What Pastor Dan said:

There is a pastoral issue here. You never, ever, ever call out a specific member of your congregation from the pulpit. Ever. When you stand to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is what you do. You give them good news and the hope of redemption. If you have to condemn them, you do it in private with some of the elders. Because worship is a time to give thanks and praise to God for God's good works, not to reprove specific individuals, not to pronounce judgment on them.

As an extension of that principle, you do not embarrass members of the congregation. Never. Intentionally or otherwise. The last thing you want to do is provide a stumbling block to somebody else's faith. Your role, as pastor and preacher, is to protect, defend, and build up the flock you have been given, not to drive them off by accident or on purpose.

And the last - the very absolutely goddammit I really mean it last thing you want to do is embarrass somebody's else parishioner. Even if it's somebody you've known for twenty or thirty years. Even if he's a candidate for the highest office in the land. Even if it is his home community, and they need defending. It's not your community, and you've got no business messing in it. You stay the freak out of the way, you do not provide a distraction, you let people get on with their business without causing more trouble - and more personal embarrassment - to that parishioner. You do not drive the gospel in like a damn shank and then wonder why they walk off with a bemused expression. Even if everything Pfleger and Wright said was 100% on the money - and it wasn't - there is still the issue of the personal effect it had on a member of the congregation.

You. Do. Not. Embarrass. People. It is not pastoral.

So while it's easy to say that Wright and Pfleger might be naive when it comes to the cutthroat politics of the national stage - and Lord knows they wouldn't be the first pastors to be politically naive at a crucial moment - it's not so easy to let them off the hook for being fearless in their pursuit of the gospel.

Yes, the gospel is divisive by its nature.

Yes, preachers are required to pursue the gospel in their preaching.

But Christians are to hold love above all things. Number two is the community. And for crying in the night, how difficult is it to figure out that it's not very loving to embarrass a prominent member of the congregation who hasn't done anything wrong? How difficult is it to understand that it's not very helpful to that parishioner - or to his community - to leave him no choice but to hand in his letter of resignation?

Because let me tell you something: FoxNews is not going to stop pointing to Trinity UCC as an example of dangerous black radicalism. Neither are the pinheads around the right blogosphere. They might lay off Obama for having the good sense to leave before anything else blew up in his face. But Trinity UCC just became the stalking horse for every racialist bedwetting night terror out there. Who needs Ward Connerly anymore? Barack Obama just agreed that his congregation is too damn radical, and the irony is that it was a white minister with his heart in the right place who made him do it.

And this is how the division wins. Somewhere, the devil is laughing.

Read the whole thing. (Via Ezra Klein.)