Obama’s Church Fires Back
File; Barack Obama with Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. (AP Photo)
The Chicago church attended by Barack Obama is fighting back against media coverage of its controversial pastor, issuing a statement on Sunday, saying reports on the inflammatory remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright are an attempt to attack “the history of the African American church.”
“Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe,” the leaders of Trinity United Church of Christ wrote Sunday in a statement distributed to the media.
Claiming that Wright’s 36 years as pastor of the church — the largest United Church of Christ congregation, with 8,000 members — is being demeaned, Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, said, “It saddens me to see news stories reporting such a caricature of a congregation that has been such a blessing to the UCC’s Wider Church mission … It’s time for us to say ‘No’ to these attacks and declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends.”
Neither Wright nor Obama was present at the church on Sunday, but all of talk news has been on the subject of the pastor, whose many sermons have been captured on video and replayed across television and the Internet over the past few weeks.
Some of the more flamboyant sermons have included statements saying that the U.S. created the AIDS virus to kill African Americans and that the United States was asking for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks because it had supported “state-sponsored terrorism” against black South Africans and Palestinian
Obama’s campaign has tried to distance the candidate from his Wright, the man who coined the phrase “the audacity of hope” that became the title of Obama’s bestselling book.
Speaking in a conference call on Sunday, Obama’s advisers acknowledged that the pastor was supposed to appear at the announcement of Obama’s presidential campaign last year, but was cut from the program in part because they knew he was controversial and didn’t want him to become a target or distraction, both of which he nows appears to be.
But even as attention is focused on Obama, Hillary Clinton’s supporters have refrained from pouncing on the opportunity to link Obama to his 20-year-long spiritual adviser.
“I mean, as you know, I prefer Senator Clinton for a whole lot of reasons, but I don’t cast aspersions on Senator Obama for what somebody else said,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told “FOX News Sunday.”
Calling Trinity’s social justice and outreach programs “inclusive and global” Moss added that not much has changed since the era of Martin Luther King’s sermons for equality. He claimed that African American churches, “born out of the crucible of slavery and the legacy of prophetic African American preachers since slavery” continue to treat marginalized victims of social and economic injustices in the face of prejudice.
“This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world,” he said, adding “The African American Church community continues to face bomb threats, death threats, and their ministers’ characters are assassinated because they teach and preach prophetic social concerns for social justice. Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America.”
Click here to read the Trinity United Church of Christ statement.
FOX News’ Caroline Shively contributed to this report.
This is not an issue of race as far as I’m concerned. It’s an issue of judgment and character. Every defender of Rev. Wright has used the lame “out of context” excuse. I am at a loss on how context can change a hateful message to a loving one, or an unpatriotic message to a patriotic one or a racist message to a unified one. The man stood in front of God and his congregation and told blatant lies. How can lies become truths by changing context. Rev. Wright will have to pay for his deeds when he meets his maker. But for the meantime, he’ll get to spend his retirement years by the pool at his 10,400SF home in a gated golf community while the people he was purporting to defend continue to live in poverty. Pretty sweet deal for a lying, racist, hypocrite. He should be saying God Bless America, not God Damn America.
With so much anger,confusion,distrust,perplexity,anxiety,mudslinging and slinging back politics,maybe it is time that everyone stop pointing fingers at everyone else and LOOK INTO THE MIRROR OF GOD’S WORD and more specifically read and meditate on the words of the LORD JESUS that says in MATTHEW 5:44 -48 :
“…But I say unto you,Love you enemies,bless them that curse you,do good to them that hate you,and pray for them that despitefully use you,and persecute you, That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and just .
For if ye love them which love you,what reward have ye?do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only ,what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans do so?
Be ye therefore perfect,even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect…”
May practicing Christians, true believers of the WORD OF GOD from Genesis to Revelation pray for America that all this hatred, malica ,bitterness, confusion and depression,wickedness and demonic powers BE REBUKED IN THE MIGHTY NAME OF THE LORD JESUS.AMEN AND AMEN.
May God Bless America. Amen and Amen. And may God give the people of America the wisdom to make the right choice when they vote. Amen and Amen. Errol Smythe.
Hilary said if that fool was her pastor, she would have left that church for what he said. Well, if I’d been married to her husband, I’d have left him for what he did with Monica and other women. In other words, different strokes for different folks.
why is a candidate responsible for what his pastor said? where’s all the backlash for what McCain’s Minister - Rev. JOhn Hagee - said about the Catholic church. He called it the great whor% of Babylon and “a cult.” He also blamed it for the Holocaust and predicts its imminent demise. Then he linked Hurricane Katrina to the gay rights movement. Sen. McCain’s response: “I don’t have to agree with everyone who endorses my candidacy,” he said. “They are supporting my candidacy. I am not endorsing some of their positions.”
I went to work today and disavowed all of my black co-workers because of what this Rev. Wright said. I told them there was no way they didn’t agree with him because they too were black and all black people stick together, through thick or thin. Black first, American second.
Right……
Get your racist heads out of your KKK hoods you idotic people! Grow up and get over your latent problems with race and you others stop denying you were ever a racist. 99% of all adult whites in America were racists until the 60’s. And Obama was correct when he alluded to his grandmother having a typical white reaction to blacks. Blacks have it too, but it’s more typical among whites and it was more prevalent when he was young.
What a nut we have running for the Presidency, blasting his big mouth off every time on anything? Now he’s stirring in voters’ fears about Iraq, with gasoline prices …. tell them when he gets in they will pay dollar a day for gasoline?
Senator Obama, have you ever heard of OPEC? Seems to me you have not; I hear you shouting your big mouth off about the gasoline price.
Well son, lem’me tell you then. Them is kind of a Union, unnerstand? Big Fellows got together long before the War, very long ago, way back before you were born, and formed this Union of Oil Producing Export Countries, called OPEC. Them fellows determine the oil price, and they try their utter best to determine supply as well.
Son, if you want to pick that 3 am phone up and call them, you can check it out, see. And I suggest you ask them about the Iraq War at the same time. You may find out a whole darn lot of them want America to stay in there permanently to help them against Iraq, you see they don’t always get along with each other …. old Saddam was not on good terms with all of them, kind of not everyone’s friendly neighbor, see.
Then son, when you have done that tell us how you suggest we end this war. Way I heard you said all our soldiers gotta be back here by end March next year. Are you gonna pick up the 3 am phone to call General Petraeus and say: “Lookie here General, this Waw is ovuh, heah, get them soldiers home on the double, heah, THIS IS AN ORDER GENERAL?”
I could tell you a lot more about oil prices and supply/demand and oil profits/export earnings, all kind of things, but we leave that for another day. You need the time to prepare another stupid speech.
You are really, double really, nuts/wacky/big mouth/empty shell. My oh my, iffin you by chance get this nomination, them Reps and American Business will chew you up, son, and spit out the hollow bones.
Maybe I should close with a little more advice: them Voters you think are all sheep and you think them sheep will follow you blind. They won’t do that no longer, Son, soon’s they realize what a Liar you are, they will get rid of you. Poor Baby? Duh!
All Christian denominations do just as much for people in their surrounding communities. To suggest that the “Trinity Church of Christ” is somehow unique, is totally absurd. However, what Christian churches do very well, is to heal the broken hearted with the “full gospel.” They do not administer a “stumbling block” called “Black Liberation Theology.”
Founder: http://www.DrawingClose.org
It is amazing to me that people got all this information out of a 30 second clip of this sermon. by Rev Wright. There were twenty years of sermons given by the Rev. Wright that Barack Obama listened to, what about those? I never watch Fox news, I feel that they are the most divise channel on the network. They are so blatantly Republican and do not give much of an alternative view. What happened about open minds and hearts? We are so ready to condemn people and we seem to want to pounce on any flimsy thing to vilify someone. We should all filter out the information we hear, take the good and reject the bad otherwise this country will never change. We have too much faith in our politicians, just because they put spin on things, don’t automaticaly beleive them, do research look for the facts and please make up your own mind, not just listen to what the networks tell you because they have their own agenda.
Here’s a foreast in the making … which they can’t see the foreast from the trees:
From Wright’s church:
This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world,” he said, adding “The African American Church community continues to face bomb threats, death threats, and their ministers’ characters are assassinated because they teach and preach prophetic social concerns for social justice. Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America.”
Ha, ha
Why does America (U S A), assist all African nations in their hour of need, where is the so
“church” better yet … other African Nations?????
Who’s threating .. any names?
I know no white or any other persons other than black could never walk along in a black area after dark, who’s racist?
Again, more B___ S ___, from the same old leaders in the black community, I guess they beleive all blacks are on CRACK, so they believe they can controll the black race and play the race card anytime the subject gets heated!
JCSA
As impressive as Senator Obama’s recent speech was, it raises many questions regarding his conduct as it relates to his involvement with Rev. Wright. (1) What does it say about Sen. Obama that he reversed his earlier assertion that he was not present for his pastor’s radical sermons? (2) Since we now know that he was present, why did he choose to remain in the church and continue to expose himself and his family to such toxic beliefs? (3) Why did the senator not challenge Rev. Wright on these appalling statements? (4) What does this say about his discernment and willingness to create change in this divisive forum? (5) And, finally, if Senator Obama lacks the moral courage to confront wrongdoing in his own church, how can we expect him to act differently as president?
I am tired unto death about the card, my ancesters were slaves-give me a break! Why doesn’t anyone say in response-your ancesters were selling their own children in africa long before the slaves!