A self-identified African-American caller to a Washington, D.C., radio station characterized the recent anti-Hillary Clinton outburst by the white liberal Chicago priest Michael Pfleger as a “minstrel show.”
Pfleger, who was preaching “another gospel,” denounced Sen. Clinton for her sense of “entitlement” in trying to take the Democratic presidential nomination from a black man, Barack Obama. Pfleger, who donated $1,500 to the Obama campaign between 1995 and 2001, is indebted to Obama because when Obama was in the Illinois legislature, he, according to the Chicago Tribune, “announced $225,000 in grants to St. Sabina programs.”
We have seen conservative preachers and other self-anointed spokesmen for God make fools of themselves by overindulging in politics and other trivialities, and now the theological left is getting its chance for equal time and deserved mockery. As I watched the video of Pfleger (and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright before him), I felt a profound sadness for the congregation, whose members might be enjoying the political equivalent of foreplay, but are being denied preaching that could do them far more good than a politician of any color or philosophy.
Shakey?s Pizza restaurants used to have among its signs: “Shakey made a deal with the bank. Shakey doesn?t cash checks. The bank doesn?t make pizza.” That is the kind of deal congregations should demand from their politicians and pastors. If preachers want to do politics, they should resign their ordination and become politicians. And if politicians want to do religion, they should stop running for positions in the lower kingdom, enroll in seminary and become ministers in the Higher Kingdom.
Cal Thomas is America?s most widely syndicated op-ed columnist and author of 11 books.
