The Wrong Reverend

Weekly Standard: What Rev. Wright Says About Barack Obama's Style

(Weekly Standard)  This column was written by Joseph Locante.

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When televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed the 9/11 attacks on "gays, feminists and the ACLU," their obscene remarks were used like a club to bludgeon George Bush and his "fundamentalist" base right up to the 2004 elections. For media elites such as The New York Times and CNN, it didn't matter that Bush quickly condemned their hate speech, or that he had no relationship to either man or their churches. It was guilt by association--an association that existed only in the feverish imaginations of the Bush-hating intelligentsia.

Well, now. Barack Obama has nourished--and been nourished by--a 20-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Obama calls Wright his spiritual "mentor" and the man whose "social gospel" drew him into the black church. He is the minister who married Obama, baptized his daughters, and prays with and counsels him at key moments of his political life. Obama absorbed hours of tapes of Wright's sermons while a law student at Harvard. When he settled in Chicago, he joined Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, where he has been an active, tithing member for over 17 years.

What do we know--and what does Obama know--about Rev. Wright? We know from his sermons that he blames the events of 9/ll on the United States: "America's chickens are coming home to roost," he said the Sunday after the attacks, when human remains were still being uncovered in lower Manhattan. He believes the AIDS virus is the malicious design of a white supremacist government. He gave an achievement award to the anti-Semitic demagogue Louis Farrakhan. We know, too, that he invokes the Bible to justify his crackpot conspiracy theories. "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America,'" Wright intoned. "No, no, no. God damn America, that's in the Bible, for killing innocent people."

The Obama campaign spent most of last week disavowing these remarks, while simultaneously rationalizing his long friendship with Wright and membership in his church. This is a hopeless strategy--and it raises massive questions about Obama's judgment, character, and the meaning of his "social justice" agenda.

Consider Obama's "I Didn't Know" defense. Wright's remarks "were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation." Church attendance records, now being examined, will surely betray Obama. In the meantime, the claim confounds common sense. YouTube clips of Wright's bellicose bloviating make one thing clear: His congregation has heard this message before--and they love it. He is their man of God "speaking truth to power."

Only a posture of willful ignorance--prosecutors might call it depraved indifference--could leave any church member unaware of Wright's hate-mongering palette. Indeed, the disheartening fact is that this minister has built an 8,500-strong congregation explicitly on a "black liberation" gospel that is anything but liberating: It reduces the Scripture to a political tool. It uses the pulpit to sanctify a race-based social critique. It makes Jesus the Judge of White America, instead of the Savior for all mankind. The black social gospel can inspire church-based outreach to the poor and marginalized, as it has at Trinity United. But it comes with a fierce rhetoric of rage and victimhood.

ABC News has examined dozens of Wright's sermons and found "repeated denunciations of the United States" based on his reading of the gospels and his racial theories. It is precisely this political theology that attracted the young Barack Obama as a community organizer. He was, as a New York Times reporter put it, "entranced" by Wright's fiery sermons of "empowerment." He has devoured them like candy ever since and spent many hours with Wright outside of church. Referring to the minister, a church member told the Chicago Tribune: "He's not a hypocrite. You know what he says behind closed doors, he'll say in the pulpit."

[blkpresident]

When was the last time the media questioned ''lil Hillary about her pastor''s remarks, if ever?!

[bombadil4]

jmc gilvray is correct--Any lingering hope that we can ever emerge from the cycles of war,extreme poverty, and the ecological ruin of the planet, will depend on whether we can every shuck off the supertitions, hatreds and bigotry that unfortunately plague religion. Then we need to work on greed.

[samthetvcat]

rukiddinme3, any thoughts on this example of market deregulation?

"In July of 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission eliminated the uptick or zero plus tick rule. This rule required that every short sale transaction be entered at a higher price than that of the previous trade and kept short sellers from adding to the downward momentum of an asset when it was already experiencing sharp declines."

[samthetvcat]

rukiddinme3''s never going to answer, are they?

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[samthetvcat]

rukiddinme3 - I''m a girl, and middle (to upper) class liberal Yankees also don''t like grievance collectors.

If you want to talk about issues, tell me your thoughts on limiting the transaction of derivatives, one of the factors that led to the demise of Bear Sterns and the government buyout. Let''s debate the social utility of investing in derivatives as opposed to stocks of companies which provide goods or services to families and the communities. Let''s debate the pros and cons of the stock market volatity generated by short-selling to generate profits from stagnant markets that have no relation to real economic growth. Let''s debate whether it''s socially beneficial to have the nation''s richest individuals all be hedge-fund managers.

I just made $700 overnight by short-selling Exxon stock - all the middle-to-upper class are doing the same thing, and are asking you to sign on to the same corporate status-quo of which you''re not even a part of, by playing on your resentment for blacks.

I think you deserve better than than and so does Obama. The question is do you . . .

[pcbirdsall]

Keep religion out of politics, and politics out of religion.

[rukiddinme3]

My comment is in response to the ridiculous response posted earlier by SamTheTVCat.

Sir, do you have your head in the sand? Or up another location perhaps? How can you read an editorial about some pretty damning information, and common sense linkage thereof, and turn that into some type of rant about George W. Bush?

Typical imo of the Obamobots today. Lets not even look at who we may be voting for, or what he may stand for, or what he has done in his, or with his life. In fact, oops, that looks bad, let''s ignore it.

Cause it must be Bushes fault.

Sorry Brother, the truth will out. And in this case I think it just did. Your candidate is exactly the same thing he has been preaching against. And I will spell it slowly for you so you get it. H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E. It leaked out when his wife said she had never been proud of her country until recently, and it is now out of the bag completely as we see who your candidate, by his own admission, uses as his "spiritual mentor".

So rather than attempt to debate the merits of the authors position, how about another rant from you. Just a little fact for you, not that it will interrupt your thoughts in any way, George Bush isn''t running for President. But your racist candidate is.

[samthetvcat]

Okay, while we''re putting everything out there, I might as well just say what''s probably coming out in my posts anyways, but I think there may be a class division that''s not readily apparent amongst whites and how we view Barack Obama, his pastor and his speech.

For those of us who went to school with guys like Duyba and have seen the likes of him turn everything they touch to pot, then use his family connection to wipe up the screw ups, we find GWB and all people related to him a BIGGER embarrassment than anything anybody else could possibly say, the difference being privilege.

How does Bush grow up without developing any social conscience whatsoever? His parents seem perfectly fine, and his brother seems pretty normal . . . he''s like a mutant or something, and then when you add nuts like Falwell into the mix who Bush doesn''t have the capacity to process, and guys like Limbaugh eager to kiss his incompetent butt, the liberal Yankee middle (to upper class) want nothing more than to disassociate from the parade of misfits.

McCain is not Bush, not at all! But with the GOP comes all of Bush''s baggage - screw up war based on greed, ignorant and unsuccessful economic policies, failed social policies, embarrassments like Katrina

Obama 08!