The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan received the ';Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright,Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer'; Award at the 2007 Trumpet Gala at the the United Church of Christ - U.S. Sen. Barack Obama -says he has been deeply influenced by his churchThe United Church of Christ .Louis Farrakhan is the acting head of the Nation of Islam .Farrakhan made several controversial statements about race, including ';White people are potential humans 鈥?they haven't evolved yet';and';Murder and lying comes easy for white people';.According to Farrakhan's mentor, Elijah Muhammad, blacks were ';born righteous and turned to unrighteousness,'; while the white race was ';made unrighteous by the god who made them.U.S. Sen. Barack Obama says he has been deeply influenced by his church, Trinity UCC on Chicago's South Side, and its senior pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
There is something in 'rock star' Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's life story that is not an appropriate target in polite society, but won't quite go away, and is absolutely certain to come trumpeting into view when the race gets rough.
The elephant in the room is the Muslim bit. Obama's middle name is Hussein, as in Saddam Hussein. We know that; so what? Well, there are an awful lot of Americans who fervently believe the nation belongs to God, as in the fellow you find in Church. And in their 'war of civilisations', the Muslims are the Bad Guys.
Obama, says PR man Robert Gibbs, happens to have had a dad from Kenya, so Islam and Hussein are just part of the family legacy. ';Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago
Presidential candidate Barack Obama preaches on the campaign trail that America needs a new consensus based on faith and bipartisanship, yet he continues to attend a controversial Chicago church whose pastor routinely refers to ';white arrogance'; and ';the United States of White America.';
In fact, Obama was in attendance at the church when these statements were made on July 22.
Obama has spoken and written of his special relationship with that pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
The connection between the two goes back to Obama's days as a young community organizer in Chicago's South Side when he first met the charismatic Wright. Obama credited Wright with converting him, then a religious skeptic, to Christianity. [Editor's Note: Can Oprah Winfrey make Barack Obama president? Click Here.]
';It was ... at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago that I met Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who took me on another journey and introduced me to a man named Jesus Christ. It was the best education I ever had,'; Obama described his spiritual pilgrimage to a group of church ministers this past June.
Since the 1980s, Obama has not only remained a regular attendee at Wright's services in his inner city mega church, Trinity United Church of Christ, along with its other 8,500 members, he's been a close disciple and personal friend of Wright.
Wright conducted Obama's marriage to his wife Michelle, baptized his two daughters, and blessed Obama's Chicago home. Obama's best-selling book, ';The Audacity of Hope,'; takes its title from one of Wright's sermons.
Because of this close relationship, questions have been raised as to the influence the divisive pastor will have on the consensus-building potential president.
Obama and Wright appear, at first blush, an unlikely pair. Wright is Chicago's version of the Rev. Al Sharpton.
It was no surprise that Sharpton recently announced that with Wright's backing, he was setting up a chapter of his New York-based National Action Network in Chicagoland. The chapter will be headed by Wright's daughter, Jeri Wright.
Minister of Controversy
Obama was not the only national African-American figure to cozy up to Wright. TV host Oprah Winfrey once described herself as a congregant, but in recent years has disassociated herself from the controversial minister.
A visit to Wright's Trinity United is anything but Oprah-style friendly.
As I approached the entrance of the church before a recent Sunday service, a large young man in an expensive suit stepped out to block the doorway.
';What are you doing here?'; he asked.
';I came to hear Dr. Wright,'; I replied.
After an uncomfortable pause, the gentleman stepped aside.
On this particular July Sabbath morning, only a handful of white men 鈥?aside from a few members of Obama's Secret Service detail 鈥?were present among a congregation of approximately 2,500 people.
The floral arrangements were extravagant. Wright, his associate pastors, choir members, and many of the gentlemen in the congregation were attired in traditional African dashiki robes. African drums accompanied the organist.
Trinity United bears the motto ';Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.';
Wright says its doctrine reflects black liberation theology, which views the Bible in part as a record of the struggles of ';people of color'; against oppression.
A skilled and fiery orator, Wright's interpretation of the Scriptures has been described as ';Afrocentric.';
When referring to the Romans, for example, he refers to ';European oppression'; 鈥?not addressing the fact that the Egyptians, who were also a slave society, were people of Africa.
The Trinity United Web site tells of a ';commitment to the black community, commitment to the black family, adherence to the black work ethic, pledge to make all the fruits of developing acquired skills available to the black community.';
';Some white people hear it as racism in reverse,'; Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ, tells The New York Times. Blacks tend to hear a different message, Hopkins says: ';Yes, we are somebody; we're also made in God's image.';
Controversy Abounds
Several prior remarks by Obama's pastor have caught the media's attention:
Wright on 9/11: ';White America got their wake-up call after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.'; On the Sunday after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.
Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway: ';Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months.';
Wright on Israel: ';The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.';
Wright on America: He has used the term ';middleclassness'; in a derogatory manner; frequently mentions ';white arrogance'; and the ';oppression'; of African-Americans today; and has referred to ';this racist United States of America.';
Bush's Bulls--t
Wright's strong sentiments were echoed in the Sunday morning service attended by NewsMax.
Wright laced into America's establishment, blaming the ';white arrogance'; of America's Caucasian majority for the woes of the world, especially the oppression suffered by blacks. To underscore the point he refers to the country as the ';United States of White America.'; Many in the congregation, including Obama, nodded in apparent agreement as these statements were made.
The sermon also addressed the Iraq war, a frequent area of Wright's fulminations.
';Young African-American men,'; Wright thundered, were ';dying for nothing.'; The ';illegal war,'; he shouted, was ';based on Bush's lies'; and is being ';fought for oil money.';
In a sermon filled with profanity, Wright also blamed the war on ';Bush administration bulls--t.';
Those are the types of statements that have led to MSNBC's Tucker Carlson describing Wright as ';a full-blown hater.';
Wright first came to national attention in 1984, when he visited Castro's Cuba and Col. Muammar Gaddafi's Libya.
Wright's Libyan visit came three years after a pair of Libyan fighter jets fired on American aircraft over international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, and four years before the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland 鈥?which resulted in the deaths of 259 passengers and crew. The U.S. implicated Gaddafi and his intelligence services in the bombing.
In recent years, Wright has focused his diatribe on America's war on terror and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
For a February 2003 service, Wright placed a ';War on Iraq IQ Test'; on the Pastor's Page of the church Web site. The test consisted of a series of questions and answers that clearly portrayed America as the aggressor, and the war as unjustified and illegal. Marginally relevant issues regarding Israel received attention.
The test also portrayed the Iraqi people as victims of trade sanctions, but Saddam Hussein's propensity for using ';oil for food'; proceeds to build palaces rather than buy medicine was never mentioned.
At the end of the test, the pastor wrote, ';Members of Trinity are asked to think about these things and be prayerful as we sift through the 鈥榟ype' being poured on by the George Bush-controlled media.'; Obama's campaign staff did not respond to a NewsMax request for the senator's response to Wright's statements.
In April, however, Obama spoke to The New York Times about Wright, and appeared to be trying to distance himself from his spiritual mentor. He said, ';We don't agree on everything. I've never had a thorough conversation with him about all aspects of politics.';
More specifically, Obama told the Times, ';The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification,'; adding ';It sounds like [Wright] was trying to be provocative.';
Obama attributed Wright's controversial views to Wright being ';a child of the '60s'; who Obama said ';expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism, and the struggles the African-American community has gone through.';
';It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly distance himself from Mr. Wright,'; writes Jodi Kantor of The New York Times. On the day Sen. Obama announced his presidential quest in February of this year, Wright was set to give the invocation at the Springfield, Ill. rally. At the last moment, Obama's campaign yanked the invite to Wright.
Wright's camp was apparently upset by the slight, and Obama's campaign quickly issued a statement ';Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church.';
Since that spat, there is little evidence, indeed, that Sen. Obama has sought to distance himself from the angry Church leader. In June, when Obama appeared before a conference of ministers from his religious denomination, Wright appeared in a videotaped introduction.
One of Obama's campaign themes has been his claim that conservative evangelicals have ';hijacked'; Christianity, ignoring issues like poverty, AIDS, and racism.
This past June, in an effort to build a new consensus between his new politics and faith, Obama's campaign launched a new Web page, www.faith.barackobama.com.
On the day the page appeared on his campaign site, it offered testimonials from Wright and two other ministers supporting Obama. The inclusion of Wright drew a sharp rebuke from the Catholic League. Noting that Obama had rescinded Wright's invitation to speak at his announcement ceremony, Catholic League President Bill Donohue declared that Obama ';knew that his spiritual adviser was so divisive that he would cloud the ceremonies.';
He noted that Wright ';has a record of giving racially inflammatory sermons and has even said that Zionism has an element of 鈥榳hite racism.' He also blamed the attacks of 9/11 on American foreign policy.';
Donohue acknowledged that Obama may have different views than Wright and the other ministers on his Web site, but ';he is responsible for giving them the opportunity to prominently display their testimonials on his religious outreach Web site.';
Political pundits have suggested that Obama's problems with Wright are not ones based on faith, but pure politics. The upstart presidential candidate needs to pull most of the black vote to have any chance of snagging the Democratic nomination. Obama's ties to Wright and the activist African American church helps in that effort.
But the same experts same those same ties may come to haunt him if he were to win the nomination and face a Republican in the general election.
The worry is not lost on Wright.
';If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,'; Wright told The New York Times with a shrug. ';I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'yeah, that might have to happen.'';As Obama heads for the presidency should White House be change to Black House?
Racist
no doesn't that seem a litle rasist to you white in white house stands for purity and cleanes of our state
Someone here is racist and I don't believe it's me.
Maybe you should check out his black Church and Pastor Wright
Only if you plan on painting the exterior. Racism should never stand in the way of humor. Sorry, but this is kind of a funny question, and I doubt the asker is serious about it. But if so, shame on you.
Are you this ignorant? The White House got it's name from the War of 1812 after the British torched it. After the British left, the Presidential Manor was painted white, thus, it is now called the White House.
For you simpletons out there, it would be like renaming The White Castle restaurant, 'The Black Castle', just because the new manager was black.
Well - Bill Clinton was named the first black president by the African-Community a long time ago; so I guess that makes Obama second fiddle - if he makes it that far, which is doubtful. Truth has a way of wiggling it's way out - and Obama's days are numbered.
if i had asked that question? i would have been violated. So my question? is how come u get away with it.pretty lady
i agree ;)
good idea
Real funny racist ***, we have had a chimp in there for 7 years and we did not paint zoo bars on it
That's not even clever. At least some klansmen have a brain. You are probably too stupid for them to allow you into their group!!!!!
oh ohkay...
Im laughing on the inside really I am.
You sound about as stable as Heather Mills after a leg-jacking.
ok but he isnt going there
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