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FILE Photo: Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivers the sermon at a funeral service at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago on Dec. 23, 2000. (AP Photo)

Rev. Jeremiah Wright told a congregation in Norfolk, Va., on Sunday that reporters sneaked into a private funeral service a day before, in which he blasted America’s founding fathers for slavery and white supremacy and received standing ovations for attacking FOX News for covering his anti-American sermons.

Barack Obama’s retiring pastor delivered a sermon at Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church, where his late uncle had been the pastor, about overcoming trouble. The public appearance was his first since news broke that the Democratic presidential candidate’s pastor frequently rails on the United States.

“Some troubles that come up in your life come up out of nowhere,” Wright said. At the end of the two-hour-plus service, about two dozen ministers gathered around Wright and his daughter to pray for them. One of the ministers asked God to give Wright courage as “the world tries to demonize him.”

Though Wright said nothing about Obama or the uproar itself, he alluded to the controversy while briefly back in the pulpit Saturday to deliver a eulogy for a late congregant of Trinity United Church of Christ — former appellate judge R. Eugene Pincham.

Wright, who is on sabbatical before retiring from Trinity United, said America’s mistreatment of blacks is the result of the founding fathers, who “planted slavery and white supremacy in the DNA of this republic.”

First reported by The Chicago Sun Times, Wright told mourners at the funeral that Thomas Jefferson, who partook in “pedophilia,” would also be considered unpatriotic these days because he wrote, “God would punish America for the sin of slavery.” He also quoted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said that the U.S. has a “congenital birth defect.”

Speaking of the seven lessons Pincham taught him, Wright said the judge’s faith “was not the jingoistic, chauvinistic ‘you’re either with us or against us’ demonizing kind of faith.”

“FOX News can’t understand that,” Wright said to rousing cheers and applause. “[Bill] O’Reilly will never get that. Sean Hannity’s stupid fantasy will keep him forever stuck on stupid when it comes to comprehending how you can love a brother who does not believe what you believe. [Pincham’s] faith was a faith in a God who loved the whole world not just one country or one creed.”

Click here to hear Rev. Wright’s sermon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Top Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.