Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Barack Obama's Disconcerting Past

...When Obama first undertook his agitating work in Chicago's South Side poor neighborhoods, he was un-churched. Yet his office was in a Church and most of the folks he needed to agitate and organize were Church people -- pastors and congregants -- who took their churches and their church-going very seriously. So, this became a problem for the young agnostic, who had been exposed to very little religion in his life. Again and again, he was asked by pastors and church ladies, "Where do you go to Church, young man?" It was a question he dodged for a while, but finally he relented and joined a church.

Not just any church, but a huge black nationalist church with a pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright
(photo below left), who unabashedly preaches a "black" gospel. Rolling Stone Magazine ran with a story on Obama and his church, entitled, "Destiny's Child," which included this exert from one of Rev. Wright's sermons:

"Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones.


"Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!"


"We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!"

The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS S**T!"

This doesn't sound like any church in which I've ever worshipped, but perhaps I have led a sheltered life. Reverend Wright, whom Obama called his spiritual mentor and still claims is his sounding board, is also a former Muslim who has taken trips abroad with none other than Louis Farrakhan. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan received the "Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright,Jr. Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer" Award at the 2007 Trumpet Gala at the the United Church of Christ. One might be led to wonder if this "church" isn't all it makes itself out to be.


Among some of the black nationalist signs hanging in this church are a list of admonishments to black solidarity, called the "Black Value System," and a sort of moral code calling for the "Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness." I don't recall the Ten Commandments or anything at all in the Gospel about race, so this seems a bit strange...


A bit strange, indeed. There's more revelations about the Democrat's new superstar in Kyle-Anne Shiver's American Thinker article that you shouldn't pass up. You'll find them here.