Heard Jeremiah Wright speak today.

I heard the Reverend Jeremiah Wright speak today; because he was friends with one professor at school, they booked him into a big speaking space on campus.

The big surprise of the night -- in his lengthy opening remarks where he talked about doing liberation theology workshops in Cuba along with the prof, he made a point of pronouncing all the Spanish names with a Spanish accent, and then when he turned to discussing South African theologians politicians etc., he said words along the lines of "Nkoko" authentically, and even did a few clicks.

Also, when he gave an anecdote about how Fidel showed up at one church service, he said one lady stood up and said, "[something in Spanish]," and after everyone who understood Spanish laughed, he then elaborated that it meants, "Holy shit, it's Fidel!"

He then said that the Cuban pastor noted right then and there that it was the first time Fidel Castro had appeared in church in 26 years, and Fidel was like (though not, it seems, in Spanish), "But it has been the first time in 26 years that I've been invited," to which all the black women in the audience were like "mmmmmmmmmm" (an "mmmmmmmmmm" that started up high and descended in tone, not an "mmmmm-hmmmmmmmm"), and then the Reverend Wright was like, "Like my mama says, 'Ain't that something to chew on right there.'"

When he first appeared, too, like all the black women stood up and applauded him and it felt very forced, and I was very uncomfortable, because it viscerally conveyed the kind of patriarchal black church "stand by your pastor no matter what" thing.

Anyhow, his remarks were on "Love your neighbor", and what me and a couple other students (one black male, one white female) after remarked on was how in his retelling of the Good Samaritan parable from Luke, he made the questioner who asked Jesus the question a lawyer (read "Jew"), and one of the people who passed the Samaritan by a rabbi, and another an imam, and the guy who helped him out be a gay former-gangbanger turned-Pentecostal Christian, "The kind folks like to sneer at" or something like that.

People definitely liked the gay thing there, but later in the Q&A when someone asked him about who in America we're trained to hate, he started out with Native Americans and then said blacks and then said gays and then went on to something else (maybe non-citizens?), and the black women next to me gave an "mmm-hmmm" to everything but the gays.

Though, the point of his good Samaritan story was kind of not-careful, since it perpetuated the anti-Semitism of the New Testament a bit, though later in his speech he made a point of saying how the holy scriptures of all religions perpetuate hatred towards different groups -- very odd.

The Q&A session was a wash, with like three "white guys with issues" standing up to ask questions - one biracial kid (white, hispanic) who told his life story and then asked something about hating Hilary Clinton, one guy (Jewish?) who asked about Israel policy (the Rev. Wright said we should sympathize with the Palestinians since they don't have guns), and one Mormon guy who said he was raised to love everyone and that his people too were persecuted in Mexico (I bet they were polygamists who fled there), and then asked something about forgiveness for historical injustices.

There was also some kid who said he was culturally Jewish but was raised atheist and felt out of place at inter-religious dialogue type-things, and he was just irrelevant.

The best part of that was this one Asian guy with an accent who asked about how something he's always struggled with is Jesus's "clear claim" that he is "the way, the truth, and the life," and how that factors into inter-religious dialogue. The Rev. Wright said that first of all no one on the South Side worries about that verse, and that maybe it was emphasized against other religions by Christian missionaries, and in any case scholars would debate that as words of Christ and see that as later church tradition concerned with spreading orthodoxy -- a very, very solid response, I thought, and the best overall part of the night.