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.
Mr. Wright’s actions and comments are so vile. We should all pray for him.
I have heard people talk about all the good he has done in the community, but if all of his efforts are accompanied by radical Islamic, anti jewish, and racial hate speaches, then he is tearing down more than he builds up. Our Lord and Savior, JESUS CHRIST was a jew, so I have to wonder if Mr. Wright has ever really given his heart to CHRIST. I think Mr. Wright’s RADICAL ANTI-JEWISH views do go along with his RADICAL PRO-ISLAMIC views….those RADICAL ISLAMICS HATE JEWS, CHRISTIANS, and AMERICA. Mr. Wright seems to be full of contradictions withn his own thoughts.
….JESUS is about changing people for the good, which usually compells people to love one another, not hate and tear down one another. I am praying for Mr.Wright to open his heart to the true teaching of JESUS….. Palm Sunday and Easter are near and this would be a good time for all AMERICANS to pray for each other, all of our troops, our missonaries around he world, for people throught out the world, and for our GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE COUNTRY.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
This not only makes Obama a racist, it also makes him very threating to the country, especially
when he has been a friend to a man that would say dam to America, not just a year, but 20 years. You cant be friends with someone that long and not know them. Put that with what his wife said and we have a mess.
Twenty years and he never heard this stuff?
if he didnt hear his preacher he is deaf
but probably talking out the side of his mouth
if hillary is smart have someone run the rant on tv with the two of them hugging in for ground
The first time I saw a picture of Obama’s pastor, I thought he was white…then I heard he hated whites and I was confused….Then I read the information on Mr. Wright and learned who he was and what he stood for. Now that I have seen the clips of him calling for God to damn AMERICA, and all of his other views on the white and jewish people, I think he is MR WRONG
Does Oprah go to his church too? If so does she share his views? Would she share those views with her large number of viewers? I used to be a big fan of Oprah and could identify with her in many ways, and I thought she really cared about the fans, no matter what the color. But in her campaign events with the Obama’s I was let down by some of her actions and things she said and indicated and quit watching her show.
I just wonder how big of a threat he is to America and if he has ties to radical Islamic factions?
I never heard him once say one thing good about all AMERICA has done. Why on earth does he live in AMERICA if it is the awful place he says it is?! He should go!
I heard him bring up slavery. but I never heard him say anything against the slavery that still goes on in AFRICA among the Africans themselves.
I didn’t hear him say anything about how Africans were the ones who kidnapped and sold by fellow Africans into slavery. I think they even helped put them on the slaves ships. Slavery is a terrible and wrong thing and should not be tolerated in any country…he should go and fight against it in the countries where it is still found.
Striking similiarities in ideology between the pastor and the wife. Are we to believe that Obama is unaware and doesn’t share the same beliefs as his “spiritual mentor” and “soulmate”?
I applaud Fox News on bring this side of Obama’s life to public view. I wish more news networks would get us more information so we can make an informed decision, not just the decision that the news network want us to make. It is good to have lots of information to help us decide which way to vote.
“reverend” Wright seems to imply that being raised by a single mom and being called the n-word somehow makes Barak more qualified to be president than Hillary.
If that’s all it takes, perhaps Mrs. Rodham would be willing to bed a Kenyan goat herder and the democrats could settle this nomination thing.
You call this Christianity, Senator?
Please gimme a break. And you defended this for twenty years? You used this to blame President for Iran hating America?
Leaves me speechless.
You are a rotten gold-seeker opportunist posing as a Messiah of Change but you a dangerous man in Public Office.
Finally!!! We were wondering when the press was going to uncover this skeleton in Obama’s closet. As Christians, as soon as we found out that Obama professes to having been a Christian and a member of the same church for over 20 years - which we did find out over two months ago - the first thing we did was research about his church and their beliefs. Immediately red flags went up all over the place, and we could not understand why nobody else was talking about it.
Now one thing keeps bugging us a lot: how come a faithful member of a church, who says he’s been attending it for 20 years, has never heard about his own pastor and spiritual mentor’s statements? What about this DVD that anyone can buy at Trinity United Church of Christ entitled (if we’re not mistaken) “The Best of Jeremiah Wright”? Has Obama NEVER even had the curiosity to know about what it was all about? Let’s say Obama is telling the truth and he has never heard of those comments until the beginning of his campaign, if Obama disagrees so much with Mr. Wright’s opinions why didn’t he kick him out of his staff right away, but only last night when the “bomb” hit the fan?
After all, twenty years as a member of a congregation can really influence you A LOT. Unless you’re a “flaky member” who just has your name in the church membership roll for political purposes. The spiritual role that Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (UCC) and its just-retired pastor Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright have played in the lives of Barack and Michelle Obama is well-established, as is the Africentric theology that is the cornerstone of the church’s self-proclaimed identity.
One largely unexamined element of that Africentric theology, though, is the pivotal role that black liberation theologian Dr. James H. Cone, Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary (NYC), and his 1969 book Black Theology & Black Power, have played in the life of that faith community. Examining Cone’s theology may enlighten us on Barack’s political philosophy and Michelle’s recently controversial statement about not having been proud of her country until the favorable reception to her husband’s candidacy.