Whatever reservations one might have about the impact of viral YouTube soundbites on American political discourse, the current media environment is a fabulous educational machine when things really get cranked up. For the past month, the national course has been Religion 246: The Black Church in America Today. It’s a mid-level course, requiring a certain amount of application, and just in the past week there have been some great readings. On NPR’s Fresh Air, Terry Gross undertook an exploration of Black Liberation Theology, interviewing James Cone, the Union Theological Seminary professor who invented the thing, and his student, University of Chicago Divinity School Professor (and Trinity UCC member) Dwight. Hopkins. Hopkins contrasted Trinity’s Jeremiah Wright with prominent black prosperity gospel preachers like Crespo Dollar, Eddie Long, and T.D. Jakes, not favorably to the latter. Jakes himself turns out has a blog of his own, where he posted something between a distancing of himself from Wright and an apologia for the man. Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune published (among many other things on the subject) an op-ed by one of the few white members of Trinity that shows Wright operating in the pastoral–as opposed to the prophetic–mode. And in the current New Yorker, Kalefa Sanneh takes readers inside Trinity over Easter weekend. On RateYourMedia.com, I’m a happy camper.