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.
as a widow of a vietnam vet who died when he was 21 and was so proud to serve his country… and as a woman who went with my mother and uncle in the backwoods of louisiana in the 60’s to help black people pay a poll tax to vote… at great risks to themselves….. I am outraged and angry at this person who has benefited from the education this country has allowed him to have…
I hear how he was a marine hero… hell.. he was a cardio tech.. and probably never saw the front lines… my husband was a marine pilot who was mia for three years before I got a closed casket to bury….
what has barrack obama done for this country…. what are his sacrifices to this country…
Ive been watching the series on John adams and the forming of this country by ordinary citizens at great risk to their lives.. these men and women put every thing on the line for this country….I look at my congress and president now and cry at the absolute corruption and self servicing to themselves…
they wouldnt be fit to kiss the boots of these men
barrack obama and his wife are racists who are tearing this country apart.. god help us if he is elected
I agree with Alison 100%- march 29 comment. Definitely paying off the media and everyone else!
Doesn’t it tell you enough that Wright was Obama’s spiritual advisor not just for the past 20 yrs. but to him, his family and his campaign just seconds before he had no choice but to address this issue???
And to address Ivan’s comments above:
This is not a family member you don’t choose or a friend with extreme opinions… This is a “Spiritual Leader” SPIRITUAL! I don’t know about you.. but I have never thought that hate/anger is something that is preached at church. There are many ways to express concern for the wrong doings we witness in this world.. is call prayer.
I can’t wait until my next job interview so I can mention that experience does not matter and attending hateful sermons is what I do on the weekends.. it is actually comical to me!
My White grandmother told me … “birds of a feather stick together” … or was that my Cuban grandma?? “dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres” I can’t remember…. but does it really matter which one?
What I do know is that it’s true 90% of the time!
I wish the country would get a clue and realize that OBAMA is a POLITICIAN.. and a very smart one at that… He definitely says what people want to hear and he is inspirational as well.
But if I have learned anything in this world… Is that actions speak louder than words. So I judge a politician, not by what he/she says but by what he/she has accomplished during their careers and definitely by the company they keep! But isn’t this just common sense???
I truley believe that Mr.Obama has the SAME views as his Pastor that is why I will NOT vote for him. I’d rather see McCain or a women instead at least they view America differently.
One nation under God.
I was absolutely STUNNED to learn that Pastor Wright’s speech was NOT a rare, estrangement of hate speech full of untruths, but one that is STILL a COMMON theme in the black community–200+ YEARS LATER! It has been my understanding that Christians believed and practiced: “Love and Forgiveness” not “Hate and Condemnation”–where does Pastor Wright’s rheteric belong under the Christian mantle?
The continuation of preaching such hatefilled and misiinformed rheteric is definitely NOT helpful in trying to move FOREWARD TO BRING THE RACES TOGETHER and under this accusatory ideology, we will NEVER be able to close the “Divide”; it takes BOTH sides! This highly charged hate speech must be recognized as an extreme negative for the black community’s “common good” and therefore, CHOOSING TO MOVE FOREWARD AND NOT LIVE IN THE PAST, they must RISE ABOVE IT, vehemently condemning such rheteric for our country and the WORLD to see and hear! (And be assured, the whole world IS, definitely, WATCHING!)
IF indeed, this ideology IS still a common theme of black Americans, (and I hope it is NOT), I believe the white community has moved much further than the black community in working toward closing the racial divide: Witness those who are holding or have held, VERY high offices in the Federal Government such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell and now Barack Obama who is running as a candidate for the President of the USA!
Be careful Obama,they are looking for the video when you were sitting in church and applauding the pastor.
I strongly disagree with Rev. Wright’s critism of America. This isn’t critism of America, this is hatred. This is racism against white people for every bad thing that has happened in the world, simply because whites are someone to blame for being unsucessful.
To pay a preacher $20,000 dollars (that we KNOW of from his tax return) who has given the GOLDEN BEST MAN IN THE WORLD award to Louis Farrakhan tells us something.
That something is that obama does NOT denounce racism when it is surfaced, if anything he supported it for 20 years, and raised his young children in that church also…
I dont know about anybody else but that should be a big red flag, and unfortunately the money he has from kennedy and oprah to name a few, are buying this election for him. Its a little more than scary.
I have been a member of a Protestant Church all my life and have never seen or heard the language that was used in this Church. Even if some of the statements were used out of context, the language that was used as no place in a Christian Protestant Church. The Chicago Church should be examined by the national office of the Church of Christ. God help the members of this Chicago Church of Christ. Amen
To criticize one’s country doesn’t mean to hate it. Those who criticize show that they care and therefore they show that they want to love, even if they can’t love at the moment. Anger and frustration can and should be expressed in the US, especially if they have real fundation in real problems such as slavery, which ended not so long ago. We shouldn’t confuse real hatred with anger and frustration. We must not neglect history. We must respect it and understand it’s ability to act in future, for the good or for the bad ends- that depends on how we act now.
No country is perfect. USA, with all its might is not perfect. It does a lot of good but sometimes it does bad things - a reality difficult to face for most people in the USA. We must not demand for an uncoditional love of the USA. That is bigotry. We must love this great country with a critical eye. This is the only way how we can improve and how we can avoid evil. Some people in the USA just want to enjoy power and do what they please. If that’s the case than these people also need to understand limitations of the power. Further they need to be ready to experience consequences of acting violently in the world, even when it is for the ‘best’ reasons.
We must not allow for a blind instinct for self-preservation to prevail over our reason and compassion, as well as over real demands to transform in a changing world. This is the only way to survive.
this is rediculous