Jeremiah Wright Sounds Off At Eulogy for Chicago Judge
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 guy is right on the money. in bringing up the history, we provoke the future in new directions.
please america, no more intellectually challenged gun slinging cowboys for rulers backed by cowardice and bibles.
To turn around a life that’s so often upside down, the individual must first
make an honest inventory of all factors that have caused the trouble.
It’s too easy to blame something outside of us for our troubles,
especially if we do not like what we see in ourselves.
But fixing the blame elsewhere will not make the trouble go away.
No white person today ever participated in slave owing. No black person alive today was ever a slave.
Trying to assign original sin, or victimization of people alive today, is like hollering “Global Warming” in the midst of a blizzard.
It’s too bad Rev. Wright can’t do something positive with his excess energy.
I agree. Let the Rev. Wright continue to talk. He shows you what a true Racist is like. I still don’t think he realizes how much he is bringing Obama down. I can’t wait till the General Election to see how real people view Obama and his friends. Has anyone heard if Obama has attended his church lately? His new pastor is just about as worse as Wright. Fox News is the only news station that has any common sense when it comes to Wright. They tell you the truth about him and I hope they don’t stop. I really don’t see how Obama can get away with what his friend(spiritual advisor) has said. Keep up the true reporting FOX! You’re the only news station that does.
And to think that Obama sat and listened to this guy for 20 YEARS!!! That’s frightening.
This man needs to retire. He is stirring his congregation to divisiveness by his comments.
Dr. King was a man of principle & great physical courage (e.g., physical/emotional stress: despite being 39 at the time of his death, his autopsy revealed a 60 year old’s heart) who knew that because the US was fundamentally a “moral country”, he could apply the principles of Gandhi’s peaceful “civil disobedience” to right a tremendous social injustice & establish a “colorblind” society. Any other culture would have put a bullet in his head outright, e.g., Tibetans protesting the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Unfortunately, the inheritors of his legacy have taken it to the other extreme & the Rev. Wright controversy has shed light on that festering sore (e.g., black liberation theology). Sunlight is of course the best disinfectant.
Fox News is the problem not Rev Wright. Everyone knows that Fox News tries to hand feed us this garbage. They have been doing it for years. Wake up America.
I hope all America now understands that you don’t have to be white to be a racist, black works too. The “Revs” Wright, Jackson, Sharpton, et al illustrate this fact nicely.
This guy is the gift that keeps on giving for Republicans. Why shut him up? Better the world know who Obama is NOW than in 2009 when he’s being inaugurated.