04-28-2008, 04:19 PM
[quote guitarist]From Slate Magazine:
"Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the recently retired pastor of Barack Obama's church in Chicago. Here is the form that the reverend's "retirement" will take: a $1.6 million home, purchased in the name of his church and consisting of more than 10,000 square feet, in a gated community in Tinley Park, a prosperous white section of the city. There used to be a secularist line about fat shepherds and thin sheep, but the joke here is not just at the expense of a man who never pretended to be much more than a hustler. The joke is on those of the "flock" who tithed themselves to achieve this level of comfort for a man who must be pinching himself when he wakes up every day."
I don't understand why the "joke is on...the 'flock'"? There are 8,000 members of that church, surely if they didn't want this to occur they could have stopped it? I don't believe this was any sort of secret or surreptitious purchase. This is the way the church has chosen to honor the man who grew the parish from 87 members to 8,000. I don't think it's anybody's business how they chose to handle his retirement, it's their money not ours.
"Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the recently retired pastor of Barack Obama's church in Chicago. Here is the form that the reverend's "retirement" will take: a $1.6 million home, purchased in the name of his church and consisting of more than 10,000 square feet, in a gated community in Tinley Park, a prosperous white section of the city. There used to be a secularist line about fat shepherds and thin sheep, but the joke here is not just at the expense of a man who never pretended to be much more than a hustler. The joke is on those of the "flock" who tithed themselves to achieve this level of comfort for a man who must be pinching himself when he wakes up every day."
I don't understand why the "joke is on...the 'flock'"? There are 8,000 members of that church, surely if they didn't want this to occur they could have stopped it? I don't believe this was any sort of secret or surreptitious purchase. This is the way the church has chosen to honor the man who grew the parish from 87 members to 8,000. I don't think it's anybody's business how they chose to handle his retirement, it's their money not ours.