Candidate Leaves After Latest Remarks from Pulpit
Sen. Barack Obama resigned on Friday from Trinity United Church of Christ after 20 years, in light of the latest controversial remarks from that church’s pulpit, this time from the visiting Rev. Michael Pfleger, who mocked Sen. Hillary Clinton, saying she feels frustrated because of her sense of white entitlement.
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Veteran Chicago journalist Monroe Anderson broke the story at 1:55 p.m. Central time Saturday on his blog, writing, “in an attempt to turn manufactured right-wing ammo into blanks, Obama has completely separated himself from his minister and his church.
“What worries me is this: Can we expect a President Obama to cave in to the whims and will of the right on policies and issues he knows are important, if this nation is to move forward in a progressive and compassionate manner? Can we expect him to genuflect to negative reports by an uninformed, misinformed or ill-willed media? Is the candidate of change willing to go-along in a willy-nilly get-along fashion?
“I hope not, but I’m not sure.”
Anderson, who also writes for ebonyjet.com and wrote for Newsweek, the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune and Ebony magazine, and spent 13 years as an executive at Chicago’s WBBM-TV, told Journal-isms he learned that Obama had resigned from the church from “a reliable source.”
At 5:46 p.m. Eastern time, CNN’s Roland Martin broke the story for television audiences. A story on cnn.com posted half an hour later said the campaign confirmed the resignation.
Obama cited CNN’s report at a press conference late Saturday in Aberdeen, S.D., in which nearly all questions were about his decision the leave the church, despite Obama’s victory before the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. The committee ruled in Obama’s favor on the allocation of delegates from the disputed Michigan and Florida primaries.
“I’m not denouncing the church and I’m not interested in people who want me to denounce the church,” Obama said, as Tom Raum reported for the Associated Press.
“It’s clear that now that I’m a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles,” Obama said. Referring to the church’s new pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, Obama said, “I don’t want Reverend Moss to have to look over his shoulder and see that his sermon vets or if it’s potentially problematic for my campaign or will attract the fury of a cable program.”
Obama was asked, “Do you think it will be possible for you to join a black church, or a historically black church, or do you think . . . that political correctness is going to be an issue in this election and that will be a factor in the racial mix of the church that you join?”
The candidate replied, “I do think that — I said this earlier, that there is a different religious tradition or a worshipping style in some of the historically African American churches and other churches. But I am confident that we are going to be able to find a church we feel comfortable with and that will reflect our concerns and values. But I do think there is a cultural and a stylistic gap that has come into play in this issue.”
The church issued this statement late Saturday:
“Trinity United Church of Christ was informed today that Senator Barack Obama and his family will no longer be members of our church. Though we are saddened by the news, we understand that it is a personal decision. We will continue to lift them in prayer and wish them the best as former members of our Trinity community.
“As in the Prayer for the Ephesians, our entire Trinity family asks that the nation entrust Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha to God’s care and guidance, so that Christ may continue to dwell in their lives, in their hearts and in their work. We ask now for God’s peace to be with them.”
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Monroe Anderson |
Obama has been dogged since March by comments from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was retiring then as pastor of the church, when reporters broadcast excerpts of Wright’s sermons that were offered for sale by the church. They were quickly publicized via YouTube. Wright was excoriated by white pundits over remarks denounced as anti-American and unpatriotic, and Wright quickly became a campaign issue.
The furor prompted Obama to give a widely praised speech on race from Philadelphia in which he said Wright had gone too far in his comments, but added, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
However, when Wright repeated some of his remarks during a question-and-answer period at the National Press Club on April 28, Obama disassociated himself from his former pastor.
Then came Pfleger’s comments this week, which Obama was also forced to denounce.
Those comments, reported heavily by Fox News, reflected not simply on Pfleger, who has his own, Roman Catholic, congregation, but on the parishioners at Trinity.
Andrew S. Ross, interactive editor of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Web site, wrote Friday:
“Apart from the appallingly racist nature of Father Michael Pfleger’s remarks about Hillary Clinton, what is one to make of the congregation who seemed to lap it all up?” Pfleger is white, and the congregation is predominantly, though not exclusively black.
“How, one may be entitled to ask, do these assembled churchgoers differ from those white Appalachians who admitted they voted for Sen. Clinton on the basis of race?
“Also, is it not fair to ask why a campaign, supposedly so disciplined seems not to be able to control some of its more prominent supporters — a former Obama campaign ‘adviser’ no less — especially in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright affair? And, moreover, since said former adviser’s political proclivities are not entirely unknown.”
However, Anderson wrote, “Obama knows what Trinity is about. I’ve only set foot in the church twice in my life and I know what it’s about. It’s nothing like it’s being portrayed in the national media. Nor is Rev. Wright.
“Obama knows that Rev. Wright and his church and Father Pfleger have been forces for good on Chicago’s South Side for three decades. Both Trinity and Father Pfleger should have known the Catholic priest’s racially-tinged mocking Hillary Clinton performance would only be perceived as another weapon to use against Obama. They should know, as I know, that they ultimately left the Illinois senator with little political choice.
“I also know that perception can become reality in our media-defined world.”
At the height of the Wright controversy, Frank James wrote in April on the Chicago Tribune’s blog, the Swamp, that overzealous reporters had become “a very real and present annoyance” at Trinity. “According to Moss, journalists have tried to conduct interviews during church services. They have accosted members as they’ve headed into the church,” James wrote.
“Some journalists have even actually gone as far as calling church members whose names they found on the sick and shut-in list that appeared in the church bulletin, a list which included the names of people dying in hospices.”
- Editorial, Chicago Tribune: Pfleger’s vile sermon
- Text of Obama’s remarks on leaving Trinity (Politico.com)
- Steven Gray, Time.com: Obama’s Church Moves On After Exit (June 1)
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Feedback: A Media-Approved List of Pastors
It is a dangerous thing when fear of the disapproval of mainstream media can so greatly influence what preachers say in their pulpits. Why not just throw out the King James Version of the Bible and let preachers choose their text from the bible according to Fox News and CNN?
The media have given their approval to the Pastor Joel Osteen kind of cotton-candy religion and the megachurch “claim it and grab it” crowd. Those disciplines or denominations that preach truth to power and rant against oppression and corporate evil are denounced or set up for divide-and-conquer tactics.
Never have I been so ashamed of mainstream media’s exploitative tactics and a gullible public that does not have the sense to see through them. Who was it that started the split between Obama and Pastor Wright? The media. If you ever examine Wright’s words carefully, he has never said anything negatively against Obama. It was the media that started the feud. In the future, I guess the political wannabes will only choose their pastors from the “A list” of CNN.
Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds
Washington
May 31, 2008
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