Chicago Priest Blends Faith and Activism

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin, and this Tell Me More from NPR News. We're finishing up a week in Chicago where we've been attending the Unity Conference for Journalists of Color and exploring the city. Coming up, we talk with Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. about relationships between Latinos and African Americans and his father's controversial remarks about Barack Obama.

But first, our weekly Faith Matters conversation. Father Michael Pfleger is a name Chicagoans know very well. He's a Catholic priest who has led the faith community of St. Sabina, a predominantly African-American congregation, for more than 25 years. He's also a long-time community activist who has organized around issues like stopping gun violence. Tomorrow Father Pfleger and members of the church will hold a gun turn-in day. Father Pfleger has his avid supporters and detractors in Chicago. He probably created more of each around the country when he was at the center of a political dustup earlier this year for comments deemed disparaging about Hillary Clinton during a sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Father MICHAEL PFLEGER (Pastor of St. Sabina's Parish): When Hillary was crying...

(Soundbite of people laughing)

Father PFLEGER: And people said that was put-on, I really don't believe it was put-on. I really believed that she just always thought, this is mine.

(Soundbite of people cheering)

Father PFLEGER: I'm Bill's wife, I'm white, and this is mine. I just got to get up and step in to the plate, and then out of nowhere came, hey I'm Barack Obama. And she said, oh damn, where did you come from?

(Soundbite of people cheering)

Father PFLEGER: I'm white. I'm entitled. That's a black man stealing my show.

MARTIN: We wanted to know more about the man behind the soundbite. He was kind enough to stop by our studios at Chicago public radio WBEC just after he lead a demonstration to acknowledge the death of another teenager in Chicago from gun violence. Thank you for coming to see us.

Father PFLEGER: Thank you, Michel, for having me.

MARTIN: And I do want to say I'm very sorry for the loss of your father.

Father PFLEGER: Yes.

MARTIN: Who I understand you lost very recently. I'm very sorry.

Father PFLEGER: Yes. Just a couple weeks ago. Nine-six years old, so even though I tremendously will miss him, and he's been my rock of strength, but I can't be mad when the Lord our God(ph) keeps somebody for 96 years. So it's a blessing to have him that long.

MARTIN: I've heard you say though that he has a lot to do with your commitment to social activism, how so?

Father PFLEGER: Well, first of all, I grew up on a house where I was always told to speak your mind and to stand up for what you believed, whether people liked it or didn't like it. Stand up and speak loudly and have a reason for what you believe and to defend it, number one. Number two, I grew up in a house in a very white middle-class inbred neighborhood where the N word was a common word used in the community, but was never allowed in our house, and I was always taught by my father, as well as my mother, to never look down at anybody. I had a sister who was - suffered from a mental handicap and she never went past the sixth grade. And my mother and father used to always remind me, look how your sister was treated because she was laughed at, she was deprived of jobs and because she was put down because of her situation. Don't treat anybody else like that and make sure that you learn from the lesson of your sister.

MARTIN: When did you receive your call to the ministry?

Father PFLEGER: Well, there's a couple of - one would be an uncommon time(ph) - I was eighth grade and getting ready to go the high school seminary. And really, because it was the nicest school around, it was walking distance from my house and I didn't want to take the bus, so it was real convenient. And I was called in by a nun in eighth grade and said, Michael, I don't know if you should go to the seminary because you're a little too wild and you might give us - our school a bad name. And I walked out of the convent that day and said, I'm going to the seminary. So that was probably the first time. The second time was the third year of high school, junior in high school. I'm in Marquette Park with two of my friends, drove our bikes over there out of curiosity, because this guy named Martin Luther King, Jr. that all this conversation was about in Chicago marching in Marquette Park.

So out of curiosity, myself and two friends rode our bikes over. And saw two things that I never forgot. One was, I saw people that I knew. People lived in my neighborhood, parents of children who went to school with me, people went to my church. I saw them throwing rocks and bottles, and calling all these racial names. Never seen them like that, and it frightened me. Second thing was, I saw Dr. King walking through the park telling people and didn't even know until days later, that he had been already hit with a rock earlier in this march. And saw him not responding to the hate and I said, what is it about this man?

Either this man is crazy or he has some kind of power about him that I want to know, and I became obsessed when I'm alone with my room, everything I could find about Dr. King, read everything he had ever written, this is 1966. And in learning and going about him said, this is what I believe is going to change the world. It's not going to be just laws, but there's got to be a changing of the heart and the mindset, that Dr. King tried to do.

MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to Tell Me More from NPR News. We're speaking with Father Michael Pfleger. You know of course that people compare you to Dr. King, but not always in a good way. And they talk about the way you talk about issues sometimes and they consider you kind of divisive, polarizing in a way that they say Dr. King was not. How do you respond to that?

Father PFLEGER: Well, you know...

MARTIN: It's not new news. I'm sure you've heard of this.

Father PFLEGER: They heard it in a different day for one thing, if Dr. King was alive today, I think he'd be called divisive, and I think he'd be called polarizing and all those others, because that's the way we now define things today. And I think many people called him that then, I mean, we say Dr. King was rejected before he died because of his coming out and condemning of the Vietnam War. You know somebody asked me a few years ago, you know, Father Mike, what do you think is your job? And I said, to make people uncomfortable. And I think the real call of the gospel, and the prophetic gospel, is to say, make the world uncomfortable as it is - uncomfortable with classicism and racism, uncomfortable with bad schools and an unequal playing field, uncomfortably because we've learned to become comfortable with situations and simply say things like, well it's better than it used to be.

Well, I don't know that it is. But I think there has to be the voices that continue to say, we have to be uncomfortable and unsatisfied until every child has equal education, equal health care, the neighborhoods where there's equal treatment of realities of growing up and becoming his or her destiny and purpose. So until that equal playing field is across the board in America and across the world, I think that my job is to be uncomfortable. And, I think with that comes a lot of hate. You know that haters have a large army of supporters and but that's OK. One has to be OK with what you believe in and that's how who likes you.

MARTIN: Well, some argue that your comments about Hillary Clinton were hateful.

Father PFLEGER: Well, I disagree with that. First of all, you know, I've apologized, you know, a hundred times now for the way, any way that I've said, anyway anybody was insulted by it. I was giving an hour talk on race and racism. That's what I was invited to come and do. I gave an hour sermon on racism, and in the sermon we talked about one of the realities of racism was entitlement. And I believe entitlement, just like I believe white supremacy, are realities in society today. And so, when I talked about a time, I used the election as an example where I thought entitlement was risen.

Now, interesting enough, a week before there was a, I can't think of her name now, a woman who wrote a whole column in the Tribune about the exact same thing using Hillary Clinton's example, on entitlement. And I talked about that Sunday and whether it was the dramatization, you know, when you're in it. I'm at a place, first of all, I'm at home. Trinity is a home to me. I have preached there many times. We know each other, and when you're around people who know you, you're looser and you're more dramatic because they know the whole of you. I did not know it was going to be out on the blogs and on YouTube in a matter of hours. And I didn't know that the whole world was going to be viewing me for the first time from a 30-second soundbite on YouTube, but that's the reality of the day we lived.

MARTIN: You know, in fact, we've had some interesting conversations about this on this program. About whether the conversations that spirit leaders have should be viewed as private conversations among family, or are they akin to political speeches, should they be viewed in that light as sort of public discourse? Or maybe you have a different view on this than you did a couple of months, but what do you think about that?

Father PFLEGER: Yeah. What I've think, Michel, one of things that I've learned now that today that there is no such thing as a private or a sacred space. That there are people who come with agendas and the agenda is that to take whatever they can take and take parts of it and pieces of it and use it for their own agenda and their own purpose. And I think we now we have to as a preacher and a pastor, I've got to watch it, I've got to watch that I still say thing that, you know, I don't apologize for raising issues or for fricking conscience(ph). And I won't apologize, but that's my job as a pastor. But I do have to watch in the ways that I say it, and realize that at any moment, anybody and not just can be taking it over live stream, but sitting in their seat. Because, every Sunday, churches are open places where anybody can come and worship and I know that every Sunday I've got somebody in my church at that moment who is sitting there with an agenda in how to trap me. And I have to be aware of that.

MARTIN: There have been consequences for your outspokenness, you had to step away from the leadership of St. Sabina for a time. Some members of your parish were worried that you would be removed permanently, now when you came back, you vowed not to be silent or to play it safe. But do you find yourself editing yourself now for the consequence of...

Father PFELGER: No. I find myself watching. I tried to watch how I say it and be more conscious of how I say it because I don't want to get in the way of the message. And that's been the growing point for me in all these. How do I speak the message just as strongly, but don't get in the way of it. So people can talk about the way I said it, than rather the message. I want people to know about classicism, about racism, about poverty, about injustice, about entitlement, about supremacy all those real issues to deal with race and inequality. But I got to make sure that I say it in a way that people can hear it and I don't get in the way. Now, sometimes I'm still going to get in the way because I'm a human being.

You know, I believe when people come to church, they should not just feel good and you know, I'm not there to give anybody massage, I'm not there to give anybody drugs. I'm there to prick the conscience, to encourage, to prune, to challenge, to have you walk out of there and wrestle with issues of that sermon. And come to conclusions about your life and, you know, I'm an imperfect person in an imperfect position to raise issues and people have to come out of that and discuss and hopefully come to personal decisions for their lives. But I can't play it safe because the Gospel was the most the radical book ever written, and if I'm going to preach the Gospel, then it's going to be radical to a day that does not want to hear truth.

MARTIN: We're going to have to pause here for just a moment, and we're going to continue our conversation with Father Pfleger after the break.

(Soundbite of music)

MARTIN: I'm Michel Martin and this is Tell Me More from NPR News. We're in Chicago this week for the Unity Convention of Journalists of Color and we're exploring the city. A little later in the program, we'll open our mail bag and hear what you have to say about our broadcast this week. But right now, we're going to continue with our Faith Matters conversation with Father Michael Pfleger. Father Pfleger, there's been some interesting conversation about what role the church should play in our society. Some people say the church should be a place where people can hear their pain spoken out loud. Some people say the church should just be there to comfort. And I'm just wondering if there's a point at which - just some pains cannot be spoken because people just don't want to hear it, or just the cost is too high.

Father PFLEGER: I think we have to speak. I think it's all that. I think we have to be encouraging to people and I think we have to speak the pain of people. We have to be the voice that cries in the wilderness. The Bible says in season and out of season, when it's convenient and when it's not convenient. I can't be silent when people eat out of garbage cans in my neighborhood, when people are living without lights or living without gas, when people, you know, are living on a day to day poverty, working poor, who one car break down, one problem of sickness in the family can throw them into the depths of society. That's how vulnerable their lives are.

Something is wrong in the richest country in the world where there's homeless, where there's children who go to school and can't get educated. I think the problem is, is that the voice of prophetic preaching and teaching and liberation is silent in today's society, that we become a very comfortable church and make people feel good and they come to church to escape rather than to deal with the issues, and I think that we have to regain the activism. You know, look at the civil rights movement. I used to watch priests and nuns marching in the civil rights, there were ministries around the country that were marching with Dr. King of all denominations, all races. Today, we're almost lulled into a sleep.

MARTIN: As I just mentioned, you are coming to us straight from a service, a demonstration, that you mount every time a teenager is killed in the city, and I'm just going to play a short clip.

(Soundbite of rally)

Father PFLEGER: Save our kids!

GROUP: Save our kids!

Father PFLEGER: Let them grow up!

GROUP: Let them grow up!

Father PFLEGER: Put the guns down!

GROUP: Put the guns down!

Father PFLEGER: Put the guns down!

GROUP: Put the guns down!

MARTIN: Father Pfleger, what do you hope these demonstrations will accomplish?

Father PFLEGER: Well, I hope it will continue to raise the issue, put it in the face of legislators because while they fail to pass common sense gun laws, blood is on their hands, and they cannot just become immune or turn their backs or close their eyes to children dying. They, nor any citizen in the city.

MARTIN: You're having a gun buy-back program at the church over the weekend. You're offering a hundred-dollar gift certificate to people who turn in a gun.

Father PFLEGER: Right.

MARTIN: Do you - you know, you can imagine - say gosh, you know, I'm drinking out of a fire hose here. Do you really think that makes a difference?

Father PFLEGER: Yeah, a lot of people say it's a joke and it's crazy, and all, but I'll tell you what. We've done this gun buy-back program with the city for the last three years, but also we've done on our own before the city had even started it. And when you see one young person come in and say you know what, I don't want to do this anymore and turn it in, it's worth it. When a grandmother or an auntie or a mother come in and say I found this is in my son's room or I found this in my grandson's room. I want to get this gun out of the house. So if we can get one gun out of the house that could have been used to hurt somebody or hurt themselves, it's worth the whole program to me. I'm not worried about numbers.

It's just every week, four months ago, we said every time a child gets killed, we're going to be back down at the Center of Illinois - Center of State Legislators in order to put this back, and say we want stricter gun laws, we want to deal with this gun issue, we want to deal with the violence for our children. We've been down there every week and sometimes twice a week because it's continued not just in Chicago, but across this country. Thirty thousand people a year die from gun violence in America. Fifty-five percent of the homicides - of suicides, are from those who have guns in the home.

MARTIN: Do you have faith that some time in your lifetime, if you and I get back together, we won't be having this conversation?

Father PFLEGER: I do. If I - you know...

MARTIN: Why?

Father PFLEGER: I still believe, you know...

MARTIN: I mean you've been doing this for a long time. Why?

Father PFLEGER: I've been doing it for a long time and I mean - you know, heaven is heaven. This is earth. And we're always going to have problems here, evil is a reality, and there's always going to be a battle. You know, when God called the people to the promised land, they entered the promised land, in this promise land, there are still giants there. There are still giants here that we got to deal with - of racism, of violence, of poverty, of classism, of sexism. If we're not willing to keep fighting the giants, then the promised land doesn't mean enough to us. So I believe, you know, we look to the days, we say whenever David won't have any giants to fight, there's always going to be some giants. Our job is to keep fighting while we got breath.

MARTIN: Father Michael Pfleger leads the faith community of Saint Sabina on the south side of Chicago, who's kind enough to join us here at WBEZ in Chicago. Thank you so much for stopping by.

Father PFLEGER: Thank you, Michel. Pleasure to be with you.

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