You don’t know me, though I know perhaps too much about you. In any case, let me introduce myself. I’m a pastor of a Unitarian Universalist congregation in New York. I’ve been married for 24 years, to a man who loves the vast majority of what I do. I’ve got two sons, who think having a mother who’s a minister is pretty cool. I’m African-American, just so you’ll know. I’ve been a Democrat all my life and a feminist (womanist, really) before there was a name for us. And in the interest of full disclosure, I’m a personal supporter of Barack Obama, and have been since he announced his candidacy, though members of my congregation span the political spectrum.

There’s really no reason for you to listen to me, but being a writer and a minister, that’s never stopped me from speaking. I feel I would be remiss in not being direct in my commentary about what is happening in this race for the Presidency. I would never presume to tell you not to run, even in these days when the doors of possibility are closing fast for your candidacy. You have every right to run for President, to make your case to the American people, to prove to those of us who are Democrats that you should be our party’s choice to run against John McCain. So far, however, the only case you have made to me is why I should not vote for you, even though I have never voted for a Republican in my life.

I guess I am part of that statistical anomaly being reported in the mainstream media; the roughly 20 percent of Democrats who say they will not vote for you if you wrest the nomination from Sen. Obama. You didn’t ask me, but let me tell you why I won’t vote for you, and why you have made my determination stronger with each passing day.

Let me begin with your relentless efforts to move the goalpost. You and your advisers continue to issue talking points about what it takes to make a viable nominee for the presidency, and those points have changed with each change in your political fortunes. This is fundamentally untrustworthy, and that is bad enough to call into question any candidate for the presidency. But though you have no hesitation about capitalizing on the issue of gender and the historic meaning of your candidacy, you continue to remain blind to the implications of race in this campaign (unless you view it as a liability for Sen. Obama).

There are few of us African-Americans who have not experienced the bitterness of playing by the rules, only to have others change those rules when it seems we will prevail. All of us who are drawn to Sen. Obama’s candidacy, and even those of us who might be drawn to yours, are paying close attention as you and your camp, faced with defeat, keep attempting to change the rules of this very serious game, as Sen. Obama meets every criteria for victory. He has won more states than you have; you respond that they haven’t been the right states. He has won more of the popular vote than you have; you respond that it’s the delegates that matter. He has won more delegates than you have; you respond that we need to let the superdelegates play out their role, as determined by the Democratic National Committee. He agrees to abide by the DNC rules about Florida and Michigan’s exclusion, just as you did at the start, before it became more expedient to change your mind when the political calculus suggested that those states might move you toward the nomination when nothing else could.

For all of your supposed awareness about our multicultural America, you are curiously blind to the implications of your current behavior. The notion that a qualified black man should take second place to a qualified white woman who is the wife of a powerful white man, (evidenced by your condescending suggestion that Sen. Obama might be your vice president) is anathema to any student of African American history. The coded message sent by your campaign harks back to the days of “Miss Ann,” the plantation owner’s wife who holds the power of life and death over the black people within her family’s reach. Your ambition for the White House notwithstanding, such sweeping power over the hearts and minds of African-Americans is long gone. I regret to say that your assumption of black allegiance or black gratitude is a dream that you (and apparently Pat Buchanan) have been having. I respectfully suggest that you wake up, Sen. Clinton, for if Barack Obama’s candidacy has done nothing else, it has cemented for an entire generation of African-Americans the reality of our own agency. No one has a right to our vote; no one can assume our loyalty, perhaps ever again. At long last, those of you who seek our votes will have to earn them. I must tell you that you have done little to earn those votes so far, especially when you have so egregiously and deliberately misstated so much about Sen. Obama’s campaign, its appeal, the man himself, and Sen. Obama’s relationships with others in the African-American community, particularly his relationship with his pastor, The Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

As a liberal religious minister, I am offended by the way in which you have used America’s ignorance about religion in general and about the black church in particular–both as a club to disable Sen. Obama’s campaign and as a stepping-stone to the nomination. I am offended that someone like yourself, who has over the years flaunted her close ties to African-American communities, would suddenly feign ignorance about the family status that black pastors frequently enjoy among members of their congregations, a status that is no less real because it is freely chosen. I am especially offended that you have not acknowledged the ways in which you (and nearly everyone else) has taken out of context the particulars of Rev. Wright’s sermon. Not only did he preach that sermon in relation to a particular text (Psalm 137), which he uses to warn his listeners against the dangerous escalation of violence and revenge, but he also “footnotes” the most contentious part of his sermon, clearly quoting a former US ambassador’s view of American history as his source. Even if you do not have access to YouTube, where a more contextual excerpt of Rev. Wright’s sermon is available for viewing, your staff certainly does. What’s more, this is not the first time you have attempted to use religion as a wedge in this contest. Why else would you have answered a question on “60 Minutes” about whether you believed Sen. Obama was a Muslim by saying “not as far as I know?”

But context and nuance do not seem to be what you or your campaign are seeking; it seems only scorched earth will do. There have been moments when I have wished that Sen. Obama would be more aggressive in his response to the distortions and vitriol issuing from your campaign. But I have changed my mind, especially after listening to his incredible speech on race in America, which brought me back to myself and reminded me why he is the candidate that best represents the future into which my family and I hope to live. I want someone leading this nation who isn’t afraid to ask me to be better tomorrow than I am today, who asks me to think past my own pain and recognize the pain of others. In much larger and more important ways, he is doing what I try to do in my congregation each week–encourage my people to connect to something greater and to reach for something higher than the immediate, petty things that consume so much of our time. And he is working hard to lead us by example, by modeling for us how we might be with one another, how we might be while under attack from the mean-spirited and short-sighted people and events that could distract us if we let them.

You have chosen a different path, and in all good conscience, I cannot follow you on it. Not only have I lost respect for the kind of presidency you might create, I have also lost faith that you could prevail against a right-wing machine who will use your own recent tactics against you, and with far more effectiveness. As it stands now, the poisonous level of the campaign you have waged has provided the right with ample material for every 527 group they can afford to fund, no matter who the nominee. Fueled by your sense of entitlement and your campaign’s lack of boundaries, you may have sabotaged the opportunity for progressive government in the United States for a generation. I hope with all my heart that I am wrong. But if I am right, I hope you will not fail to take at least as much credit as you have given yourself for the Northern Ireland Peace Process and your interventions in Bosnia.

With deep regret,

The Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt

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So let’s add one more reason to the pile: his stunning speech on race in America. I couldn’t see it live, and spent most of yesterday trying to find a site that hadn’t crashed from all the traffic. But I finally got to see it last night; what a brave, brilliant moment. It was a speech of such courage and compassion, such honesty and respect. I felt he articulated on my behalf the wound of slavery in a way no contemporary public person has in a generation. And in articulating it so clearly, and in its full context, he invited me and other African-Americans, to risk putting aside its memory for the sake of something more important: the future of my country. The brilliance of his speech was that he did not simply do the same old thing and ask black people to get over it. He asked us to own the truth of our experiences, to acknowledge the truth of the experiences of whites, and to recognize that some of what troubles us is our collective ignorance about race , about history and about one another. I know that he will have disappointed some Latino/Latina and Asian people by seeming to focus on the black/white aspect of the racial divide. But I believe that such focus is entirely appropriate, because I believe slavery and its legacy in the United States is our country’s primary, deepest festering wound.

To me, the least interesting thing about the speech was the ostensible reason for giving it: an opportunity for Obama to reject/denounce/decry the words of his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Watching the news coverage of Rev. Wright over the past several days has been a textbook example of religious illiteracy in the American media. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. It’s perfectly obvious that most reporters and commentators don’t go to church/synagogue/mosque, so they don’t have any idea of what a relationship with your pastor/rabbi/iman can be like. It’s just as obvious that none of them have a clue about the black church in general or black theology in particular. Mad props to Chris Walton for his brilliant Philocrites post of a few days ago on this very subject; you go, Chris!

Most telling of all, for me anyway, is the complete lack of cultural understanding about this “rejecting/denouncing” business that seems to have such currency in the public arena. At the risk of making too broad a statement about African-American values, and with the full knowledge that I don’t speak for all black people, let me say that we don’t do the “rejecting/denouncing” things with family. We just don’t do it. Nearly every black person I know has family members and close friends who have said and done all kinds of uncool things, even criminal things. Every one of us that I know of have been clear about disapproving of the offending party’s behavior. But all those folks are still part of our respective circles, even amid all their imperfections and failures.

When I was growing up, I was taught that you don’t turn your back on family, no matter what they’ve done. (Sociologists have long documented the incorporation of good friends and mentors into the structures of black family life. In studies, such people are referred to as “fictive kin.” When I was growing up, we just called such people our “play sisters/brothers/cousins/uncles/aunts.”) So when Obama talked about Wright being like an uncle to him, it made complete sense to me, especially considering that Wright performed the Obamas’ wedding and baptized their children. You don’t stop going to your family’s house for Thanksgiving because your family members start acting out, do you? (In my house, the only question on Thanksgiving is: who’s turn is it to act out this year?) Your people are your people. Period. You can hate what they say and do, but at their core, you belong to them and they belong to you. This posture is, among other things, Universalist theology 101.

As always, nobody wanted to talk about anything else but that speech today. The only trouble is, today is the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, and so many of us seemed resigned to it. I like to think it’s because we are waiting for November to remedy this tragedy. It would be nice to think that Americans could carry on more than one serious national debate at a time, wouldn’t it?

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As both minister and mother, I can sympathize with the multiple demands on our children, as well as the state of exhaustion in which they live/move/have their being. After all, I live with two world-class whiners on the subject of church, ages 11 and 14. There are weeks when I get nothing but static from our sons, who complain that Sunday ought to be the one day they can sleep in peace. I’m also privileged to be the targeted recipient of the “you’re only making me go to church because YOU have to go to church” conversation, reserved for ministers, DREs and other religious professionals.

But I’ve made it clear to A. and D. that they have to go to church anyway, even if I don’t go. (Imagine how appalled they’ve been during my sabbatical, when their birthright UU father herds them out the door while I watch “Meet the Press!”) As I once told them a while back, “you don’t want to go to school either, but you still have to go to school. There are things you have to learn in school, and things you have to learn in church, and it’s our job to make sure you learn in both places.”

Of course, much sighing and eye-rolling ensues (it is so hard not to laugh sometimes!) along with how boring church is and how they aren’t really learning anything. But there are two events I remember when I consider this, one about each of my sons. Recently, Bob and the kids (hereafter known as “the guys”) went to a church-sponsored dinner without me that had been planned before I went on sabbatical. I had something else to do anyway, but I got home before they did. The guys arrived home with a doggie bag for me, and stories of the evening’s fun. At one point, A., my lanky 14-year-old, stretched out on the living room floor looking happy as he relived the night’s events. “I just love all the people at our church,” he said. “They are all so cool.”

The other story concerns my little one, at a church game night. D. is consumed with that old Milton Bradley game, “The Game of Life,” and he’d joined with several congregants in playing it that night. In fact, it was D.’s job to pass out all the little playing pieces. At one point, one of the players landed on a square that demanded they get married, and D., reaching over to get one of the pink and blue pieces that indicate marriage, paused and asked the player: “Are you marrying a boy or a girl?”

These two stories are the reasons we listen to the boys complain about church, and make them come anyway. Even when they think it is boring to be there, they are learning the value of multigenerational community, they are learning to be kind and open and accepting and fair. Our two sons are wonderful human beings, and church is one of the reasons they are that way. It takes a UU congregation to help raise our children–but first, they have to be there.

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