Posted by
Jennifer Waite on Tuesday, September 09, 2008 8:14:37 PM
According to the NY Post, Elizabeth Payne, 37, claims to have had an affair with controversial preacher, Jeremiah Wright, earlier this year. Payne met Wright while working as a secretary at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. Since the affair became public this spring Payne was fired from her job, and her husband, Fred Payne, 64, (guess she likes older men) has divorced her.
Apparently Payne was busted when her husband found e-mail correspondence between her and Wright in February. Payne claims Wright said he would leave his wife of over 20 years, Ramah, for her. The NY Post article also claims Ramah met Wright when she came to him for marriage counseling with her ex-husband. Nice. Oh yeah, one more thing, Payne is a white lady. That’s right, (punny) America’s most prominent voice of black liberation theology had a white girlfriend 30 years his junior.
Now before we rush to judgement let’s remember Rev. Wright is a member of the clergy. I think it would behoove us to treat him with the same Christian love, respect, compassion, understanding, forgiveness and grace he so often preached about from his pulpit at Trinity. We should also restrain from citing these allegations as basis for generalizations about all proponents of black liberation theology. We should learn from the way Rev. Wright always judges each person independently based on character and circumstances and not by skin color. We also shouldn’t assume that any of these allegations are true until we have concrete, verified facts to back up these claims, just like Rev. Wright would do.
Thank God Rev. Wright set such a fine example of Christian love, so we would know how to care for him in his hour of need. Thanks Rev. Wright.