe the moment that we\u2019re in. And the moment that I think we\u2019re in \u2013 in black communities \u2013 is that the languages, the vocabularies of struggle that were generated under the conditions of the \u201960s and \u201970s have been fundamentally transformed by the successes and failures of the \u201960s and \u201970s and by the transformations in the material conditions of black living since then.<\/p>\n

So what has happened is that you\u2019ve produced folk like me. I mean I grew up in a household with my mom who had her first baby in the eighth grade and my dad never graduated \u2013 graduated only from high school and delivered mail. Now I have an endowed professorship at the age of 40 at Princeton. And Cornel \u2013 and I talk with Cory Booker<\/a> and Cory Booker talks about his journey. Or you talk about Michael Nutter<\/a> or Adrian Fenty<\/a> or you talk about all of these folk \u2013 these Harvard folk \u2013 who are behind the scenes of Obama \u2013 the Harvard black cabal, as it were.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this interesting sense that something has fundamentally changed and transformed that we\u2019re trying to mark. The term post-racial, as I said earlier, is a kind of lazy, American way of marking something that\u2019s shifted. When Obama talked about Jeremiah Wright as not acknowledging the progress, he was in an interesting sort of way marking \u2013 however deliberately and strategically \u2013 marking a generational divide that is confounding black communities right now. That\u2019s really confused an established black political class that is really impacting the various ways in which people imagine struggle. Black folk, particularly Obama, are now using the language of governance as opposed to the language of struggle. So that\u2019s \u2013 it\u2019s really a fascinating moment of transition.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> And do you have a sense for how many, I mean \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, I don\u2019t have a sense of the percentages. But it\u2019s happening in Trinity.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong> Jeremiah Wright returned to Trinity to reclaim his church, his pulpit; and my classmate, Otis Moss III<\/a>, who\u2019s just a couple of years younger than I am, is having to deal with a church that\u2019s divided in very fascinating ways between those who were shaped \u2013 I call them post-soul babies, and those who were shaped in the context of the struggles of the \u201960s and \u201970s. This is a really fascinating \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> You say Reverend Wright just returned \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> He\u2019s just returned, he\u2019s not \u2013 Otis has not officially \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Is he trying to take himself out of retirement?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> He\u2019s not \u2013 Otis has not officially been appointed.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Uh-oh. Byron you were next and I think \u2013<\/p>\n

\"Byron<\/figure>\n

BYRON YORK, NATIONAL REVIEW<\/em>:\u00a0<\/strong> Well, he didn\u2019t entirely \u2013 (inaudible). I remember \u2013 I visited Trinity and \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> (Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

YORK:<\/strong>\u00a0 I called in June, I think, the person who I had worked with arranging my visit. A couple of weeks later, I called. This was the first person that Reverend Moss had hired, and I call her on her cell phone not at the office. And she says, I\u2019m no longer with Trinity; we\u2019re having a bit of a problem. There\u2019s a deep division and, they had the handoff to Reverend Moss and then Reverend Wright kind of came storming back.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s been resolved as of yet \u2013 John you might know. I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s been resolved, but it might have by now. I do know that there was an interesting tension there.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Anyway, on this Reverend Wright business \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> (Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> I mean, the incendiary stuff \u2013 the killer words were \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u201cGoddamn America.\u201d<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 \u201cGoddamn America\u201d and \u201cchickens coming home to roost.\u201d And after Obama gives his race \u2013<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry, are you starting a new question?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m sorry, is it \u2013 oh, I\u2019m sorry; you weren\u2019t finished.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:<\/strong>\u00a0 (Inaudible.)<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Remind me of the second question again.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY:\u00a0<\/strong> Do we see this new \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m sorry, Barbara.<\/p>\n

HAGERTY: <\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 do we see this new alliance between white and black?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Oh, yes. Absolutely, yes. Actually, what\u2019s interesting is that precisely because then-Senator Obama, now President-elect Obama has ascended to the White House, it will fundamentally change the very nature of African-American politics. We know that the voting trends have shown that African-American voters when you control for race tend to actually trend to the right in interesting sorts of ways around issues \u2013 around capital punishment, around, shall we say, core social value issues. African-American communities tend to trend towards the right in terms of ideological spectrum.<\/p>\n

Now what happens with Obama\u2019s ascendancy to the presidency \u2013 it actually releases them in interesting sorts of ways to be a cultivated constituency, in ways that Ken Mehlman<\/a> understood, but was then dropped in interesting sorts of ways. There is an interesting alignment \u2013 I actually blog when I can on Beliefnet.com<\/a>, a progressive blog of religious and, you know \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Beliefnet.com.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Beliefnet.com. You know, Robert Thurman<\/a>, the Buddhist scholar at Columbia blogs on there as well. There\u2019s a sense in which there are progressive energies among those who hold religious commitments, even those of us who are rather strange in the very ways in which we profess our religious commitments, to say that this is not the sole purview of a particular ideological current. It has led to an interesting kind of alignment. But what\u2019s striking is that we\u2019re beginning to see \u2013 it\u2019s starting now, it has to become more intense than that particular strand \u2013 engaging in much more substantive conversations with the more evangelical, conservative strand. We must begin to have these kind of internal arguments as to what we mean by Christian witness, as to what we might mean by living the life of Jesus in public. This is a conversation that is beginning to be had, and I hope that the substantive outcomes will be to the benefit of democracy in the U.S.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Byron, you\u2019ll take us into the break and then we\u2019ll take a break at \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Back to this Reverend Wright matter.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0 <\/strong>(Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

YORK:\u00a0<\/strong> Anyway, the incendiary, the killer words were \u201cgoddamn America\u201d and \u201cchickens coming home to roost.\u201d So Obama gives this race speech. I remember after the race speech as they were filing out of the room in Philadelphia, I asked a number of black ministers, what their reaction was \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Were you there, Byron?<\/p>\n

YORK:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah. And they all defended Reverend Wright a lot; and they said you\u2019ve just got to understand the prophetic tradition, you\u2019ve just got to understand this. But now Obama had basically in the speech declared these remarks \u2013 the specific ones that he said he didn\u2019t hear \u2013 to be completely off-limits. He said that\u2019s beyond the pale. On the one hand \u2013 and he wouldn\u2019t distance himself or disown Reverend Wright at the time because, he said, of all the good things that Reverend Wright had done.<\/p>\n

On the one hand I had these people telling me you\u2019ve just got to understand, don\u2019t forget the context and all of this stuff. And on the other hand you had Obama kind of declaring that this stuff was beyond the pale. And I think I heard you earlier making a little reference to them being, you know, pulled out of context. What is it in your view?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 When we look at that speech \u2013 that sermon in its entirety, that moment is a particularly powerful and incendiary moment, of course. But it is an interestingly powerful meditation on the concept of love in a very fascinating way he\u2019s making. So I think there\u2019s this role for prophetic language, within the black church particularly, that will always express \u2013 and see, I\u2019m going to say it. I\u2019m going to be very, very incendiary here \u2013 that white folks just got to wrap their minds around.<\/p>\n

That is that there is an abiding, intelligible and reasonable suspicion about the American nation-state vis-\u00e0-vis black folk. That suspicion can find itself articulated in the pulpits in very powerful ways. The fact that these particular folk are suspicious of the nation-state \u2013 because you see it and don\u2019t know it, surprises folk. At the very same moment when folk express the suspicions of the nation-state from the pulpit of John Hagee<\/a>, or Rod Parsley<\/a>\u2019s \u2013 because I remember saying this on Hannity & Colmes<\/a><\/em>, and Sean tried to \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 You were the first person that called Sean Hannity \u201cBrother Hannity.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Laughter.)<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 We\u2019re both Catholic boys. Part of what I was trying to suggest at that moment is that, first give folks in the pews a little more credit. They\u2019re discerning; they\u2019re making distinctions all the time. And suspicions about the state emanate from pulpits that are black and white all the time. It\u2019s just why are these suspicions singled out as opposed to these sorts of suspicions singled out.<\/p>\n

And I remember this question \u2013 I forget who said it \u2013 are we going to \u2013 it was in the media \u2013 are we going to start vetting all of the things said in American pulpits? Is this the road we\u2019re going down? And then suddenly it went silent.<\/p>\n

YORK:<\/strong>\u00a0 Let me ask you this: What was your \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Am I right in that? (Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

YORK:\u00a0<\/strong> What was your personal reaction \u2013 what was your first reaction when you first saw the sound bites of Reverend Wright like all of us saw them?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> I said Obama\u2019s in trouble. (Laughter.) My first reaction was a political one: They got him. And I was trying to figure out why didn\u2019t this show up earlier \u2013 who was doing the oppositional research in the primary? I was just wondering why was this so late in the game? And secondly I thought \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> You remember it was the Senator Clinton campaign that helped get it going.<\/p>\n

G<\/strong>LAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yeah, yeah but it was still \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 But also it was \u2013<\/p>\n

YORK:\u00a0<\/strong> It was in March.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong> That’s not proven.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong> Unproven, yeah.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong> (Chuckles.)<\/p>\n

YORK:<\/strong>\u00a0 But anyway \u2013 your personal reaction?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Keep going.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> My personal reaction was, there\u2019s some truth here. If it is the case \u2013 and Jeffrey said it. You said in your remarks that \u2013 in response to I think Kirsten\u2019s question about America\u2019s role \u2013 that we\u2019ve done some good, we\u2019ve done some bad and we\u2019ve done some evil. If we have done some evil, then \u201cgoddamn America\u201d makes sense on Christian grounds, rhetorically. It doesn\u2019t fly well politically, but it makes sense. Now, whether not America is a source of AIDS and all that other stuff \u2013 that\u2019s absurd.<\/p>\n

But I could understand a person who preaches the gospel, and I\u2019m willing to say that and accept the responsibility of what that might mean. If our nation is a purveyor of evil in the world \u2013 if one is a believer \u2013 it is not, shall we say, oblivious to the judgment of God \u2013 no matter how we tell the story of America being the shining city on the hill, it seems to me. My personal reaction, Byron, was they got him, oh my goodness; and then my second reaction was okay, oh \u2013 he\u2019s says something that\u2019s not too \u2013 let me go back and see the sermon.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> But why do I wonder that you didn\u2019t think that when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson did the same thing?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> What do you mean?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 After post-9\/11 Falwell<\/a> and Robertson<\/a> were rightly and roundly condemned<\/a> for blaming the attacks on the twin towers for America\u2019s social condition.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right. There\u2019s a theological difference there.<\/p>\n

GREEN:\u00a0<\/strong> Yeah, I think he blamed it on homosexuals and \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, my point is simply this: Whatever you blame it on, it\u2019s theologically probably incorrect to try to speak what the mind of God is in a tragic situation and give it sort of \u2013 (inaudible).<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right, but what I was saying is that it\u2019s a theologically different claim to say if one\u2019s state is the purveyor of evil that it will be subject to the judgment of God.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> As opposed to the culture.<\/p>\n

DIONNE:\u00a0<\/strong> As opposed to somebody flying planes into buildings.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yeah. I think those are qualitatively different theological claims, that America is suffering the judgment of God because of its culture of sin has defined \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right, right, yep.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 I think that\u2019s a very different claim. And maybe \u2013 am I wrong in \u2013 I think those are two different sorts of claims.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, we\u2019ll open that up after the break because we\u2019re past break time.<\/p>\n

(Break.)<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay. Thank you for being so prompt. Michael?<\/p>\n

MICHAEL PAULSON, THE BOSTON GLOBE<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 This a slightly self-interested question, but we were talking a little over lunch about the impact of the Obama election on African-American studies. Then I was listening to your \u2013 what seemed like \u2013 somewhat unhappy critique of the focus on Obama\u2019s church, and it made me wonder. For those of us whose responsibility it is to write about religion in politics, what do you think we ought to be watching, vis-\u00e0-vis Obama and the black church over the next few months and years? What is it that we should be doing instead of chasing down where he\u2019ll worship?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> The big issue for me is what Barbara alluded to in her question \u2013 the first part of your question. There\u2019s an extraordinary transformation taking place within African-American churches that is not only formal \u2013 the way the churches actually look \u2013the data showing that these mega-churches are showing up in vast numbers. And they\u2019re non-denominational. We\u2019re beginning to see the Pentecostalization of much of African-American religious life \u2013 that the worship services are bearing the imprimatur of the impact of Pentecostalism in interesting sorts of ways.<\/p>\n

There is a place like New Birth in Atlanta with Bishop Eddie Long \u2013 it\u2019s a Baptist church, and you should already hear the incongruity \u2013 Bishop Eddie Long in a Baptist church. And he explicitly says that he \u2013 what the Catholic Church got right was the structure. And so he\u2019s trying to dismiss deacon boards \u2013 it\u2019s just really fascinating in terms of what\u2019s going on. The relationship between market, media, theology and the generational impact is really having a substantive impact on the form and content of African-American religious life. How do we think about that in relation to President Obama? I\u2019m not sure. But it certainly suggests that this institution that has historically been seen as the site for so much political work \u2013 recognizable political work \u2013 is changing dramatically. And so then we have to ask ourselves, what sorts of political work will follow from that?<\/p>\n

PAULSON:\u00a0<\/strong> Let me just ask a follow-up. You were talking about the transformation taking place within the church. You referred several times, earlier, to liberation theology and the black church; so what happens, theologically, when Joshua gets to the promised land? Does liberation theology still animate those churches, or does something new happen because here we are?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, the basic premise of liberation theology as I understand it was that Jesus sides with the oppressed. And to the extent to which there is always oppression in it\u2019s first instantiation or iteration, Cone locates the oppressed among black people, particularly in the United States and in the ghettos. But now he kind of correlates, with questions around patriarchy, questions around the circulation of capital \u2013 so wherever there is oppression, Jesus speaks. And so to that extent, liberation theology \u2013 at least how I read Cone \u2013 always has a place and a role. But one of the interesting things about it is that liberation theology never really found its footing in actual pulpits; you can actually almost count the number of folks who self-identify, like Jeremiah Wright, on two hands.<\/p>\n

So one of the critiques, for example, by his brother, Cecil Cone, of James Cone, was that this was just simply white theology in blackface and that it didn\u2019t have indigenous roots in black, religious institutions. And so Cone writes The Spirituals and the Blues<\/a><\/em> \u2013 the book on the spirituals and the blues \u2013 as a source for theological reflection.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re moving in a moment. I don\u2019t teach in a seminary; I teach in a religious studies department. We\u2019re now finding African-American religious studies beginning to emerge out from under the hegemony of black liberation theology. So people are beginning to write much more complicated works \u2013 studies of black religion \u2013 that are not driven by the telos of black liberation theology. So we\u2019re going to see, over the course of the next few years, a body of literature that will really help us understand this unique formation in all of its complexity. That\u2019s a long-winded answer.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> We have, next, Perry Bacon. And then E.J. and then Eleanor.<\/p>\n

\"Perry<\/figure>\n

PERRY BACON, THE WASHINGTON POST<\/em>:\u00a0<\/strong> Two questions: The first is, traditionally, a white politician who\u2019s trying to win a lot of black voters would go and meet the religious leaders in the community: appeal to the Charlie Rangel<\/a> or whoever of that community and so on. Hillary Clinton<\/a> did all of this and got a lot of black pastors to endorse her, a lot of congressman that were black endorsed her, and won a very, very small percentage of the black vote \u2013 more than you would have expected, even. And the question is, do you think that\u2019s going to change how the politicians appeal to the black vote?<\/p>\n

And then, two, how the religious leaders \u2013 traditional people who are older \u2013 how their power is perceived and how they\u2019re perceived now? Does Charlie Rangel have less power in his community because he endorsed the wrong person? How do you think it affects these traditional leaders in both churches and African-American leaders in politics as well? And the second question \u2013 this is sort of unrelated \u2013 is what kind of role do you think someone like a T.D. Jakes will play in politics in the next five or 10 years? Does he avoid that? Does he get into that, and so on?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Well, I think black churches will remain extraordinarily important sites for political organizing and mobilizing. There is \u2013 and in some circles I\u2019m a pariah figure for saying this \u2013nothing about black religious institutions that is inherently progressive or prophetic. I think the prophetic voice is always in the minor key, and that\u2019s just a theological position that I hold. And so these churches are not inherently anything; they\u2019re made something by the people who inhabit them \u2013 and the person who leads that institution.<\/p>\n

The extent to which these churches are important to communities \u2013 although, they\u2019re increasingly not important to the communities in which they\u2019re located. We\u2019ve seen the disappearance of the niche church in interesting sorts of ways; the neighborhood church is quickly disappearing because people drive in from outside the place to go to their churches as opposed to the church being down the street like it used to be \u2013 but it\u2019s still a site for organizing. What we see, also, is that even within major \u2013 even within mega-churches or large congregations \u2013 that the members are making decisions reflective of their interests, that they\u2019re not just blind followers. The pastor, from the pulpit, could say I\u2019m going to support Republican candidate X, Y, and Z, which a lot of mega-church pastors did not do this past election cycle, but the election cycle before. We saw in interesting ways that the congregants didn\u2019t follow them. People were saying mega-churches are inherently conservative, but there\u2019s some interesting data to make that a little more complex.<\/p>\n

You still have to organize; so they\u2019re going to remain a site of organization. Going back to the claim that I\u2019m making about generational shifts \u2013 the post-soul babies, of which I\u2019m one \u2013 we\u2019re all finding our political voices now, our intellectual voices now. There will be an array of challenges to an established, black political class in every locale. One of the collateral effects of Obama\u2019s run is that he\u2019s made space for a new generation \u2013 a different cadre \u2013 of political voices. So the traditional brokers of African-American politics are vulnerable. They\u2019re vulnerable in very interesting sorts of ways, in my view. Go ahead.<\/p>\n

BACON:\u00a0<\/strong> Vulnerable in the sense that they\u2019ll have primary opponents or vulnerable in the sense that they just don\u2019t have any influence, or what does that \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> In each instance, there will be vulnerability. They will have much more viable challengers. Constituencies will be much more critical. Precisely because the demographics of those constituencies are changing, given this kind of influx of young, new voters as we saw in the national election. That\u2019s going to play itself out in local areas in very interesting ways. In terms of the kind of cultural logic within which politics plays out, the kind of cultural space, it\u2019s beginning to take on a kind of tone \u2013 timbre, pitch, resonance \u2013 that\u2019s not reducible to the aesthetic of a \u201960s-inflected struggle. Does that make sense?<\/p>\n

Part of what we\u2019re beginning to see is that those of us who were shaped under different conditions and who have, historically, been locked out of black politics because we didn\u2019t march, or because we didn\u2019t \u2013 we hadn\u2019t earned our bona fides by virtue of participating in Selma \u2013 we now have Ph.D.s and J.D.s. And not only that, we\u2019re also starting non-profits and grassroots organizations around hip-hop. It\u2019s going to be a really complicated moment, and at every level, they\u2019re vulnerable, it seems to me.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay. E.J. Dionne is next, and then Eleanor and Kevin. And Jeffrey, did I see you nod to me? And Peter Boyer, you haven\u2019t had your hand up, but I know you have a question.<\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/figure>\n

PETER BOYER, THE NEW YORKER<\/em>: <\/strong>I did have just one tiny thing I guess, maybe, I could \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, but I\u2019ll put you on the list. You want to let him ahead?<\/p>\n

DIONNE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I don\u2019t mind, he can go ahead.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong> Okay, pull the – Peter Boyer over here, because you’ve been doing some interesting body language things, and I thought we probably should – (laughter) – we probably should call on you no matter what.<\/p>\n

DIONNE:<\/strong> Does that go on the transcript? Interesting body language things?<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong> I know, that part is probably –<\/p>\n

GOLDBERG:<\/strong> So then you could do a Google search, Peter Boyer, Key West, interesting body language.<\/p>\n

(Laughter.)<\/p>\n

BOYER:<\/strong> Because of the transcript, E.J., is why I’ve limited myself, so far, to body language. (Laughter.) I will say, but just, I hate to bring back up the subject of Jeremiah Wright, but following up a little bit on what Michael asked, let me put the question this way: That strain of the prophetic tradition, as expressed by Jeremiah Wright at Trinity \u2013 just in the particular case of Trinity \u2013 now that in Jeffrey\u2019s term, \u201cevil-doing America\u201d has elected \u2013<\/p>\n

JEFFREY GOLDBERG, THE ATLANTIC<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 All right, all right. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n

BOYER:\u00a0<\/strong> \u2013 has elected a black man, but not just any black man, but a congregant at Trinity to the highest office in the land. Does that rob that strain of its juice?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> It certainly complicates it, Peter. You know, we\u2019ve just experienced this extraordinary ritual of racial expiation called the Obama campaign, where we tried to shed the ghost of our racial past in this really fascinating way. To the extent that he\u2019s won, the question of how will black suffering speak publicly is now a pressing one. Whether or not the traditional rhetorical modes will be as effective \u2013 I hope they will be \u2013 we would have reached an interesting phase in the maturation of African-American politics if one could rail against Obama as one has railed against Bush, without recourse to language, which historically has been the language of racial authenticity.<\/p>\n

Instead of us saying, Clarence Thomas<\/a> is wrong, those of us who might disagree with his judicial philosophy \u2013 too many people find themselves saying that Clarence Thomas is a sell-out. The latter sort of formulation isn\u2019t helpful; it\u2019s about drawing boundaries of inside and outside; it\u2019s about policing the diversity of black positions. So I think there will be a role for prophetic voices; wherever power is operating, there\u2019s a role for the prophetic voice. It\u2019s going to be complicated because there\u2019s a black man running the empire.<\/p>\n

BOYER:<\/strong>\u00a0 But that particular strain \u2013 forgive me, and I hear you and I hope that it\u2019s \u2013 dare I say, pray \u2013 that it\u2019s true. But that particular strain that also contains maybe even as aspect of conspiratorial thinking, that talked about the CIA and AIDS and stuff, of which, one gathered, there was something of a receptive ear. That\u2019s premised on a certain view of this country \u2013 a country that, perhaps, God might indeed damn. And now that that country has \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Redeemed its soul.<\/p>\n

BOYER:\u00a0<\/strong> Well, in the flawed sort of way that it can \u2013 I mean, you know, we express ourselves in sundry ways in public life, and one of them is electing the person who leads us and makes policy. And now that, again, it\u2019s so striking to me that he wasn\u2019t just a black guy; he was a black guy who was in this congregation \u2013 this preacher with that strain of theology \u2013 reared up his babies. Now that this country has chosen that man to lead it, what happens to that particularly, in my view virulent, strain of thought? Does that go away, now?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 No. I don\u2019t think so. It\u2019s going to express itself at various registers. There\u2019s a wonderful book by an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, John Jackson<\/a>, entitled Racial Paranoia<\/a><\/em>. And I don\u2019t see, with the election of Obama, the end of that. And to the extent to which a kind of paranoia \u2013 you know, Baldwin had this wonderful moment in The Fire Next Time<\/a><\/em>, where he says that African-Americans didn\u2019t \u2013 could not risk themselves believing that a white person would, shall we say, hold their humanity as more important than their whiteness. And so that moment, was in effect, a kind of moment that you had to brace yourself before the \u2013 it\u2019s at the heart of the certain kind of paranoia that Baldwin was so wonderful in exploring.<\/p>\n

So I think that will remain, precisely because the Pew data has already shown us, or demonstrated, this extraordinary gap between those African-Americans who are living in hyper-concentrated spaces of poverty, where, as William Julius Wilson<\/a> says, work has simply disappeared, and those of us who have gained access to mainstream social capital in ways that black America could never have imagined. And so among those folks who are living in resource-deprived communities, blackness is still circulating in particular sorts of ways \u2013 a certain kind of ministry continues to work, continues to have power. So I don\u2019t see it disappearing anytime soon.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 In the same way, if I might add, that certain right-wing conspiracy theories didn\u2019t disappear under Reagan or Bush, am I right? But they weren\u2019t rooted in prophetic traditions, or some of those weren\u2019t. Okay, I\u2019m sorry, I jumped in the line; I forgive myself. E.J. Dionne, you\u2019re up next.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> You\u2019re forgiven.<\/p>\n

(Laughter.)<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Thank you, father.<\/p>\n

DIONNE:\u00a0<\/strong> Two quick thoughts \u2013 one\u2019s quasi-theoretical. I want to go all the way back to the beginning about this whole public reason debate, which has driven me crazy for some years now. On the one hand, I do think there\u2019s an obligation on the part of a believer to express his or her political views in ways that are accessible \u2013 his proposals or her proposals \u2013 in a way that is accessible to nonbelievers or people who don\u2019t share the faith tradition. On the other hand, I also think that people should be free to \u2013 and may even have an obligation \u2013 to say that they, in fact, have religious reasons for taking a particular political position. I sense you\u2019re struggling with this sort of contradiction, too; I\u2019d just love to hear you out more on that.<\/p>\n

And then, the other one is, again, just to go back to Jeremiah Wright. I remain, at the end of all this, mystified by the Wright we ended up seeing. I\u2019d like your sense of him, before he became really famous. If you talk to an awful lot of people in the church writ-large, including some fairly conservative people, there was a lot of respect for Jeremiah Wright floating around out there. Again, it wasn\u2019t just people who agreed with liberation theology. Yet, you can\u2019t square what you\u2019ve heard about him from some of those folks with the Wright, especially, you saw at the National Press Club that day<\/a>. So I\u2019d love it \u2013 even go \u2013 forgive me, Michael \u2013 even go off the record; I\u2019d just love your insight on, who is this man as far as you know. How do you square this person we saw, especially, toward the end of that controversy with the person you heard described by an awful lot of people in rather positive terms over a very long period of time?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right, I mean, let me take that first one \u2013 the last one first. And some of it can be on the record or off the record, I don\u2019t \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay, well, we\u2019re on the record until you say off.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yeah. One of the striking things about Jeremiah Wright\u2019s ministry is that it\u2019s within UCC. I mean, and there\u2019s like \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Say what UCC is.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 United Church of Christ<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Yeah, I just want to be sure.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Right. And I mean, what\u2019s the percentage of black folk in UCC? So I mean, obviously, Jeremiah Wright was doing something \u2013 I mean, he hadn\u2019t just simply brokered this little space within UCC just for himself and Trinity to do weird things. So there was a kind of interracial dialogue that was taking place within that denomination that Jeremiah Wright was at the forefront of. So he\u2019s a very complicated figure; he has an extraordinary social ministry that has done amazing work in Chicago, where he\u2019s garnered extraordinary respect. But Chicago is a unique space, particularly in terms of African-American politics.<\/p>\n

And so part of what \u2013 let me give you the answer that was said among my friends, who happen to be preachers. They said, you leave the pews at church, and what happened is, at the National Press Club, he brought the pews with him. (Laughter.) And he didn\u2019t get in trouble until the question and answer period, would you say? Remember? And there was this kind of antiphonal moment \u2013 \u201cYes sir, say it!\u201d \u2013 and he got caught up in the moment. That\u2019s when he started misbehaving \u2013 you know, the kind of bodily theatrics, and not only the content, but the kind of performance of what he was saying just got him in trouble.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I don\u2019t start doing that until tomorrow.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> Right. So part of what happened is that in any church, in any black church \u2013 and of course, I would say, in any church setting \u2013 there\u2019s an insider\u2019s discourse and an outsider\u2019s discourse. There are ways in which we talk at home, and then there are ways in which we talk outside. And that line was blurred, and he suddenly became Louis Farrakhan<\/a>. I mean, he was elevated to the kind of figure in the American public imagination, that \u2013 you mention Jeremiah Wright\u2019s name, and he becomes as much of a lightning rod as mentioning Louis Farrakhan\u2019s name. So much so that in the blogosphere, there was this slideshow of Obama and Jeremiah Wright, Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright, Obama and Jeremiah Wright, Farrakhan \u2013 it was this really interesting thing.<\/p>\n

I think what happened was a ministry that had been defined in interesting sort of ways by a profound commitment to the social gospel. It was often articulated within the context of a black community that is subject to particular kinds of forces, a ministry that is also influenced by the languages of black nationalism. Through his own theological orientation, it went public; and it went public in the National Press Club and got in all sorts of trouble. So I would want to say, E.J., that those elements were always a part of his ministry. It\u2019s just, when they\u2019re voiced publicly, certain elements stand out and others don\u2019t. So we see and hear that which is recognized as incendiary language, as opposed to seeing and hearing what\u2019s often said alongside of it \u2013 that which we might be committed to as well. So that\u2019s a very long-winded answer to that.<\/p>\n

The second \u2013 the first question is that you\u2019re absolutely right; I\u2019m struggling with it in a very \u2013 I think all of my colleagues at Princeton, we\u2019re all struggling with this. And the kind of \u2013 you know, I get this from the philosopher Robert Brandom<\/a> \u2013 and Jeffrey Stout<\/a> has channeled this through his own work, Democracy and Tradition<\/a><\/em> \u2013 he is a colleague of mine. What we\u2019re committed to is expressive democracy.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Expressive democracy.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Expressive democracy, and part of expressive democracy \u2013it involves, for the most part, this insistence on the exchange of reasons. And what Jeffrey Stout does so well is that he\u2019s so attentive to theological voices \u2013 whether it\u2019s Hauerwas or the orthodox folks. He\u2019s just very \u2013 trying in some significant way to engage them in light of these democratic values, which he believes \u2013 and I think rightly so \u2013 that his interlocutors share. And to the extent to which I can believe that fellow Christians who express their commitments differently than I do are committed to democracy, I want to engage them in a way that doesn\u2019t force them to deny who they are, at root. Attention is there, but the overriding value, again, is my commitment to expressive democracy. That\u2019s not an answer, but that\u2019s how I\u2019m struggling.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Eleanor Clift is next, and then I\u2019ve got Kevin and Sally and Rachel.<\/p>\n

\"Eleanor<\/figure>\n

ELEANOR CLIFT, NEWSWEEK<\/em>:<\/strong>\u00a0 The tradition, in this country, when a new president is sworn in is that his full name is used \u2013 James Earl Carter, William Jefferson Clinton \u2013 you know where I\u2019m going with this. Assuming \u2013<\/p>\n

UNIDENTIFIED:<\/strong>\u00a0 When he was sworn in, it was Jimmy Carter.<\/p>\n

CLIFT:\u00a0<\/strong> Oh. Interesting. I stand corrected, but I don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to say, I\u2019m Barry, that way. (Laughter.) I\u2019m assuming he\u2019s going to go with his full name; I just wonder what your perspective is on the message that sends, mostly around the world, but also here at home?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think it sends a powerful message. During the campaign, I was waiting for the Obama campaign to say what Colin Powell<\/a> said on Meet the Press<\/a><\/em>. I was waiting for them to say it. They move Muslims from the photo op. I was waiting for the Obama campaign to speak powerfully in the very way that General Powell spoke, and I think by having Barack Hussein Obama said as his hand is on a Bible will be a profound symbolic moment. I know my son will revel in it, and I will revel in it with him. So I think it will be wonderful. And for some, it will be a sign of the apocalypse \u2013 (chuckles) \u2013 but that\u2019s okay, that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

KUHN:\u00a0<\/strong> Do you not think he repudiates himself if he then chooses this official occasion \u2013 the most official of occasions \u2013 to use his middle name? Does he then repudiate his campaign\u2019s vociferous effort, often off the record, to not have this appear at all in the political discourse. If it did appear, it was immediately considered the dirtiest of dirty politics.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE<\/strong>:\u00a0 Right. It\u2019s a repudiation that I would welcome, David.<\/p>\n

KUHN:\u00a0<\/strong> Okay, that\u2019s well said.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay, Kevin and then Sally and Rachel and Byron.<\/p>\n

ECKSTROM:\u00a0<\/strong> I\u2019m wondering if we can just go back to something we were talking about earlier \u2013 Obama\u2019s relationship with the black church. Specifically, what do you see happening over the next four or however many years, in terms of how he deals with them and how, perhaps, the black church deals with him? Do you think the black church, as diverse as it is, \u2013 but in a general sense \u2013 do they expect something from him, since he\u2019s sort of one of their own? Do they have an ally there, or is he under any sort of special obligation to reach out to them? I\u2019m just curious what you see of that delicate dance in the coming years.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> First, you\u2019ve framed it; it\u2019s going to be a delicate dance. But he\u2019s going to be attentive in interesting sorts of ways, and I\u2019m going to flesh out something I said earlier to an earlier version of this question. And what comes to mind is, Obama allowing Ebony<\/a><\/em> to have him on the cover as the man of the year. And doing it in interesting sorts of ways \u2013 he had to be mindful \u2013 his folks had to be mindful of how that would be perceived. You know, Ebony<\/em> is like, our magazine. \u201cOur\u201d magazine \u2013 (laughter) \u2013 and so for him to do that is to suggest that he will be attentive to various institutional manifestations of the black community.<\/p>\n

I think he\u2019s going to engage in a kind of interesting cost-benefit analysis of that connection; it doesn\u2019t cost him much to be on the cover of Ebony<\/em>. What will it cost him to affiliate with particular black churches, when he hasn\u2019t seen all of the tapes of that particular minister, he might be attending? So that\u2019s the first thing. The second thing is that I think African-American communities have already been primed to not expect anything from Senator Obama, or President-elect Obama.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Primed by his campaign or primed in general?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE: <\/strong>\u00a0Primed by his campaign, because the campaign provided African-American communities with this response when African-American communities wanted him to specifically address their issues. What was the response? \u201cI cannot be the president of black America. I am the president of America. I will be the president of America.\u201d That kind of formulation, has, in interesting sorts of ways \u2013 and I don\u2019t think this is a good thing for African-American politics, by any stretch of the imagination. I will go on record as saying I think we might have seen the Obama campaign set African-American politics back a generation.<\/p>\n

And let me explain what I mean, because I just saw Jeffrey\u2019s face. What I mean by that is for the first time in 40 years, we had an opportunity to re-imagine African-American politics apart from the issues and themes and personalities of the 1960s and \u201970s. There was a gaping hole there. And Obama\u2019s campaign stepped in with a kind of wink-and-nod politics. That wink-and-nod politics was, in effect, I can\u2019t be a black politician; but he appealed to the sentiments that have driven African-American politics for generations, for decades. So at that very moment in which we had an opening in order to generate a more vibrant deliberative space for black folk of a variety of interests to engage in the back and forth, Obama would come into black communities and talk about personal responsibility as opposed to policy. He would come into black communities and one time, at Howard University<\/a>, he gives that extraordinary talk<\/a> about the criminal justice system; we don\u2019t hear any more about it.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t hear about how his healthcare policies actually impact these folk whose infant mortality rates, hypertension, diabetes \u2013 we can go down the line. And when black folk wanted to ask, specifically, how these policies will affect black communities, the response was, \u201cI can\u2019t be the president of black America; I\u2019m the president of America.\u201d And so that becomes an interesting \u2013 at the moment in which space is open, it contracts almost immediately. I think communities have been primed not to expect anything, because he can\u2019t give it. That was the condition for him being elected. I really believe that. Now, are those costs too high? I think so.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 We\u2019re about to come up to our break, but we\u2019ve got three more to get in and I think we can do it.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> And I\u2019ll be briefer.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Sally, you\u2019re next, then Rachel and Byron.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0 <\/strong>Can you \u2013 is my mic working? I want to go back to Jeremiah Wright. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Our national obsession.<\/p>\n

QUINN:\u00a0<\/strong> I think in all of my years of journalism, I don\u2019t think I have seen a story covered as badly as this story was \u2013 by everybody, print, television, radio. But also, I didn\u2019t see the black community standing up for Jeremiah Wright in a way that one might have thought. This is a guy who is unbelievably distinguished, who, for 36 years, had this extraordinary career, who is a real intellectual \u2013 he\u2019s a linguist, he\u2019s a philosopher. The projects that he did in community outreach were extraordinary. He had this fantastic \u2013 and in two, 20-minute sound bites, his entire career was destroyed. When you look at what he said \u2013 because I went back and looked at some of the other quotes from other religious leaders. When he was particularly talking about chickens coming home to roost and goddamn America, Martin Luther King said almost exactly the same thing about Vietnam<\/a>, that God is going to punish us for what we did \u2013 I don\u2019t have the exact quote in front of me \u2013in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s his name \u2013 Bill Clinton\u2019s spiritual advisor \u2013 Tony Campolo<\/a>, after 9\/11, virtually said we brought this on ourselves. He basically was saying, the chickens have come home to roost. In the Bible, Jeremiah talks about the Israelis saying, if you don\u2019t shape up, we\u2019re going to \u2013 God will destroy the temple. One right after the other, these people have said exactly the same thing that he said. The language was \u2013 and if you took it out of context, I don\u2019t think they played the whole speech the way they should have, but when you heard it in context \u2013 it wasn\u2019t nearly as inflammatory as it sounded just by those sound bites. But I also think that Jeremiah \u2013 he, in a way, was representing, as everyone knows, an older group. Barack Obama was not a child or an ancestor of a slave, so he didn\u2019t come in with that perspective.<\/p>\n

I went to the National Press Club the day that Jeremiah Wright spoke, and I was there as a guest, and so I was not in the press \u2013 the press balcony was up there. Lisa Miller, my colleague \u2013 several of my colleagues were sitting up in the balcony with the press, and I was sitting downstairs. Almost everybody downstairs was black because they were all Jeremiah Wright\u2019s friends and colleagues and all that. And his speech was really good, smart, very on-the-money. Then the Q&A started, and the questions were coming. The people I was sitting around were responding like, \u201cSay it, say it, brother! Go ahead! Tell it!\u201d And people were laughing and they were clapping and they were screaming, and you could just see him just turn into this \u2013 oh my god, you know, look at me, right in the National Press Club.<\/p>\n

I kind of thought it was funny until I walked outside, and Lisa and all the press came downstairs saying, oh my god, this is the biggest disaster they\u2019ve ever seen in their entire lives. And it was so amazing to me that my perspective was so completely different from theirs because of where I was sitting and the response of the crowd that I was listening to. I then went over to the Shiloh Baptist Church, where they \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Sally, we are running out of time, but this is very interesting.<\/p>\n

QUINN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, no, no, I\u2019m sorry. There was an entire day, from 9:30 until 10:30 that night, of appreciation for Jeremiah Wright. His whole family was there. One after the other of educated Ph.D.s, lawyers \u2013 but older blacks talking. Each one spoke about slavery and the pain of slavery, each one. But after \u2013 what I\u2019m asking you is, I don\u2019t see that happening any more. That\u2019s why I\u2019m interested in this whole fight in the Trinity church between Otis Moss and Jeremiah Wright and how he\u2019s managed to ease his way back in. Because Otis Moss is clearly the voice of the future, and this thing of slavery and where we\u2019ve come from just doesn\u2019t seem to be relevant \u2013 as Peter was saying \u2013 just doesn\u2019t seem to be relevant any more.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 We have a challenge, and the challenge is that we\u2019re about to see, for the first time in the history of the African-American sojourn in the United States, a cadre of leadership that has no biographical experience of slavery or Jim Crow<\/a>. It\u2019s the first time ever. And so we sound differently, we look differently, the rhythm of our speech \u2013 our tone \u2013 our voices are different. And so folks are having a difficult time wrapping their minds around it. I always say this, very quickly: I was confused by Reverend Wright\u2019s mini-tour. I said to myself, if he had the right advisors, somebody would have told him, sign the book contract for six figures, write the book, and then the book tour will justify you being out there.<\/p>\n

You will be pushing your book and you can defend yourself \u2013 I didn\u2019t understand why he went out there so soon. And I think a lot of folks in the African-American community asked \u2013 why are you going out, doing this? Why are you feeling the need to defend yourself in this way, at this moment? You\u2019re jeopardizing his candidacy; disappear for a moment. And so there was support but there was also a kind of confusion about his motivation and whether or not ego got in the way.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Can you explain, quickly, his relationship to Louis Farrakhan \u2013 his friendship?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, Farrakhan was honored in his church, and as a member of the community in which he lives. To understand the black community on the south side of Chicago is to understand the role of the Nation of Islam in that community, and there\u2019s no way that you can disentangle them. Part of this litmus test of acceptability is, what\u2019s your position on Louis Farrakhan \u2013 he simply rejected out of hand. It got him in a whole lot of trouble, obviously, because now he\u2019s just like him \u2013 persona non grata.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Rachel Martin and then Byron.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:\u00a0<\/strong> This builds on the current conversation. You keep saying that Reverend Wright needs to leave the pews in the church; how does that jibe with what your thesis is, about being able to speak authentically in public spaces and about religion?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 (Chuckles.) Rachel, touch\u00e9.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:<\/strong>\u00a0 Truly, I mean, divorced from the political implications, which I understand \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> No, I think my point was not about the substance of his claim, but the performance of the claim. Part of what I was saying is that in the Q&A, which Sally witnessed, there was a kind of environment of insularity that felt like home and that environment allowed for a certain kind of insider discourse to make itself known. That\u2019s not so much about the \u2013 what I mean by that is that at that moment, in that venue, to perform a certain kind of blackness on that stage was to place himself and Obama in jeopardy. So prudentially, it wasn\u2019t a good move.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 At that time.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 At that moment.<\/p>\n

MARTIN:\u00a0<\/strong> So you concede that there are certain moments when it might not be in your best interest to speak authentically about the religious motivations that inform your opinions and values?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m distinguishing \u2013 because I didn\u2019t think the content of what he said was the issue; it was how he said it, how he performed it. Most people would say he looked like a buffoon \u2013 look at how he\u2019s acting. That moment when he looks this way, and then he runs back to the thing \u2013 and so there was a sense in which \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> But there were words, too.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> There were some words, but I don\u2019t think those words were the equivalent of faith claims in the public domain. I think I\u2019m resisting the conflation of those two moments.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Before I go to Byron York, a quick point, if Peter could get his permission. He wanted to make a small, quick intervention and they\u2019re both next to each other, Brett.<\/p>\n

BOYER:\u00a0 <\/strong>(Inaudible, off mic) \u2013 I mean, it seems that \u2013<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> And by the way, he\u2019s a homeboy, from Gulfport. (Chuckles.) That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

BOYER:\u00a0<\/strong> That\u2019s why you can\u2019t get too far from me, Professor. But on Rachel\u2019s point, it seems to me that in the same \u2013 even if Reverend Wright had contained his physical expression that day, the actual words that he said. In other words, had he made a defense of his theology, it still wouldn\u2019t have gone over so good, I would suggest. And I would go further, not to suppose motivation for your thesis, professor. But it seems to me that if theologically motivated \u2013 if faith-motivated folks go into the public arena and make a faith-based argument. Let\u2019s just say that you believe what you believe as your poor, abused sister, to bring her back into the conversation. If she believes what she believes about Proposition 8 for reasons of revelation, but gets it that you can\u2019t make that argument in the public square, isn\u2019t your argument for making it in the public square on those terms, which is to say, reasons of revelation \u2013 the Bible tells me it\u2019s wrong \u2013 isn\u2019t part of that just setting up an a\u2014kicking, as we saw what happened with the Reverend Wright?<\/p>\n

If you actually go into the public square and actually preach what you believe, which we have also seen, as Michael pointed out, from Pat Robertson and all those guys, you lose. It only stands a chance of winning if, in fact, you find a way that it can be cast in terms of reason and stripped of its spiritual aspect.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> This is a species of Richard\u2019s point that I\u2019m engaging in a sleight-of-hand, that I\u2019m trying to set religious folks up to be defeated in the public domain on democratic grounds, trying to rid the democratic process of certain kinds of dissimilation in order to get to some ends that I might \u2013<\/p>\n

BOYER:<\/strong> But can you imagine your sister winning that argument on the terms that you would have her argue it \u2013 I guess is what I\u2019m asking?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 I imagine \u2013 no, probably not \u2013 but I imagine my sister having a conversation with those of us who might not hold her position whereby she\u2019s asked to explain more fully what she believes and how I could engage her, and you might engage her, on different grounds. So, for example, she might make the case that scripture views homosexuality as an abomination, and I might argue with the resources of Eugene Rogers<\/a>, a professor at the University of North Carolina, who makes the case that on scriptural grounds, same-sex love is actually justified \u2013 on scriptural grounds.<\/p>\n

And so there could be an argument on public grounds, if I\u2019m sensitive enough to engage her as a Christian on her own terms, so that we could, perhaps, generate conclusions that she might be willing, if she lost in the debate, to concede to \u2013 as opposed to simply being excluded from the deliberative process so that she has no buy-in, in terms of the conclusions, and then winds up blowing up stuff. You get the point? In that sense, I might be trying to generate consensus disingenuously, but I might not concede that just yet. In the case of \u2013<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong>\u00a0 This is a deeply, deeply theoretical proposition and point, and I think it best, would be continued over drinks.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 Beautifully done! Beautifully done.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE: <\/strong>At seven. Well, we actually did this some years ago – we had Rick Warren here and the conversation just kept going and going and going, and finally, I said, well, we could have this over cocktails, of which Rick did not join.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE<\/strong>: I will join them.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong> He joined the talks, but not the drinks.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong> I’ve got to call my mom and tell her I was compared to Rick Warren.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:<\/strong> That’s a good point. But Byron, you can be the person to give us the – take us into the break –<\/p>\n

YORK:\u00a0<\/strong> I want to move away from Reverend Wright. Pollsters often ask the question, what do you think is the most important issue that the new president or the new Congress ought to address? It\u2019s an open-ended question; they don\u2019t give any choices. Race relations, from the polls I\u2019ve read, is always right down at the bottom \u2013 maybe 1 percent, maybe 2 percent. We all know the issues in this election with the economy and before that, gas prices and Iraq and Bush-fatigue the whole time. And then you called the election of Obama \u2013 and I think it\u2019s a quote \u2013 you called it, \u201can extraordinary act of racial expiation.\u201d So my question is, to what extent do you think this election was about race?<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:\u00a0<\/strong> It was all about race. That\u2019s why we were all crying \u2013 many of us were crying when we saw him in Grant Park<\/a>. We couldn\u2019t say it was about race during the election, but it\u2019s historic, why? It\u2019s historic precisely because he\u2019s the first black man to be elected to the office, so it was all about race, in my view. The question is, how do we deal with the ghastly ghosts of our past? America has this extraordinary ability to retreat into its innocence \u2013 or its perceived innocence. These ghosts are constantly reminding us of how earthly and human this fragile experiment in democracy has been. So I think it was all about race. I think his election, for African-American communities in particular and for the nation more generally, is a signal that the true work now begins, as opposed to, we should all pat ourselves on the back. I think the true work begins January 20.<\/p>\n

CROMARTIE:\u00a0<\/strong> Ladies and gentlemen, again, it\u2019s a mark of a great session when we even go into our break time and people are not getting up and leaving and running to the beach. Let\u2019s thank Professor Glaude for a wonderful presentation.<\/p>\n

This written transcript has been edited for clarity, spelling, grammar and accuracy by Cheryl Jackson. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2008 for the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Eddie S.Glaude Jr., author of In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America, discussed religion and race in America. Specifically, he described historical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_api_pending":"","apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_hidden":false,"relatedPosts":[],"reportMaterials":[],"multiSectionReport":[],"package_parts__enabled":false,"package_parts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":false,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[75,161,149,101,28,425,24,172,422,406,174,432],"tags":[],"bylines":[],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"level_of_effort":[],"primary_audience":[],"information_type":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[469],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[517],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-74417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-beliefs-practices","category-black-americans","category-discrimination-prejudice","category-race-ethnicity","category-race-ethnicity-religion","category-religion","category-religion-politics-1","category-religion-race-1","category-religious-characteristics-of-demographic-groups","category-religious-demographics","category-us-religious-demographics","formats-transcript","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-religion"],"label":false,"post_parent":0,"word_count":26025,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2008\/12\/08\/religion-and-race-a-historical-and-contemporary-perspective\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"report_materials":"","report_pagination":{"current_post":null,"next_post":null,"previous_post":null,"pagination_items":[]},"parent_info":{"parent_title":"Religion and Race: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective","parent_id":74417},"materialsOrdered":[],"chaptersOrdered":[],"partsOrdered":[],"partsEnabled":false,"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Religion and Race: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective","description":"Some of the nation's leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in December 2008 for the Pew Forum's biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. Eddie S.Glaude…","og_title":"Religion and Race: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective","og_description":"","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":0,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{"prc-image-alt-text":{"status":"complete","message":"No image blocks in content.","data":null},"prc-about-this-research":{"status":"incomplete","message":"Add an \"About this research\" details block.","data":null},"prc-paragraph-count":{"status":"complete","message":"Found 5 paragraphs.","data":{"count":5}},"prc-internal-link":{"status":"complete","message":"Found 16 internal links.","data":{"count":16}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[{"key":"11eb3ca5-cf1e-4e24-a382-64d1bb8f3b3c","termId":2197}],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133018,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74417\/revisions\/133018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"level_of_effort","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/level_of_effort?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"primary_audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary_audience?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"information_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/information_type?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=74417"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=74417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

KUHN:\u00a0 <\/strong>Jumping off some of your comments today \u2013 my questions have changed as the day has progressed, in the last half hour \u2013 on the subject of black churches. I think you have to separate the movement that Wright comes from \u2013 which comes from this more aggressive, assertive, civil rights response \u2013 those who felt King wasn\u2019t moving fast enough and so on. He was a theological \u2013 it was a theological, Malcom X<\/a>-esque religious movement that is very recent from the other discussion about the black church.<\/p>\n

GLAUDE:<\/strong>\u00a0 No, I think at that point it becomes the occasion to begin to have an argument, to begin to have a conversation. On what grounds would you say \u2013 that their revelation is not your revelation. Both of you identify as Christians. How would you then differentiate your view from theirs? Are you making the claim that they\u2019re not Christian? If not, then what role might their understanding of revelation play? In other words, it becomes the occasion for a substantive and hopefully nuanced discussion. Now, the assumption is that, typically, folks who hold that view are not up to nuanced discussions. At that point their views, as the late Richard Rorty<\/a> would say, constitutes a conversation stopper. Maybe I, naively perhaps, am not committed to that notion. You frown.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost like \u2013 there\u2019s an old19th-century argument William Whipper<\/a> and others used to use that we need to rid ourselves of race language if we\u2019re going to rid ourselves of racism. We can\u2019t identify difference. We need to stop using language of black, white, color and these sorts of things. And beyond portraying a kind of peculiar sense of the way in which language works, in some significant way, you rob yourself of the kinds of tools to specify the specific conditions under which you live your life. So part of what I\u2019m saying is that we don\u2019t need to get beyond cultural, specific institutions that have rich histories that are meaningful in order to get to a post-racial moment. We need to begin to think about how these can be valued apart from the hierarchical arrangements that white supremacy instantiates.<\/p>\n