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In sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ on Easter Sunday, Rev. Jeremiah Wright was compared to Jesus Christ for facing aggressive media in wake of anti-American remarks. Wright was not present at the sermon. (AP Photo)

CHICAGO — The new pastor of Barack Obama’s church delivered a defiant defense of its retiring reverend Sunday, comparing media coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. to a modern-day lynching that resembles Jesus’ death at the hands of the Romans.

In a sunrise Easter sermon, Rev. Otis Moss III never mentioned Wright by name, but implied that his mentor, who has delivered sermons in which he likened the U.S. to the Ku Klux Klan and declared it damned for its “state-sponsored terrorism,” is facing the same challenges Jesus did.

“No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching,” Moss said.

“The lynching was national news. The RNN, the Roman News Network, was reporting it and NPR, National Publican Radio had it on the radio. The Jerusalem Post and the Palestine Times all wanted exclusives, they searched out the young ministers, showed up unannounced at their houses, tried to talk with their families, called up their friends, wanted to get a quote on how do you feel about the lynching?” he continued.

The criticism surrounding Wright has not softened the services at Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has been a congregant for 20 years. Instead, Moss defiantly defended their method of worship, referencing rap lyrics to make his point.

“If I was Ice Cube I’d say it a little differently — ‘You picked the wrong folk to mess with,’” Moss said to an enthusiastic congregation, standing up during much of the sermon, titled “How to Handle a Public Lynching.”

Wright’s sermons were criticized for casting the country as institutionally racist and Obama sharply condemned Wright’s remarks as racially divisive in a high-profile speech Tuesday, though the candidate would not renounce the pastor himself. Church officials said Wright, who is now on sabbatical and entering retirement after nearly 40 years of service with the church, was not attending any service Sunday.

Obama and his family were spending Easter on vacation and also were not attending services.

Though the church recently moved a once-prominent section on its Web site about the “Black Value System,” the congregation still describes itself as “unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian.” A plaque states this prominently behind the front desk.

The sermons Sunday, which kept references to Wright as a common thread, implied that the firestorm over Wright’s remarks has taken the church’s teachings out of context.

Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the first female bishop in the AME Church, also delivered a sermon, in which she talked about visionaries like King and Gandhi and “Jeremiah” (it was unclear whether she meant Wright), and argued that their words weren’t about “anger,” but about “a passion that demands confrontation.”

“The purveyors of information are trying to be judge and jury over prophetic utterances,” she said.

The church program handed out Sunday also included an essay called “Not on My Watch” from the Rev. Samuel B. McKinney of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle. McKinney said he was “greatly disturbed” by the “media feeding frenzy that has tarnished everyone in the process.”

“Dr. Wright represents the best among us … An attack on this man of God is an attack on all those of the cloth who believe in the social Gospel of liberation. And I will not stand for it,” he wrote.

Moss issued several pleas to congregants to donate to what he called the “Resurrection Fund,” stressing that during this time of battle, money is needed to defend the church. He offered no additional specifics about the fund, telling churchgoers he didn’t want to get into it because Trinity is streaming the service live on the Web and the services are available for purchase on DVD.

He concluded with another analogy, saying, “In order to crucify him you’ve got to lift him up … he had more visibility on the cross than he did during his entire ministry.”

FOX News’ Jeff Goldblatt contributed to this report.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Barack Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.