ABARDEEN, S.D. (May 31) - Barack Obama has resigned his 20 year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and more recent fiery remarks at the church by another minister.
Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs said Obama had submitted a letter of resignation to the church and would discuss his decision in a session with reporters later Saturday.
It happened "over the last few days," Gibbs said.
Messages left for a church spokeswoman in Chicago were not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.
Comments by Wright have inflamed racial tensions and posed an unwanted problem for Obama, front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, as he seeks to wrap up the nomination.
More recently, racially charged remarks from the same pulpit by another pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, has kept the controversy alive and proved the latest thorn in the side of Obama.
Pfleger earlier this month mocked Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as a guest speaker at Obama's church.
Obama has condemned comments by both Wright and Pfleger, but the controversy has persisted.
For months, Obama has been hamstrung by the rhetoric of Wright, whose sermons blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks and calls of "God damn America" for its racism became fixtures on the Internet and cable news networks.
Initially, Obama said he disagreed with Wright but portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding and been his spiritual mentor for some 20 years.
But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at an appearance in Washington that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.
After that, Obama denounced Wright's comments as "divisive and destructive."
On Thursday, Obama was again forced to reject another man of the cloth, this time Pfleger, who made racially charged comments mocking Clinton in a guest sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama's church.
Obama made it clear he wasn't happy with the comments — in which Pfleger pretended he was Clinton crying over "a black man stealing my show" — and said he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."
Pfleger, too, issued an apology, saying he was sorry if his comments offended Clinton or anyone else.
I'm hoping now we don't get people trying to twist this into more insults against him by bringing in his "inability to stay with his faith and community" or shit like that.
Then again, with Hildebeast's campaign (if you could call it that), it's not hard to imagine.
fgalkin wrote:At least, some good came out of the whole fiasco- it put and end to those 'Obama is a Muslim" rumors floating around.
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
No... sadlly there's still a good 8% of the voting population who believes he is a Muslim. Funnily enough of those 8% who believe, 40% stay they will still vote for him.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
fgalkin wrote:At least, some good came out of the whole fiasco- it put and end to those 'Obama is a Muslim" rumors floating around.
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
No... sadlly there's still a good 8% of the voting population who believes he is a Muslim. Funnily enough of those 8% who believe, 40% stay they will still vote for him.
It was something like 10% nationwide, 20% among rural americans before. So, at least SOME of them figured out the truth.
If her destiny was so easily spoiled, then it wasn't really destiny and she didn't really deserve, now did she?
Fragment of the Lord of Nightmares, release thy heavenly retribution. Blade of cold, black nothingness: become my power, become my body. Together, let us walk the path of destruction and smash even the souls of the Gods! RAGNA BLADE!
Lore Monkey | the Pichu-master™
Secularism—since AD 80
Av: Elika; Prince of Persia
Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know, the piper's calling you to join him
