The central thesis of Wright’s smoothly written cultural and personal memoir reminded me of a section in Benjamin Franklin’s “Autobiography.” Franklin undertakes a project to move consciously towards moral perfection.
He makes a chart and notes his daily progress in 13 different virtues: temperance, frugality, industry, thrift and so on. He does pretty well at improving in many of the categories but admits he had a lot of trouble with pride and, he says, “even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”
For Wright, in her childhood and then as a community organizer and founding pastor of The Beloved Community United Church of Christ in Birmingham, the problem, the internal paradox, was loving the hateful. Angie Wright’s childhood was marred by the racism of her culture, and especially, her father, an angry, bigoted man who caused a lot of pain.
By the time of his funeral, they had been utterly estranged for eleven years. Outraged by her politics, for years he was rude, then refused to speak to her or her twin sister. To him, their choices—liberal Democrat—were “unforgivable.” He finally announced “I reject you. You’ll never get a dime from me.” The temptation to hate her father was strong, but she fought it, as she has struggled against other hateful parts of her culture.
She describes her personal life during those years: marriage, children, partners, friends, and catastrophes like losing her home in a tornado. Her model for how people should live was, not surprisingly, Jesus, whose presence she felt all her life. The lesson she carried from baptism on was, of course, to love your neighbor as yourself, and in her 16 years as pastor of a racially mixed and LGBT-friendly congregation she had many opportunities to hate back.
One of the battles she described was in 2011 when the Alabama Legislature passed HB 56, which she calls “the most vicious anti-immigrant law in the country.” A consulting attorney warned her that she could “go to prison for fifteen years and pay a fine of $20,000 simply for opening her church to undocumented immigrants for English language classes, community organizing meetings, or even worship.”
U. S. Congressman Mo Brooks said in support of the legislation: “I will do anything short of shooting them.” State Senator Scott Beason urged citizens: “empty the clip, and do what has to be done.”
Wright really hated them for their attitude and behavior but bore in mind Jesus and her earthly models, Rev. King, with his philosophy of nonviolence, and John Lewis who, she believes “Made himself look into the eyes of Klansmen as they were beating him, in the faint hope that they might see his humanity and call forth their own.”
