Judging by the backlash against Barack Obama for things his former pastor said, you'd think the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was the first person to rail against our government.

He's not. Evangelists Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and several others often made such criticism the cornerstone of their fundraising efforts, frightening true believers into thinking that jackbooted government thugs were coming to their homes to take their Bibles and guns unless they shored up their ministries with copious cash contributions.

They've said the same things as the Rev. Wright and worse about 9/11 and other tragedies, yet some people want Wright and, by extension, Obama, swept from the national stage or tried for treason.

Since Wright has tilled no new soil with his preachments, the question becomes, "Does a black preacher have the right to say the same things as a white preacher?"

No, he doesn't have that right. He has an obligation to say those things. And more.

Much of what Wright was quoted as saying was strident and, at the least, undiplomatic. Who, though, wants a diplomatic preacher, one content to mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities from the pulpit?

I tell you what: With so many preachers behaving like prosperity pimps -- preaching that the good life in the form of big cars, big houses and flush checking accounts is just a cash contribution to their ministry away -- it is refreshing to hear someone not afraid to express statements that will anger the mighty.

When I was planning to enter the ministry -- I lasted a week at Bible college -- one of my major influences was the Christian theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, who preached what he called a "social gospel." That's one that's as concerned with a man's physical and emotional well-being as it is with his spiritual well-being.

He was, in many ways, the anti-Billy Graham. Graham, to my consternation, became the premiere minister in America for generations, despite never speaking out against any of the great social ills afflicting our great country back before it became great.

For the same reason that I found Graham irrelevant, I felt the same toward any black preacher who stood in his pulpit each week and espoused a flaccid gospel of "get your pie in the sky by and by when you die."

In heaven, that kind preached, you'll float around listening to Mahalia Jackson on the celestial jukebox while gnawing on the succulent bones of contentment -- pig's feet -- without getting high blood pressure.

Hmmph. A good preacher should be like a good journalist: the mission of both should be, as the saying has it, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Balanced news sources have reported that Wright was just as scathing toward the shortcomings of blacks as he was toward those of whites or the government. He was well known for saying things that made both the government and his parishioners uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that Obama acknowledged confronting him after some sermons.

That's good. Here's a tip:

If your pastor never says anything to make you feel uncomfortable, you probably need to find a new one.

Can I get an "Amen"? I didn't think so.