By J. Lee Grady
Race, Religion and the Roots of Obama’s Faith
I would love to support an African-American for president. But Barack Obama won’t get my vote in November.
Like so many people in this country, I’m embarrassed that we haven’t yet elected an African-American president. It’s been 40 years since Martin Luther King Jr. went to the mountaintop and envisioned a glorious future of racial harmony. I want to see that, too. I share King’s dream.
But when I listen to Barack Obama’s campaign speeches, as stirring as they sound, I feel empty. Obama is not the embodiment of King, and his political sermons don’t make me stand and shout hallelujah. His words about hope and change are hollow. I didn’t fully understand this until recently, when I gained more insight into Obama’s religious roots.
Obama has been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1987, the year he says he rejected agnosticism and accepted Christian faith. But what kind of Christian faith? Thanks to recent media reports, we all know that Obama embraced the faith of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, whose inflammatory sermons have been played, replayed and debated on CNN, Fox News and countless Web sites during the last few weeks.
“No one could attend a church for 20 years—especially one led by such a controversial and outspoken radical as Wright—without knowing what that pastor believes.”
Wright has been Obama’s pastor for more than two decades. He married Barack and Michelle Obama in 1992 and later baptized their two daughters. He counseled Obama during his early political life on Chicago’s South Side. Wright’s sermon called “The Audacity of Hope” became the inspiration for Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention. That led to Obama’s best-selling book by the same name. Until this month, Wright served on Obama’s presidential campaign. He has been a quiet and abiding force behind Obama’s impressive rise to political messiah status.
But after the media stumbled onto Wright’s incendiary, hate-filled rhetoric—including a sermon in which he said Sept. 11 was a wake-up call to “white America”—Obama had to distance himself from his maverick pastor. And Obama disappointed us all when, in true Clintonian fashion, he claimed that he really didn’t know Wright spewed so much venom from his pulpit.
Yeah, right. Are we to assume that Obama was sleeping during 20 years of sermons? Considering the decibels produced by Wright’s impassioned oratory, I don’t think that’s possible.
No one could attend a church for 20 years—especially one led by such a controversial and outspoken radical as Wright—without knowing what that pastor believes. Consider these uncomfortable facts about Wright:
** He pastored Trinity, the largest congregation in the ultraliberal United Church of Christ (UCC), from 1972 until this year, when he retired. Fully committed to an agenda of black empowerment, Trinity is also known in Chicago for its inclusion of homosexuals. It has helped lead the UCC’s aggressive efforts to sanctify gay marriage. (Oprah Winfrey, our national New Age priestess, is also a member of Trinity—which makes me wonder what they teach kids in Sunday school.)
** Wright proudly touts himself as a disciple of liberal theologian James Cone, author of the 1970 book A Black Theology of Liberation. Cone once wrote: “Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community.” (Note: This is called idolatry—fashioning a god in your own image.)
** Wright, who is 66, has often aligned himself with non-Christian influences including the militant African National Congress and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Trinity’s magazine honored Farrakhan in the 1980s. This year Obama deftly distanced himself from Farrakhan and said he does not share his pastor’s support of the Muslim leader. (Nice try, bro, but we needed to hear a much stronger denunciation of Farrakhan’s toxic beliefs.)
** In various sermons that have reportedly been removed from Trinity’s bookstore recently, Wright clearly condemns the United States. He once said the song “God Bless America” should actually say “God Damn America,” he has claimed that the U.S. government created the AIDS virus to kill black people, and he often rants about “the United States of white America” while denouncing white evangelical leaders.
Perhaps before we welcome Obama as our national savior we should consider the questionable prophet who anointed him when he was just a young politician. Personally I don’t trust the oil that Wright has used to christen this new king.
I understand that African-Americans who have been mistreated in our society are frustrated. Racism is wrong and it must be continually challenged. But Martin Luther King Jr., a man who believed the Bible, taught us in the 1960s that the path to racial healing begins with forgiveness. Jeremiah Wright has rejected that path. He preaches a gospel of hate, bitterness and alienation. He is certainly not empowering the black community with a counterfeit religion that idolizes race, ignores biblical holiness and denies Christ as the only source of salvation.
Obama says he will bring change to America. I can predict that if he wins the presidency in November, and his infamous pastor has even minimal influence on his years in the White House, it will take a generation to recover from those tragic changes.
J. Lee Grady is the editor of Charisma. He invites you to share your political views on our Web forum by clicking below.
