Not God Bless America, God Damn America: Black Rhetorical Performance and Patriotic Idealism

Abstract

In April 2008, Angela D. Sims, then an instructor of Christian Ethics and Black Church Studies at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, received a handwritten note from one of the seminary’s donors asking Sims to elaborate on her comments in Helen T. Gray’s Kansas City Star article “A Prophet in His Own Land.”¹ In particular, the self-described “Methodist layman” wanted to know whether Sims’ “apologist role is for the style of Wright’s preaching only and not for the sulfuric anti-American content.” Of particular concern for the writer was Sims’ “analysis of Wright’s statement [that]: The U. S. created the aids virus to infect Black Americans.” He wanted to understand by “what standard could this outrageous statement be considered speaking truth to power as in prophetic preaching.”