Obama’s Pastor’s Sermon: ‘God Damn America’
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, March 2005. (Trinity United Church of Christ/Religion News Service)
In a fiery sermon taped and available on DVD, Barack Obama’s longtime pastor and spiritual adviser can be seen and heard saying three times: “God damn America.”
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., in his taped sermons, also questioned America’s role in the spread of the AIDS virus and suggested that the United States bore some responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Confronting the content of some of Wright’s sermons, parts of which have been aired this week on FOX News, Obama on Friday moved to condemn the remarks in his firmest statement on the matter to date, after initially stopping short of a full repudiation.
“Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy,” he said in the statement. “I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.”
Obama said he never personally heard Wright preach the statements at the center of the controversy, but that he first learned of them when he launched his presidential campaign.
Click here to read the full Obama statement.
Wright’s supporters say his Afro-centric sermons accurately portray black America, and they contend his sermons are widely studied by theologians. But critics are now calling attention to his more incendiary words from the pulpit.
The pastor delivered his final sermon last month and retired as leader of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Obama has attended the church for 20 years and calls Wright his spiritual adviser.
Click here to visit the Trinity United Church of Christ’s Web site.
In a fiery sermon in April 2003, Wright said: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes three-strike laws and wants them to sing God Bless America.
“No! No No!
“God damn America … for killing innocent people.
“God damn America for threatening citizens as less than humans.
“God damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and supreme.”
In DVD copies of his sermons available for purchase, Wright can also be seen questioning America’s role in the spreading of the HIV virus that leads to AIDS. In another speech, made in the days after 9/11, he suggested that American foreign policy invited the terror attacks.
“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki. And we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye,” Wright said.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because of stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own backyard. America is chickens coming home to roost.”
The pastor also said: “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.”
Amid calls to fully repudiate Wright, the Obama campaign said late Thursday it has distanced itself from certain Wright comments.
“Senator Obama has said before that he profoundly disagrees with some of the statements and positions of Reverend Wright, who has preached his last sermon as pastor at the church,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said. “Senator Obama deplores divisive statements whether they come from his supporters, the supporters of his opponent, talk radio, or anywhere else.”
That preceded the lengthy campaign statement issued Friday.
Last year, Obama rescinded an invitation to Wright to deliver the invocation at his announcement that he was running for president. He also issued a statement saying personal attacks have no place in politics after Wright delivered an attack on Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton.
But Obama’s longtime relationship with Wright is continuing to spark controversy.
“This is not just someone that Barack Obama has a casual relationship with,” said Tom Bevan, executive editor of RealClearPolitics.com. He noted that Wright married Barack and Michelle Obama, and Wright’s words were the inspiration for the title of Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
“Barack Obama has not out and out distanced himself from all of these comments … ,” Patricia Murphy, editor of CitizenJanePolitics.com, said before the campaign responded Friday. “It’s unclear if he rejects all of these statements. I would assume that he does, but I think he is going to be pushed where he needs to come out and fully explain his relationship with his pastor.”
Some of Wright’s statements have raised eyebrows at a time the Internal Revenue Service is scrutinizing tax-exempt religious organizations for alleged violations of rules barring them from participating in political campaigns.
Prior to his retirement last month, Wright delivered commentary from the pulpit in which he praised Obama, as well as remarks focusing on the racial divide between Obama and Clinton.
“There is a man here who can take this country in a new direction,” Wright said during his Jan. 13 sermon.
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 a 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.”
So far the Clinton campaign has been quiet over Wright’s comments.
Wright has declined interview requests from FOX News.
FOX News’ Jeff Goldblatt contributed to this report.
This is such a horrible thing to be doing in our lords house, the pastor is certainly not a pastor that is definitly “satan” up to his “tricks” again and anybody that thinks Obama did not know of that pastors conduct should take a good hard look into it. I can not and will not believe Obama after 20 years and with his “spiritual advisor” has no idea of such conduct of this pastor so called “uncle” as he has also called him. This man (pastor) has in several different I guess “radical” sermons on different dates has made disbelieving statements. This man calls himself a pastor but in reality it is nothing more than “predudice” conduct hiding in the pulpit and getting everyone else all energised in that church! We are all in this world togeather and evidentually can not seem to all get it togeather and a pastor like that surely does not help the matter, that is how and why we end up in so much hate for our brothers and sisters. Obama I feel has wittnessed a few of these radical sermons and is just as radical, it sure put a different view on the way I thought of him. This matter is nothing to be taken lightly but to be considered very unexceptible behavior on both of their parts,Obama for excepting this pastor into his life at all!!! Thank-you and god bless america
Hugh Christopher Newsom, Jr., 23, and Channon Gail Christian, 21, lived in
Knoxville, Tennessee. The couple was out on a date after midnight on January
7, 2007, when they were carjacked and kidnapped at gunpoint by four men,
and later a woman as well. They were then driven to another neighborhood,
where over the next few days they were both tortured, gang raped, and
murdered. By some accounts they were mutilated as well.
In front of Channon, Christopher was first tortured, beaten and gang-raped
by the men in turn. Then he was shot, body burned to conceal evidence,
wrapped in a blanket, and later dumped behind some railroad tracks. Some
accounts claim that his genitals were also cut off, perhaps while he was
still alive.
But believe it or not, Channon’s fate was even worse. She was kept alive for
three more days, and repeatedly raped and tortured during that time. The
torture included beatings, forcing her to drink cleaning fluid, urinating on
her, and cutting off at least one of her breasts. She was eventually
murdered, and her body chopped up and placed in five different garbage bags.
Fortunately, the perpetrators were caught relatively quickly. One left his
fingerprints inside Christian’s vehicle, and when officers arrived to
question him, her body parts were found.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bloggers and media critics are complaining that the
national media has ignored the rape and murder of a young Knoxville couple
because of the racial implications of the story.Channon Christian, a 21-year
-old University of Tennessee student, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom,
23, were raped, tortured and killed in January. Separate trial dates were
set Thursday for four people charged in the slayings.
Online critics have angrily insisted that reporters are ignoring the story
because the victims are white and the defendants are black.
“I am not going to call it reverse racism,” said country singer Charlie
Daniels, who has written on his Web page about how little he has heard of
the case in Nashville, about 150 miles west of Knoxville. “But I will say
it is very selective (journalism).
“There are probably not five stories in the country that could possibly
have been more important than that one during the time it was going on,” he
said. “It is totally, completely unfair to the memory of these young
people not to inform people about what happened to them.”
(edited by writer)
Can you invite Obama to answer specific questions publicly?
His book, “The Audacity of Hope,” has much to offer America. Obama can demonstrate what he understands while serving as President; he can do much to bring our multifaceted people groups closer together in understanding and vision. He could inspire us to more intelligently converse as we exercise our rights appropriately toward the continued building of a more perfect union. People may finally realize, that although we are not perfect, we have the right combination of laws and constitution to allow us to form a more perfect union without going fist to fist or having mini revolutions each year.
I have spent endless hours in congregations that had speakers with much to say about nothing, or not enough to say about something, as well has personally biased remarks. I never took what was said in the pulpit as coming precisely and always from the mouth of God. If Obama is as smart as he appears, I doubt that he has done less than I have in his assessments of the messages heard in his church.
The public at large has difficulty following clear logical sense about the man when the disjointed bits and pieces of his character are served up with large doses of media slanted seasoning. He is the ONLY person who can answer and tell us who he is.
Where is the journalist that will find Obama and ask the questions? Will that journalist present the answers clearly without dual meaning?
Go for it. Do something for our country. Maybe you were meant to be hear at this time.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Sage
Unbelievable that this is just now coming out. Shame on the news media for not reporting what Americans need to know. If Obama gets the nomination, I will be voting republican. The single most important thing to me is what a person believes. There is no way this man could have been in the church for over 20 years and not be influenced by this trash. And my beliefs have nothing to do with his race.
Can you invite Obama to answer specific questions publicly?
His book, “The Audacity of Hope,” has much to offer America. Obama can demonstrate what he understands while serving as President; he can do much to bring our multifaceted people groups closer together in understanding and vision. He could inspire us to more intelligently converse as we exercise our rights appropriately toward the continued building of a more perfect union. People may finally realise, that although we are not perfect, we have the right combination of laws and constitution to allow us to form a more perfect union without going fist to fist or having mini revolutions each year.
I have spent endless hours in congregations that had speakers with much to say about nothing, or not enough to say about something, as well has personaly biased remarks. I never took what was said in the pulpit as coming precisey and always from the mouth of God. If Obama is as smart as he appears, I doubt that he has done less than I have in his assessments of the messages heard in his church.
The public at large has difficulty folllowing clear logical sense about the man when the disjointed bits and pieces of his character are seved up with large doses of media slanted seasoning. He is the ONLY person who can answer and tell us who he is.
Where is the journalist that will find Obama and ask the questions?
Will that journalist present the answers clearly without dual meaning?
Go for it. Do something for our country. Maybe you were meant to be hear at this time.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Sage
There is so much controversy surroundign the Obama campaign; why do people want to vote for him? It seems like everywhere he turns he has to defend himself because of his past or his present. People need to wake up and see that there is a problem with this guy running for president.
I heard the comments made by Pastor Wright. Very harsh comments…
I also know that it is a 1st admenment right for a person to express himself in America. This is what makes America so great. There are Pastors who are very critical and harsh -Pat Robinson, Pator Hagee. I do not think that Senator Obama should penalized for another’s words or comments. That is wrong. These are Patstor Wrights comments and not Senator Obama’s words. Let him be the accused and not Senator Obama. I do not agree with his cursing of America. I am an American. But rememeber America cannot ease it’s past. It sounds like Pastor Wright is really still upset over the way his ancestors were demoralized in slavery and also certain controversal historical facts?… I cannot connect Senator’s Obama’s beliefs with Pastor Wrights. He has denouced them. This seems to be an attack on Senator Obama due the fact there has not been any refrence to Senator McCain and his spiritual Leader Rod Parsley who also spits venom against homosexuals and Muslims. This is not fair. If you are going scutized Senator Obama then you need to scrutized Senator McCain. This has given your news casting a biased and unfair appearance. The American People are tired of this. WE want the facts and we want the facts on ALL the Presidential Candidates.
are you kidding me? how can people vote for this guy? i can really see the love of Christ in Rev. Wright’s sermons…again…ARE YOU KIDDING ME? this guy is Obama’s “spiritual advisor”???? who WOULD vote for anybody that would listen to a man like THAT?
Please grow up Fox news Greta you should have known better to use such an old sermon, how current is it? This is just was just what blacks expect from you when ever you are on the losing end , dirty tatics. Fox news start running current news before you air it I do believe the sermon was in 2003. White folks get out of the past. Mr. Obama is giving us the best of two worlds, he’s half black and half white .
This is terrible, I thought the comments Obama’s wife has made in the past was disturbing. I guess now we know where her “from the heart” words have been coming from.
As for Obama, does he really expect the American public to believe him when he said he has never heard his Pastor of over 20 years make statements/sermons of this nature? How can we honestly continue to support him? The election should not be become a black or white issue.
I now have concerns about his intentions for my country. I for one plan to take a harder look at the other candidates and their positions.