The blunt fact is that scriptures Old and New pronounce a fulsome God damn not on foreign nations but on the prophets’ own land. Stiff-necked Bible-thumpers prefer Micah mounted in museum glass to the real thing. But if we do not take scissors to our scriptures, then those blunt words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright exactly match the purpose of the prophets: to that land which perverts equity through greed and force the word is, God damn!
My study of history and anthropology and the Bible does not settle for me the question, whether there was a man named Jacob who fathered twelve sons who became each in turn father to a tribe secured within certain domains all contiguous and all honoring one God. I don’t know. Much tells against that simple tale, and heavy sands are blown across the pages of time. But of this we can be certain. In time, twelve tribes came to tell one story of their great fathers and mothers. In time, twelve tribes came by one name to praise and to fear God. Therefore, the telling of that one story is the irreducible fact with which we have to do. That telling—the willingness, the hope, the need to be bound together telling of God with one name only through one story—this is the mortar with which the Lord builds the house.
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