March 15, 2008
Obama Denounces His Pastor?s Statements
By JODI KANTOR
In the handful of years he has spent in the national spotlight, Senator Barack Obama?s stance toward his pastor has gone from fulsome praise to growing distance to ? as of Friday ? outright denunciation.
On Friday, he called a grab bag of statements by his longtime minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ?inflammatory and appalling.?
?I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue,? he wrote in a campaign statement that was his strongest in a series of public disagreements with his pastor over the past year.
Earlier in the week, several television stations played clips of Mr. Wright referring to the United States as the ?U.S. of K.K.K. A.? and saying that the Sept. 11 attacks were the result of corrupt American foreign policy. On Friday, Senator John McCain?s campaign forwarded a Wall Street Journal column to reporters in which Mr. Wright was quoted telling audiences that they should sing ?God Damn America? instead of ?God Bless America,? and accusing the United States of importing drugs, exporting guns and training murderers. Later in the day, Rush Limbaugh dwelled on Mr. Wright in his radio program, calling him ?a race-baiter and a hatemonger.?
In the statement he released a few hours later, Mr. Obama, known for uplifting messages about national unity, professed a certain innocence about his pastor?s most incendiary messages.
?The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation,? he said.
The eight-paragraph statement, first posted on the Huffington Post Web site, does not recount Mr. Wright?s claims, but rather was designed to address concerns about whether Mr. Wright?s beliefs reflected Mr. Obama?s own. ?He has never been my political advisor,? Mr. Obama wrote, ?he?s been my pastor.?
Mr. Obama belongs to the church Mr. Wright built, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and was married by Mr. Wright, who baptized his two daughters.Mr. Obama credits a sermon of Mr. Wright?s, ?The Audacity of Hope,? with drawing him to Christianity, and used those words as the title to his second book. But the evening before he announced his run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama started to distance himself from Mr. Wright, canceling an invocation he initially asked the minister to give at his presidential announcement.
Mr. Wright, 66, who last month fulfilled long-standing plans to retire, is a beloved figure in African-American Christian circles and a frequent guest in pulpits around the country. Since he arrived at Trinity in 1972, he has built a 6,000-member congregation through his blunt, charismatic preaching, which melds detailed scriptural analysis, black power, Afrocentrism and an emphasis on social justice; Mr. Obama praised that last quality in Friday?s statement.
Mr. Wright?s most powerful influence, said several ministers and scholars who have followed his career, is black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as a guide to African-American oppression.
He attracts audiences because of, not in spite of, his outspoken critiques of racism and inequality, said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at University of Chicago Divinity School, in an interview last year. But his blistering statements about American racism can shock white audiences.
?If you?re black, it?s hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people,? said James Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary and the father of black liberation theology, who has known Mr. Wright since he was a seminary student.
Mr. Wright did not answer a message left on his cell phone requesting an interview. In the interview last spring, Mr. Wright expressed frustration at the breach in his and Mr. Obama?s relationship, saying that the candidate had already privately said that he might need to distance himself.
Mr. Wright?s defenders say that the statements that have been playing this week on television are outliers, taken out of context, and that he is in not anti-white. Trinity belongs to the United Church of Christ, an overwhelmingly white denomination of Protestant Christianity. And Mr. Wright is an equal opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their educations and work ethics.
?I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: everyone who?s your color ain?t your kind,? said Richard Sewell, a church member, in an interview last year.
One of the statements that has been most replayed this week come from the sermon he delivered following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
?We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards,? he said. ?America?s chickens are coming home to roost.?
Asked to explain the sermon in an interview last March, Mr. Wright said he was questioning the country?s desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, counseling his congregants to look inward instead.
Immediately after the attacks, the country?s response was ?to pay back and kill,? he said. But ?before we get holier than thou,? he said, the nation should have considered how its own policies led to the events of that day. Last year, Mr. Obama said, ?The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification,? and added that he and his wife were at home on the day of the sermon, tending to their new baby.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
