The Audacity of Dishonesty

Before Reverend Jeremiah Wright was purged in order to save Barack Obama’s presidential bid, the hate-filled reverend claimed that his quotes were only sound bites taken out of context.

NPR enthusiastically covered the reverend’s objection that “his comments have been taken out of context and that the attacks on him are actually toward the entire black church” (Trinity United Church of Christ).

Yet even Obama refused to back up his former pastor on this subject… stating, “Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy.” Obama also said that if Rev. Wright didn’t retire then he would have left his church.

It’s interesting to note that according to Newsweek one of the major reasons former-churchgoer Oprah Winfrey left Trinity in the 1990s was Rev. Wright. However, Obama stayed for 20 years.

Rev. Wright knew his days were numbered and he said; “If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said, ‘Yeah, that might have to happen.’” It’s a pity that not much good can be said about Obama’s sense of loyalty. In light of his comment in which he called his grandmother a “typical white person” this is not surprising. Not only did Obama save his political career by ditching his former mentor, but he saved the Trinity United Church as well.

It has escaped the notice of the media that even before Rev. Wright became pastor, the church adopted a racially separatist agenda. According to a key Trinity lay leader at the time, Vallmer E. Jordan, the church leadership decided that, “For years we had prided ourselves on being a middle-class congregation within a mainline denomination, but suddenly the values within the black community had shifted. Aspirations for integration and assimilation were being replaced by those of black pride and separation.” (Speller, Julia 2005. “Walkin’ the Talk: Keepin the Faith in Africentric Congregations.” Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 80)

Even a staunch Trinity apologist like Jason Byassee admits the following…

“There is no denying, however, that a strand of radical black political theology influences Trinity. James Cone, the pioneer of black liberation theology, is a much-admired figure at Trinity. Cone told me that when he’s asked where his theology is institutionally embodied, he always mentions Trinity. Cone’s groundbreaking 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power announced: “The time has come for white America to be silent and listen to black people... All white men are responsible for white oppression… Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil’... Any advice from whites to blacks on how to deal with white oppression is automatically under suspicion as a clever device to further enslavement.” Contending that the structures of a still-racist society need to be dismantled, Cone is impatient with claims that the race situation in America has improved. In a 2004 essay he wrote, “Black suffering is getting worse, not better... White supremacy is so clever and evasive that we can hardly name it. It claims not to exist, even though black people are dying daily from its poison”.

Rev. Wright fit the mold of what church leaders like Jordan were looking for. After all, Rev. Wright asserted on the behalf of his African-American congregation that, “We are descendants of Africa, not England. We have a culture that is African in origin - not European. The Bible we preach from came from a culture that was not English or European”.

In the 21st Century I strongly disapprove of Cone and Rev. Wright’s racial separatism. American culture owes a great debt to Africa. Our music, arts and dance are strongly influenced by the continent and I wouldn’t want to be associated with a European-American congregation that resented African culture because their ancestors came from England. Either way it is a step backwards away from tolerance and a step closer to hatred.

CNN relates that bulletins from the Trinity United Church back in June 10, 2007 include comments (reprinted from other sources), which maintains that South Africa and Israel worked on “an ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs”. They also quote a historian who said, “What the Zionist Jews did to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews”. Another one of those church bulletins, from July 22, 2007, includes an article refusing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist by Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy of the political bureau of Hamas. At the bottom of the page, the bulletin has a copyright in Rev. Wright’s name. He regularly published such disgustingly anti-Israeli articles.

So it’s interesting to note that Democratic Party Frontrunner, Barack Obama recently said that John McCain’s quote stating that the militant Islamic group Hamas favors Obama is “offensive” and a “smear”. While the Obama campaign demanded that McCain should apologize for “repeating tired and divisive attacks about Barack Obama that he knows are flat-out untrue”.

Well, the fact is that Ahmed Yousef (a political adviser for the militant organization Hamas) stated the following in an interview with New York’s WABC radio station, “Actually, we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle”.

Therefore McCain’s statement is a factual one. So what’s next? Will statements saying that, ‘since Obama is a freshman senator - he doesn’t have much foreign policy experience’, be “offensive” or “a smear”?

In order to win the liberal, Democratic Jewish vote Obama is trying to prove that he is pro-Israel. So all of a sudden, he dumped his reverend and fired one of his Middle East policy advisers who has regular contacts with Hamas. But after 20 years of attending Trinity, Obama still claimed as recently as March that:

“I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.”

Then when video tapes of Rev. Wright starting appearing on prime time TV and on the Internet he back tracked to say:

“I did not hear such incendiary language myself personally, either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew.

So besides Ophray Winfrey, did any one else at Trinity hear these speeches? Was the clapping of hundreds of enthusiastic churchgoers in the Rev. Wright videos piped in? Obama has to repudiate the church members who didn’t sleep through Rev. Wright’s incendiary remarks and instead cheered him on.

It is unfortunate that if Obama wasn’t running for president he would have never disowned his reverend-mentor and would still be calling him his spiritual advisor. To believe that after 20 years of membership in this congregation that one election cycle can purge such hatred is not realistic unless Obama comes clean. If he really wants to be a president who unites this country then he must give up his hateful church and denounce it for what it is.

Rev. Wright isn’t an expendable scapegoat who can be the fall guy for the sins of the entire church. Almost every word he preached was met with adoring cheer. For 36 years Rev. Wright led the flock. He built up the church from 87 members to 10,000. Right before Rev. Wright came to Trinity, church leaders had determined that the decline in membership was due to changes in the values of the black community. If you recall, church lay leader, Vallmer E. Jordan, named these values as black pride and separation. Additionally, it should be pointed out that the church’s vision statement is based on James Cone’s racist liberation theology.

So we’re not just talking about Obama’s connection to Rev. Wright, his connection with his church is important too. Obama has to admit that his church spread hate during his many years of membership there and that he knew it. Obama needs to come clean before any intelligent person can ever believe him again. How could someone aspire to the presidency of the United States of America and for 20 years not realize that his church, (Trinity United) is controversial? Not only has Obama been dishonest about that, but he has also been intentionally misleading about his knowledge of his pastor’s inflammatory statements.

Before Obama changed his story, he claimed on March 2008 that, “Had I heard those statements in the church, I would have told Reverend Wright that I profoundly disagree with them... …What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor.”

Yet back in January 2007 Obama asked Rev. Wright to deliver a public invocation at the announcement of his presidential campaign, but Obama knew that his reverend spoke about a lot more than just “Jesus” and “faith”. A month later he revoked his request and invited Rev. Otis Moss III (Rev. Wright’s replacement at Trinity and a firm ally of the retiring reverend) to deliver the invocation, but Moss refused out of loyalty to Rev. Wright. The clincher is that when Obama spoke to Rev. Wright he said, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public”. So Obama abandoned Rev. Wright not because of his offensiveness (as he clearly knew about all along), but only to further his campaign for the presidency.

Much like the reason he all of a sudden loves Israel after 20 years of going to a church that enthusiastically promoted anti-Israeli propaganda. In 2005 the United Church of Christ (UCC) Synod even passed a resolution calling for divestment from doing business with Israel and the dismantling of Israel’s security barrier (which has saved many Israeli lives from Palestinian terrorism). The Simon Wiesenthal Center called the resolution, “functionally anti-Semitic”. Two years later when Obama spoke before the Synod, “Israel’s newly christened friend”, never mentioned the resolutions. Only a dysfunctional media can miss the issue here. For a man running on a platform of “Change We Can Believe In”, the only thing that you can really believe in is that Obama will continue the age-old campaign strategies of dishonest politicians.

(Note: The IRS has notified the United Church of Christ, that they have opened an investigation into Obama’s address at the UCC’s 2007 General Synod because the church was engaging in political activities.)

The chance of Obama denouncing his church is slim because it has been the center of his power base for a long time. Trinity is a nepotistic hydra with many heads. When Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate back in November 2004 his vacated seat was filled by Kwame Raoul... Who just so happens to also be a member of the same church as Obama, “Trinity United Church of Christ”!!! It’s a political machine that Obama has relied on for years and the church will increase its influence through him unless he does the right thing for the American people. Now is finally the time for Obama to fully divest himself from hatred.

Lets give Rev. Wright the last word;

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’. No, no, no, not God Bless America. God Damn America - that’s in the Bible - for killing innocent people. God Damn America, as long as she pretends to act like she is God, and she is supreme.”