So, Frank Schaeffer thinks that since the right embraced his father it makes them hypocrites for denouncing Wright:

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father’s footsteps) rail against America’s sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the “murder of the unborn,” has become “Sodom” by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, “under the judgment of God.” They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama’s minister’s shouted “controversial” comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation’s sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father’s sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our “stand” by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.
[…]
The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister’s words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to “bear arms” as “insurance” to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as “fallen away from God” at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.
Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the “progressive” Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post “[The Clinton’s] are, indeed, now part of the ‘vast right wing conspiracy.’

Schaeffer is using the tit-for-tat argument form that is popular in the comment sections of blogs, “Oh yeah, what about Bush? He is worse!” “Oh yeah, what about Clinton? He’s the one who started it!” This type of back and forth never addresses the problem at hand. Is what the pastor said offensive standing alone without any moral equivalence? Evidently Obama thought so, he condemned the words and distanced himself from them:

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

I was listening to Debra Dickerson on the Imus show this morning and she said that it was racist for us to ignore what black preachers are saying in the pulpit. I think it’s clear that both the right and the left have rejected the rhetoric as racist and divisive.
But does Schaeffer have a point? Should the right have condemned the words of his father as we did Wright, Falwell and Roberson? Well, I think we should remember that the judgment proclaimed by the self-appointed prophets of God is on America for an event that we had no control over. Vicious, brutal men took control of a plane and used it and its passengers as a weapon against their fellow citizens. They did it because they believed it was God’s will for them and that he would bless them for doing so. They did it because they were at war with us and it was an act of war, pure and simple. Whatever we did before that didn’t justify the killing of our unarmed citizens. And as to why God allowed it to happen, no one knows and they cannot speak for God. We rightly condemn those who would equate an act of war with God’s judgment on this nation or that we brought it on ourselves. From the quotes I don’t see his father doing anything equivalent.
On the issue of condemning America for it’s racism, abortions, decadence, etc. Schaeffer has a point that Wright was doing what preachers have been doing for years but maybe we shouldn’t give Wright a pass but condemn the practice all together. A few years ago I was listening to Dobson on the radio, he was saying that God should judge America for something (I can’t remember what) and I thought, “No! Why are you saying that? Why would we wish the Lord to judge this nation? Doesn’t he read the Bible? Doesn’t he understand that devastation that could be truly wrought if God rained down judgment on our heads? Babylon was laid to waste and so was Sodom and Gomorrah.” These pastors who are quick to condemn and call judgment upon the nation might want to remember that when God judges he also condemns, hardens and blinds those under judgment (Exodus 7; John 12:40) and gives them over to their depravity (Romans 1). Is that really what these pastors want for America?
Let’s pray, not that God will blind Americans but open their eyes to see because now is the time for salvation:

2 Corinthians 6:2 For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 3 We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,

Oh, and btw the whole right to bear arms and civil disobedience thing, that’s pretty much what the founding fathers believed. But they were all rightwing nuts, right? (Even Jefferson? 🙂

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”
Thomas Jefferson
“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
George Mason Co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …”
Samuel Adams quoted in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, August 20, 1789, “Propositions submitted to the Convention of this State”
“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”
George Washington
“The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside … Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”
Thomas Paine
“The great object is that every man be armed.” and “Everyone who is able may have a gun.”
Patrick Henry
American Patriot
“Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not.”
Thomas Jefferson