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Obama and theology of liberation Exclusive: Hilmar von Campe revisits Rev. Jeremiah Wright's relationship with president -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 04, 2009 1:00 am Eastern -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The naïve American public and their dumb political leaders believe that Barack Hussein Obama has cleared his past with leaving the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and stating that he has severed "outraged" and "insulted" his relation with the then senior pastor of that church. In reality, however, this close relationship of 20 years, which I don't think is broken, makes clear who he is and where his philosophy is rooted. When you...

Back in May, when the furor over Jeremiah Wright threatened to derail the Obama campaign, the candidate mournfully explained his decision to leave the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ. "We don't want to have to answer for everything that's stated in a church," Obama said. "On the other hand, we don't want to have a church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes." After Obama parted from Wright, the preacher and Trinity United became the campaign issue that dared not speak its name.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a voice crying in the wilderness that the mainstream media and middle class America weren't quite ready for and megachurch pastor Rick Warren is an ignorant evangelical rube who isn't totally without hope, given his awareness of AIDS and other favored liberal causes. That's essentially what Eleanor Clift preached to her choir in her December 19 "Capitol Letter" column, "Choosing a Church: Obama's next big decision -- and its implications." Wrote Sister Eleanor (emphasis mine): Black religious leaders did not stand up for Wright even as they understood and sympathized with the prophetic theology he was...

For the first time since his retirement last spring, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. returned to the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ this morning with two goals: glorifying God and vilifying the media. In honor of Trinity's 47th anniversary, Wright preached Sunday worship services in place of Rev. Otis Moss III, who was attending his father's farewell from the pulpit of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland. Citing the revelation to Mary by the angel Gabriel that she would conceive a child to be born the Son of God, Wright said Mary's disbelief was similar to the doubts...

(CNSNews.com) – President-elect Barack Obama said in 2004 – while he was a state legislator running for a U.S. Senate seat – that he attended services at Trinity United Church of Christ every week. This is in contrast to what Obama, as a presidential candidate, said this year after controversial anti-American remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced. Obama then told news outlets that he did not attend the church frequently and was not aware of Wright’s comments. The comments from Obama about his church attendance appeared in the transcript of an interview posted Tuesday on the religious news Web...

His name was invoked at church services nationwide on Sunday, but President-elect Obama didn't attend any of them. He went to the gym instead. Obama doesn't have a church in Chicago since he severed ties in April with his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. And his decision on which church to attend when he moves to Washington will undoubtedly be closely watched. When he left Trinity United Church of Christ in May, Obama said his family would look for a new congregation. Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Sunday that the president-elect hadn't yet picked a church. He knows...

At Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side, where President-elect Barack Obama embraced Christianity, the congregation rejoiced today and shouted, "Yes, We did!" Hundreds of worshipers packed into the sanctuary for a joyous service that celebrated the church's role in the spiritual awakening of a future president. Trinity's pastor, Rev. Otis Moss III, said history would note that Trinity was the holy place where "God stirred a young man's soul and put him on the path to the presidency." "You have much to be proud of this morning," Moss said. "We rejoice today." In his memoirs and campaign...

Senior advisers think John McCain should attack Barack Obama's ties to his former pastor. He won't. McCain has refused to do it. The main reason, according to two aides who did not want to be named discussing private conversations with the candidate: any attack could be viewed as racially insensitive—or stir up racist sentiments—and that gets personal for McCain. He has not forgotten the racial smear directed at his own family during the South Carolina primary in 2000, when he ran against George W. Bush. Back then, supporters of Bush (their precise identities were never known) papered cars outside churches...

Viewer comment: That guy's a maniac. And I'm not talking about the good type of maniac. YouTube

A group targeting Barak Obama's campaign have launched a series of television ads in many key markets. The title of the ads are "Obama's Wrong Values"; "Obama's Awful High Tax Policies"; "Hillary Clinton Rips Barack Obama" and "Obama's Patriotism Problem." These ads are paid for by a group called Our Country Deserves Better PAC, a Sacramento, Calif.-based group formed to campaign against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. PAC claims ads are airing in Nevada, Colorado and Michigan, with a total ad buy of more than $100,000. The ads are the work of an independent group and are not produced by...

Tape Discovered of Obama Listening to Rev. Wright Sermon Here. Okay...I use the word "discovered" a bit loosely--the way one might "discover" a Big Mac at McDonald's. But now that I have your attention, the point is that most voters don't have a clue that Obama writes in his memoir that the very first time he attended Trinity United Church, he heard Rev. Wright rant that "white folks' greed runs a world in need." As you may recall, Obama said, following Rev. Wright's infamous press club appearance in April, that "The person I saw yesterday was not the person that...

Content of "disappeared" Trinity United Church of Christ bulletins could cost Obama the election. Napoleon's general Antoine Charles Louis Lasalle once told an associate, “My friend, any hussar who does not die by thirty is a blackguard.” We would not have appointed someone with this attitude to a command during the horse and musket era of warfare, because cavalry was too expensive an instrument to throw away in swashbuckling, glorious, but suicidal enterprises. Our ideal commanders would have instead had enough common sense to stay well away from intact infantry formations that presented solid hedges of fixed bayonets, but enough...

Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee chaired by Vallmer Jordan in 1981. We believe in the following 12 precepts and covenantal statements. These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered. They must reflect on the following concepts: 1. Commitment to God 2. Commitment to the Black Community 3. Commitment to the Black Family 4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education 5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence 6. Adherence to the Black Work Ethic 7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and...

Election 2008: Since we first drew attention to Barack Obama's Afrocentric church a full 12 months ago, other media have weighed in. And additional disturbing information has come to light. At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith — whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two — is African nativism, which raises political issues of its own. In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks. Wright makes the Rev....

Barack Obama’s former pastor has been cavorting with another man’s wife, whom he romanced while she worked at a church in Dallas run by one of his disciples, according to a report in the New York Post. Elizabeth Payne, 37, told the Post that she and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, 67, had a sexual relationship this year and that she was fired from her job when the affair was made public. Payne had been working at Friendship-West Baptist Church as a secretary to the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a longtime Wright protege.

Wright returns. Says Obama to be first U.S. president to “have a black woman sleeping” in White House “legally” “Uncle” Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, the former pastor of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)’s former church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago (both tossed under the Obama bus), made an appearance today at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in downtown Houston, Athena Jones at MSNBC’s First Read reported. Mike Snyder of the Houston Chronicle wrote that Wright has been “a regular guest minister at Wheeler Avenue for more than 15 years” although a “scheduled appearance in March was canceled because of...

Barack Obama:The 2004 "God Factor" Interview Transcript At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, 2004, when I was the religion reporter (I am now its religion columnist) at the Chicago Sun-Times, I met then-State Sen. Barack Obama at Café Baci, a small coffee joint at 330 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, to interview him exclusively about his spirituality. Our conversation took place a few days after he'd clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat that he eventually won. We spoke for more than an hour. He came alone. He answered everything I asked without notes or hesitation. The...

An interesting nugget from Newsweek's cover story on Obama and his faith: As young marrieds, Barack and Michelle (who also didn't go to church regularly as a child) went to church fairly often-two or three times a month. But after their first child, Malia, was born, they found making the effort more difficult. "I don't know if you've had the experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it's not easy," he says. "Trinity was always packed, and so you had to get there early. And if you went to the morning service, you were looking at-it just was...

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, the Chicago priest suspended for two weeks after a sermon mocking Sen. Hillary Clinton, returned to his pulpit on Sunday like a fighter ready to take back the title. In an exclusive interview, Pfleger told "Good Morning America" that he does not "apologize for being passionate, I don't apologize for being free." "But I apologize when my passion or my freeness and my flawedness of character get in the way of a content which is much more important to me," he told "GMA's" Robin Roberts. Pfleger gave the controversial Clinton speech on May 25 as a...

Donald Young, a vibrant, charismatic choir director at one of Chicago's largest open and affirming black congregations, Trinity United Church of Christ, was found shot to death this past Sunday in his home. Young,47, was a longtime member of Trinity's choir, initially singing bass and then moving up the ranks to become one of its most electrifying and popular directors. He was also a faithful attendee at the conferences of the Gospel Music Workshop of America. The details about why and exactly how he died remain unclear; there is, however, one story that emerges with some semblance of clarity: a...

Like losers in a shell game, most of us got snookered into looking under the wrong nutshell regarding the inflammatory and racist sermon delivered last month by the Rev. Michael Pfleger during his guest appearance at Barack Obama's church in Chicago. The media focused the spotlight on what Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest, said about Hillary Clinton from the pulpit at Trinity United Church of Christ, prompting Obama to end his 20-plus year association with the church. "When Hillary was crying and people said that was put on, I really don't believe it was put on," proclaimed Pfleger, feigning tears...

If everybody in America saw this video -- that really makes it clear, in his own words, how much Barack Obama despises white people -- he'd lose in a landslide. PS: Just in case you were wondering, this was apparently put together by a Hillary supporter and it is extremely powerful. (The video is at the link)

Who's Tony Rezko? William Ayers? Few Americans know, but they probably will by Election Day. Rezko is a Chicago businessman, convicted of more than a dozen charges this week. Ayers is a professor - and former member of the radical Weather Underground. Both have ties to Barack Obama and may well show up in anti-Obama ads you'll be seeing before long. These days, presidential candidates can expect to have every personal relationship, new or ancient, inspected like a crime scene on "CSI." Then, if there's political hay to be made, a version of the details is quickly out. Republican John...

UPDATE: Much like written words don't do justice to Jeremiah Wright's sermons, the video must be watched to be believed. Pfleger is introduced as "a friend of Trinity", and then the YouTube skips ahead to one section: I must now to address the one who says, 'don't hold me responsible for what my ancestors did.' But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did! And unless you are ready to give up the benefits — Throw away your 401 fund! [sic] Throw away your trust fund! Throw away all the money that been put away in the company...

Senator Obama is now trying to erase his personal history by resigning from his radical Left church, after two decades of active membership -- that's more than 1,000 Sunday sermons over twenty years. The media will do their best to help him fuzz over that history, just as they have tried to eradicate the memory of the Twin Towers and Pentagon assaults seven years ago. Yet the evidence is overwhelming by now that Trinity United is a front for the hard Left, which is trying to turn American blacks into another angry proletariat, to be played and controlled by their...

"I'm going to buy a bed and get some furniture from the church basement and move into an apartment in the neighborhood," a deflated-sounding Pfleger told me, while the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ where Pfleger made the fiery statements late last month that got him into this latest donnybrook with the cardinal, waited to take him to a late dinner. "I'm trying to find out what [George] means by 'a couple of weeks.' There's no timeline. There's no date. Give me a time. It just says a couple of weeks. I don't know ....

When Sen. Barack Obama severed ties with his Chicago church, most political observers saw the move as a way for the candidate to insulate himself from the controversies stirred by its retiring pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. But Trinity United Church of Christ does not have that kind of insulation. According to sources within Trinity, Wright, 66, who began the process of retirement two years ago, is resisting fully relinquishing his duties as senior pastor, hanging on to power in the church he helped build.

Senator Obama is now trying to erase his personal history by resigning from his radical Left church, after two decades of active membership -- that's more than 1,000 Sunday sermons over twenty years. The media will do their best to help him fuzz over that history, just as they have tried to eradicate the memory of the Twin Towers and Pentagon assaults seven years ago.  Yet the evidence is overwhelming by now that Trinity United is a front for the hard Left, which is trying to turn American blacks into another angry proletariat, to be played and controlled by their new...

In case you fell victim to Barack Obama's cynical attempt to bury a major news story by holding a press conference in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a Saturday night during the Democratic National Committee's public fight over Michigan and Florida delegates, let me fill you in: Obama has finally resigned from that loony, racist church of his in Chicago. Back in March, while delivering what the sycophantic mainstream media described at the time as the greatest speech since "I have a dream," Obama assured us that he could no more disown his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, than he could disown...

While some question the impact of preaching from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ on Senator Obama's thinking, the influence of one of Trinity's most recommended authors on Obama is clear. Three of Randall Robinson's books are available for purchase on Trinity's website. One, entitled "The Debt: What America Owes To Blacks," is particularly important to understanding Obama's notion of reparations. So who is Randall Robinson? He's a Harvard-educated lawyer, author, and civil-rights activist born in 1941. Robinson is described by Wikipedia this way:

Decision '08: Barack Obama is changing churches in hopes of changing the subject long enough to slip into the White House. But it won't change what he believes. Who'll pin him down?A careful reading of the transcript of Obama's press conference over the weekend reveals that he neither denounced his church nor permanently quit it. He twice left open the door to rejoining Trinity United Church of Christ after the election. He said he and his wife merely decided "it was going to be very difficult to continue our membership there so long as I was running for president." Typical...

How long can Barack Obama carry forward this ruse that he is a uniter, when he has placed himself in a climate that is, at the very least, quite accomodating to the anti-white racist perspective, vulgarity and anti-Americanism? It strained credulity that Obama could have been unaware of the toxic environment of his Trinity United Church of Christ and its pastor, Jeremiah Wright. That didn't pass the laugh test. But now we have the Rev. Michael Pfleger bursting on the scene and spewing the most offensive, racially charged remarks imaginable. Truly, if Obama weren't the darling of the MSM and...

Church leaders and members cheered Pfleger’s racial hate speech, sanctioned blood libels of U.S. and Israel In one of George Macdonald Fraser’s “Flashman” books, Harry Flashman–the school bully from “Tom Brown’s School Days”–is watching a public hanging. The man next to him suggests that, instead of watching the actual hanging, he watch his fellow Britons’ reaction to it because it will be far more entertaining and enlightening. It is similarly far more enlightening to watch the reaction of Barack and Michelle Obama’s fellow churchgoers to Father Michael Pfleger’s hate speech, even though Pfleger’s obvious feigned outrage and overacting is the...

A self-identified African-American caller to a Washington, D.C., radio station characterized the recent anti-Hillary Clinton outburst by the white liberal Chicago priest, Michael Pfleger, as a “minstrel show.” Pfleger, who was preaching “another gospel,” which the authentic gospel warns against, denounced Sen. Clinton for her effrontery and sense of “entitlement” in trying to take the Democratic presidential nomination from a black man, one Barack Obama. Pfleger, who donated $1,500 to the Obama campaign between 1995 and 2001, is indebted to Obama because when Obama was in the Illinois legislature, he, according to the Chicago Tribune, “announced $225,000 in grants to...

This fascinating New Republic story about Barack Obama’s days as a community organizer came out over a year ago: Chicago pastors still remember Obama making the rounds of local churches and conducting interviews—in organizing lingo, "one-on-ones"—where he would probe for self-interest. The Reverend Alvin Love, the Baptist minister of a modest brick church amid the clapboard bungalows of the South Side, was one of Obama's first one-on-ones. During a recent visit to his church, Love told me, "I remember he said this to me: There ought to be some way for us to help you meet your self-interest while at...

There are people in this world who believe that America is a force for evil in the world. They are called Europeans. Then there are people who feel the same way, but who will help elect the next president of the United States. They’re called Obama supporters. Calm down, my Cambridge friends. I am not saying that Sen. Barack Obama hates America. But even his most ardent supporters must admit - when they aren’t fainting away at his campaign appearances - that there is a direct and disturbing correlation between hating America and loving Barack. In Europe, for example, they...

While Rev. Jeremiah Wright was preaching "G_d damn America" and blaming our government for creating the AIDS virus to kill black people, he and his Trinity Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side collected more than $15 million in grants from the federal government. Fox News' Jeff Goldblatt brings us this outrage: FOX News has learned that over the last 15 years, Trinity has received at least $15 million in grants from the federal government — in other words, taxpayer money. Records show this money supported a variety of outreach: everything from low income housing to nutritional programs for needy...

None of it came from Obama; he was too busy getting earmarks for Pfleger. Look, the parishioners pay their taxes, however damned by God they might think the Treasury Department is, and the church does appear to be putting the money towards charitable programs — although given Wright’s beliefs about AIDS, I’m mighty curious to see the lesson plan for the HIV “education” program. Unless someone can show it’s being spent on improper ends, like, hypothetically, a mansion for the ex-pastor, I’m not sure what the beef is. FOX News has learned that over the last 15 years, Trinity has...

Obama’s Ex-Church Has Won $15M in Federal Grant Money by FOXNews.com Monday, June 2, 2008 By Jeff Goldblatt Across America seven days a week, parents drop their kids at day care centers, which are supported by funding from the federal government. But what makes one facility noteworthy in inner city Chicago is that it’s run by Trinity United Church of Christ. It’s the same church whose former head pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, drew widespread scrutiny after he cursed the U.S. government for its treatment of African-Americans. FOX News has learned that over the last 15 years, Trinity has received at...

Suppose that a political candidate of the Caucasian persuasion belonged to a church whose minister (call him JimCrow White for the sake of argument) consorted openly with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and arranged an award for the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The same minister proclaimed that the Black people in New Orleans got a wake-up call with Hurricane Katrina. This minister’s replacement then welcomed a guest speaker who proclaimed from the pulpit, with the church’s tax exempt resources, that “There were a whole lot of Black people crying” because the candidate’s African-American opponent...

National Review Online: Senator Approves Of The Political-Theological Outlooks Of Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright Having now left Trinity United Church of Christ, can Barack Obama escape responsibility for his decades-long ties to Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright? No, he cannot. Obama’s connections to the radical-left politics espoused by Pfleger and Wright are broad and deep. The real reason Obama bound himself to Wright and Pfleger in the first place is that he largely approved of their political-theological outlooks. Obama shared Wright’s rejection of black “assimilation.” Obama also shared Wright’s suspicion of the traditional American ethos of individual self-improvement and...

A part of modern political Americana says he's gone Pittsburgh Tribune-Review By Salena Zito Former President William Jefferson Clinton told supporters in South Dakota that this many be his last day that he is ever involved in a campaign of this kind.

Stanley Kurtz asks and answers his own Obama question: Having now left Trinity United Church of Christ, can Barack Obama escape responsibility for his decades-long ties to Michael Pfleger and Jeremiah Wright? No, he cannot. Obama’s connections to the radical-left politics espoused by Pfleger and Wright are broad and deep. The real reason Obama bound himself to Wright and Pfleger in the first place is that he largely approved of their political-theological outlooks. To be fair to Obama, I don’t believe that he necessarily believes in the bigotry regularly preached from the Trinity pulpit and echoed by the cheers of...

He ran. After twenty years of sitting with apparent acquiescence in the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ, after doing a slow-motion backslide from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright when the campaign spotlight flickered on, a backslide that eventually ended in an open break, Senator Barack Obama has now officially cut his ties with Trinity UCC altogether. Faced with a choice between bringing change to his own congregation, or simply turning his back, Obama chose the latter. As he would do in Iraq, so he has now done with Trinity. The question now is, will he leave the United Church...

More video of Rev. Michael “Vanilla Ice” Pfleger’s race-baiting sermon last week at Trinity United Church of Christ has emerged on YouTube. Boy, was he on a roll. If you thought his bug-eyed, Jeremiah Wright wannabe mimickry of Hillary Clinton’s “white entitlement” was over the top, you’ll love the new excerpts in which Pfleger inveighs that “America is the greatest sin against God.” (”God damn America” was already taken, of course.) My question is: What will it take for the Catholic Church to cut themselves loose of this racial huckster? “Have the balls” to fire him already. (See also Catholics...

Rev. Pfleger: "America is the Greatest Sin Against God" June 01, 2008 10:46 PMIn another excerpt from Rev. Michael Pfleger's sermon last Sunday, May 25, from the pulpit of Sen. Barack Obama's now former church, Trinity United Church of Christ on the South side of Chicago, the longtime Obama associate condemns America for racism in fairly harsh terms. Watch HERE. "Racism is still America's greatest addiction," Pfleger says. "I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God." There seems to be a mixed reaction to that from the pews. But Pfleger explains: "If the greatest command is to...

The other day I mentioned a possible pending Michelle Obama bombshell, and it looks like it's getting closer. Republican strategist Roger Stone was interviewed today on Fox News and had this to say: FNC 06/01/2008 14:43:30: …>>> Welcome back to our special coverage live coverage from Puerto Rico. just before the break, Roger Stone the Republican strategist made the comment that Michele Obama used the phrase whitey when describing white people and Michael Brown says bs that is republican dirty tricks as usual. Roger take it away. Michael, you are in the wings. >> This has little to do with...

Who says there's no humor in politics? Obama communications director Robert Gibbs went on ABC's This Week today, and in one of the best bits of deadpan comedy seen since Buster Keaton, actually said that Barack Obama's decision to quit the Trinity United Church of Christ was "not political." GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: In Philadelphia, just in April, Senator Obama said of Reverend Wright "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." Now he's cut all ties to Reverend Wright, and left his church. What is it a mistake to wait this long? ROBERT GIBBS: No, George....

Sunday, Father Michael Pfleger addressed his congregation about the controversy surrounding his sermon for the first time. He told the congregation he's received more than 3,000 threatening emails – some calling for his death. The messages caused the church to beef up security for Sunday's services, as CBS 2's Pamela Jones reports. "YouTube and headlines and soundbites can now and have now become an instrument that creates the story rather than tells the story," said St. Sabina Church's Father Michael Pfleger. Pfleger sounded off giving a sermon entitled "Beyond YouTube," chiding the media and the Web site, saying the clip...

Obama also accepts testimonial from 9/11 conspiracy theorist who equated 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire Please view Priest Michael Pfleger Campaigns for Obama at Trinity United at YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGgRaApkcP8). Pay attention not only to what Michael Pfleger is saying, but also to the audience’s reaction to “There were a whole lot of white people crying.” (Two screen shots appear below.) They didn’t get up and walk out in disgust. They didn’t sit in embarrassed silence while pretending not to hear. They applauded wildly, and many stood up to give “There were a whole lot of white people crying” a standing...