Obama’s Spiritual Mentor May Put Church in Hot Water
(Trinity United Church of Christ/Religion News Service) Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, March 2005.
By Jeff Goldblatt
CHICAGO - Barack Obama’s controversial pastor and the church he’s served for 36 years may be in hot water over statements he has made from the pulpit in support of the Illinois senator’s run for the White House.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. preaches that he follows the righteous path, but when it comes to the federal tax law, his Trinity United Church of Christ may have crossed the line.
Although Wright delivered what was billed as his final sermon last month on his path to retirement, prior to his departure he delivered commentary from the pulpit now being scrutinized in which he praised Obama.
“There is a man here who can take this country in a new direction,” Wright said during his Jan. 13 sermon, according to recordings obtained by FOX News.
It was not the first time Wright appeared to endorse Obama, who was baptized at Trinity United, has been an active member of the church for two decades and receives spiritual mentorship from Wright.
The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was taken from a sermon by Wright.
During a Christmas sermon, Wright tried to compare Obama’s upbringing to Jesus at the hands of the Romans.
“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said. “Hillary would never know that.
“Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”
In his Jan. 13 sermon, Wright said:
“Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”
FOX News purchased the video recordings of Wright’s sermons from the church.
“It’s pretty clear an indirect endorsement of Barack Obama - that’s not something you’re supposed to do according to the tax code,” said Andrew Walsh, a professor at Trinity College who specializes in religion in politics.
The tax code bans churches from participating in or intervening in a political campaign. Violations can result in the loss of a church’s tax exempt status.
The Obama campaign issued a statement in response to FOX News’ inquiries about Wright’s sermons.
“Senator Obama has said repeatedly that personal attacks such as this have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they’re offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church,” said Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman.
“Senator Obama does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Senator Obama deeply disagrees.”
Click here to visit Trinity United Church of Christ Web site.
Obama defended Wright’s longtime activism for blacks in America last week at a campaign event in Ohio.
“Jeremiah Wright … has said some things that are considered controversial because he’s considered that part of his social gospel,” Obama said.
The Internal Revenue Service wouldn’t comment on whether it is looking into potential tax violations at Trinity United. The church declined to make Wright available for an interview.
Congregant Dwight Hopkins, a professor of Theology at the University of Chicago, said there is no basis for the IRS to go after the church.
“From the church side they will say it’s theology,” said. “If it wasn’t a senator running for president and it wasn’t his church, then I think we could say all kinds of things.”
The IRS has written dozens of letters warning churches against political advocacy from the pulpit. Yet it has revoked a church’s tax-exempt status only twice in the last half-century.
Walsh said it’s not typical for the IRS to enforce the rules.
“There’s a tension here between the desires of the religious leaders to say important things in the public marketplace and the IRS rules, and so most of the time, the IRS does not enforce these rules,” Walsh said.
The public scrutiny of these sermons comes in the wake of last month’s revelation by the head of the United Church of Christ that the IRS is investigation a speech Obama gave at the denomination’s national conference last year in Connecticut.
In a certified letter, Marsha Ramirez, IRS director, EO Examinations, wrote:
“Our concerns are based on articles posted on several Web sites including the church’s which state the United States Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama addressed nearly 10,000 church members gathered at the United Church of Christ’s biennial General Synod at the Hartford Civic Center, on June 23, 2007. In addition, 40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside the center to promote his campaign.”
The church and the Obama campaign have denied that any inappropriate political advocacy occurred during this speech.
Wright’s sermons often address themes of white supremacy and black repression, and critics have called them racially divisive.
Some remarks attributed to Wright that have been posted on the Internet and cited in press accounts include:
“Fact number one: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college.
“Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.
“We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers. … We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. … We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. … We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means.
“And … And … And! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this shit!”
Click here to hear an audio clip of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. WARNING: Contains offensive language.
Once Wright’s remarks were widely publicized last year, Obama backed out of his plans for his pastor to speak at his Feb. 10 presidential announcement.
Obama met Wright after college while working with local churches in Chicago to tackle problems of drug abuse and unemployment in inner-city neighborhoods. Wright preached an Afrocentric theology that interpreted the Bible through shared suffering of African Americans.
For Obama, this experience was a spiritual turning point. He has written that he had been exposed to various faiths during his life but never formally adopted one until after meeting Wright.
“Inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones,” he wrote in his memoir, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.”
“Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story.”
If Hillary Clinton or John McCain had been associated with a Pastor for Church that promoted the KKK which is the same as Barack’s Pastor has chose to do, they would have never made it to the campaign trail. If you have listen to this kind of preaching and teachings for 20 years than you have supported it and Michelle confirmed it with her remarks “This was the first time she had been proud of the United States of America” If she and Senator Barack are just now proud of the United State, they need ato leave it not run it. We did not need this kind of Commander and Chief. The lives that have been lost to give us the right to have our freedoms of Religions, Speech and that have protected us from our enemies, this is an insult at its highest to these men and women of all colors, nationalities and genders. Barack and Michelle,along with Ophra Winfrey, need to take Wright and their church to one of those communist countries that they so hartly support and live there for the 20 years. Share their teaching with them. I am not a racist, some of my best friends are black. But, I do hate ignorance in any form and self indugence with any person. These people are ignorant and so self absorbed that they will never take on any responsibiltiy for themselves. Obama will be worst than Bush, he will more arogant, self centered and it will always be someonelses falt, never his. I think we have had enough of this kind of behavior. Just watch the expressions on his face when things do not go the way he thinks they should. Wake Up America, all religions, nationalities, colors and genders. He is SCARY!!!!
“REVERSE” IS THE WRONG DIRECTION FOR ALL THOSE IN FAVOR OF MR. WRIGHT,(WHAT A BAD NAME FOR HIM!) OBAMA DIDN’T KNOW HIS IDEALS? HA!!! I’VE HAD THE SAME SPIRITUAL LEADER FOR JUST 3 YEARS, AND I KNOW ALL OF HIS VIEWS- GIMME A BREAK OBAMA, YOU MAKE ME SICK? YOU ‘RE JUST A CARBON COPY POLITICIAN WITHOUT A REAL PLAN FOR GUIDING OUR AILING COUNTRY!
REVERSE DISCRIMINATION, REVERSE RACISM, REVERSE THINKING (OR LACK OF THINKING!)
I THINK EVERYONE AGREES THAT “REVERSE” IS THE WRONG DIRECTION! WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO “ERASCISM”? “BLACK” HISTORY MONTH, “WHITE”, RED, WHATEVER! WHY?
HEY! HOW ABOUT - REVERSE HIGH GAS PRICES FROM THE CONGLOMORATES! REVERSE INFLATION, WASTED TAX MONEY, REVERSE TAKING CARE OF OTHER COUNTRIES BEFORE OURS! REVERSE OUR TAX SYSTEM, REVERSE OUR HEALTH CARE AND THE COST OF HEALTH CARE!, REVERSE THE WAY WE TAKE CARE OF OUR ELDERLY! REVERSE WAR!
LET’S GO HILLARY - TAKE CARE OF THE REAL ISSUES!
My grandparents always told me, tell me who you hang around with and I’ll tell you who you are. Twenty years is a long time to have Pastor Wright as a mentor, and advisor. This Pastor Wright seems like his a racist, and his way of preaching didn’t just change overnight. In my eyes this preacher is not a man of God , the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If Obama attended Pastor Wrights church for twenty years, and this man married them and baptized his children, that tells me, Obama looked up to this preacher like a father figure. It’s hard for me to believe that Obama never heard this preacher preach hatred and blasphemy.
these wright remarks should be a wake up call for anyone who thinks obama would make a good president. these remarks show once again that some blacks are the most racist people on the planet. white people would have no place to hide with an obama president. we implore wright and others like him to live elsewhere if they are so unhappy here in the usa.
Barack Obama talks real big and loud on unity yet he boast about his Racist advisor pastor who preaches seperatism and “Dam American” Do you want this man to be president especially with
no knowledge as to how to even begin to be President or maybe he is planning on picking his pastor as vp to continue on with his advising. His unity spewings are mere words. ANY candidate can run on a vague message of “change” or “unity. Few can run on true experience, qualifications, or foreign policy experience of which Obama has none of the above. Isnt it quite obvious that Obama is running his campaign on meaningless words that really mean nothing in terms of actions? Cmon…..What does anyone really think this guy is going to do for the benefit of the US? He wants change alright but I don’t think we want his kind of change. Wake up!!!
Something new…..Who would have guessed the dirty mouth pastor also was Sen. Hillary Rodam Clinton’s advisor….
Wright was the latest in a series of advisers to Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who have stepped aside as supporters of both candidates trade racially charged accusations.
See here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23634881/
If you are white in america you are VERY VERY bad!!! You (personally) created slavery and you hold the black man down every day!! You force the guns in thier hands, you force them to sell thier bodies on the streets and you force the needles in thier arms!!!! You force them to peddle drugs on the streets and you force thier parents not to care what thier kids are doing on the streets at all hours of the night. After all it’s your fault they have to work two jobs so they can afford ther hummer and escalades and the jeans that hang down around thier knees. You force them to kill each other and white cops have the nerve to beat down a black man on PCP for attacking and pulling a gun on them. Shame on the police force. (at least you gave him millions to spend on more crack!!!!) Yu tried put a black man away for killing his white wife and her white friend. But the glove didn’t fit. If he was found guilty there would have been riots and more black businesses would have been ruined and burned. The black community would have had to do something to show thier displeasure. White people may NEVER have and opinion that concerns a “black person” It is racist and wrong!! A white preacher may NOT say that America is all for the blacks and whites have no rights anymore for if they do the NAACP will come in and have him beaten and prosecuted and he would then have to pay retribution to the African Americans who were the Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great grankids of a slave that may or may not have lived a hundred years ago. White people wake up!! It is all your fault!! Every black person in america should be protected by some kind of law that allows them the same freedoms as whites. What? There is one? It’s called what? OOOOHHH “The Bill of Rights”. Yea.
I wish I knew just how deep the resentments of B.O. and his wife run against the “rich white people” and G.. D…ed America; and if elected President, whether there will be any limit to the punitive fines he will levy or the compensation he’ll extract.
The problem with this political grandstanding on religious pulpits is that it implies the position put forward is endorsed by God.
Hitler, also, believed what he was doing was for the good of his country.
What if Obama believes we need a man in the White House who can see that America is “evil” in its present form? What kind of CHANGE is he hoping to bring???
I think Obama absolutely agrees with his pastor, and America is too horrified to believe that someone with these views could get this far in the election process. Guess what? Because we can’t believe it, he could get into the White House.
Can we afford to put someone in the White House who even MIGHT feel this way?????
Shake it off, America! Get a clue!
What ever happened to COMON SENSE? There are way to many people in the public eye who are sroking the fires of racial tension. Its long past time to call ourselfs African Americans,Mexican Americans and so on. We should JUST be calling ourselfs AMERICANS. My grandaughter is half black and half white, she has a mixed heritage and you should be proud of that but you should be prouderof that you are an AMERICAN.
As far as the those running for public office I look for SUBSTANCE. I’m a white male but I would love to see CONDI RICE run.