The pastor to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, whose fiery sermons are often seen as racial divisive, plans to retire in May and will apparently assume a lower profile during the height of the election season.
The move could be a political break for Obama, who has repeatedly been asked whether he agrees with Chicago Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr’s black-liberation theology.
Charles Lofton, a spokesman for Trinity United, confirms to Newsmax that Wright plans to retire in May.
Lofton refused to answer any questions about any joint travel plans Obama and Wright may have. [Editor's Note: Read Newsmax's Original Report "Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division" - Click Here]
Wright has occasionally traveled with Obama on the campaign trail. Whether Wright could be playing the role of Obama’s personal spiritual adviser is undetermined.
In an address to a group of ministers in June, Obama described his personal relationship with Wright: “It was ... at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago that I met Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who took me on another journey and introduced me to a man named Jesus Christ. It was the best education I ever had.”
“What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice,” Obama told the Chicago Tribune in January 2007, when Wright announced his retirement plans. “He’s much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I’m not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics.”
Wright’s message has clearly embraced a black power agenda. “Some white people hear it as racism in reverse,” Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a member of Trinity, tells The New York Times. Blacks tend to hear a different message, Hopkins says: “Yes, we are somebody; we’re also made in God's image.”
Several prior remarks by Obama’s pastor have caught the media’s attention:
• Wright on 9/11: “White America got their wake-up call after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.” On the Sunday after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.
• Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway: “Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months.”
• Wright on Israel: “The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.”
• Wright on America: He has used the term “middleclassness” in a derogatory manner; frequently mentions “white arrogance” and the “oppression” of African-Americans today; and has referred to “this racist United States of America.”
Wright’s day-to-day political and spiritual advice to Obama – his sermons have furnished the titles for two of Obama’s books -- may continue on the campaign trail.
Repeated Newsmax attempts to contact Wright for an interview have been met with explanations that “the Reverend is traveling,” during periods when Obama has been bounding back and forth between Washington DC and the early primary states.
During these periods, Sunday sermons at Trinity United were delivered by Rev. Otis Moss III, who has been tapped to formally replace Wright as head of the church when he retires.
But on the rare occasions in the past year when Wright has been available to preach at Trinity United, Obama has been present as well. These virtually identical attendance patterns may not be a coincidence, since Obama continues to describe Wright’s “day-to-day” influence on the rare occasions when Wright is now mentioned.
Wright has also been observed, on at least two occasions, traveling with Obama during the past year.
Wright has been described as “divisive” and a “maverick.” While Obama clearly places a high value on his spiritual and political advice, it may be seen as a prudent maneuver to move him out of his highly-visible role at Trinity United, and into a virtually invisible role in Obama’s private campaign entourage.
Wright arrived at Trinity United in 1972 wearing a red Afro and dashiki robes, and immediately started preaching about “white arrogance,” “the racist United States of America,” and “the United States of White America.”
The church motto, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian,” was coined by Wright’s predecessor, Rev. Reuben Sheares, and the congregation officially adopted it soon after Wright started his tenure. Obama began attending in 1985, when he noticed the “Free South Africa” sign that had been standing on the church lawn for seven years.
Today, Trinity United boasts 8,500 members. Sunday sermons are broadcast live on cable TV and radio, and rebroadcast on the church website Monday through Friday. Among its more than 80 outreach ministries to various segments of the community is one for gay and lesbian singles, who are often neglected by other churches.
But recently, the church motto, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian,” and other messages of empowerment have been removed from the Trinity United website.
As Wright’s successor at Trinity United, Moss has taken a more careful and calibrated approach to weaving the black power agenda into the spiritual mission. He practices what has sometimes been described as “dog-whistle politics.”
The term refers to the whistles that are so high-pitched that they are inaudible to humans, but a dog can hear them. Practitioner of dog-whistle politics speak in carefully coded words and phrases that don’t lend themselves well to the unequivocal sound bites seen above, and are clearly understood only by their followers.
All of these maneuvers – replacing Wright at Trinity United with a more subtle preacher of racial divisiveness, toning down the racial empowerment messages on the website, and moving Wright into a behind-the-scenes role in Obama’s personal entourage – seem designed to make Obama more palatable to white voters.
Some professional political observers have given Obama the benefit of the doubt. Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago government watchdog group Better Government Association, was contacted by Newsmax via cell phone as he was returning from Springfield, after winning a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
“I think we should judge Obama on what he says rather than what his former pastor said,” explained Stewart. “I’m not inclined to make much of it. Obama doesn’t screen what the pastor says.” But Obama’s choice of Wright as his personal, “day-to-day” spiritual advisor is well within his control.
Editor's Note: Read Newsmax's Original Report "Obama's Church: Cauldron of Division" - Click Here.
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