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WASHINGTON: Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said
Saturday he has quit his long-time Chicago church, following a
string of racially tinged rhetoric by preachers from its pulpit.
The decision followed new controversy over
sermons at the Trinity United Church of Christ, when a guest
preacher last week mocked Obama’s foe Hillary Clinton with racial
rhetoric.
“Michelle and I told Reverend Otis Moss that
we were withdrawing as members of Trinity,” Obama told a gathering
in South Dakota.
“This is not a decision I come to lightly, and
frankly it is one I make with some sadness,” noting that he had
concluded “it was going to be very difficult to continue our
membership there so long as I was running for president.
“It’s the right thing to do for our church
and for our family.”
Trinity’s former pastor was Reverend Jeremiah
Wright, who sent the Obama campaign into turmoil when videos emerged
of a string of vehement and race-based sermons earlier this year.
Wright’s most controversial statements
included comments assailing US and Israeli “terrorism,”
exhortations on blacks to sing “God damn America,” over racism
and allegations that AIDS was spread by the US government.
His comments, and Obama’s former allegiance to
the church are likely to be a major target for Republicans, should
the Illinois senator as expected clinch the Democratic presidential
nomination and face Senator John McCain in November’s general
election.
Obama on Thursday said he was “disappointed”
by the latest remarks made by guest preacher and Catholic priest
Father Michael Pfleger last Sunday at Trinity.
Pfleger mocked Clinton for appearing to cry days
before the New Hampshire primary in January, saying she was on the
verge of tears because “there is a black man stealing my show.”
“She always thought, ‘This is mine. I’m
Bill’s wife, I’m white and this is mine,’” Pfleger said in
the dramatic sermon, which now has 100,000 hits on YouTube.
“And then out of nowhere came him, Barack
Obama. And she said: ‘Damn, where did you come from? I’m white,
I’m entitled, there’s a black man stealing my show!’”
“She wasn’t the only one crying, there was a
whole lot of white people crying,” said Pfleger, a white Catholic
priest.
Obama, seeking to quell the controversy that
could provide ammunition to Republican critics, quickly rejected
Pfleger’s rhetoric in a statement Thursday night.
“As I have traveled this country, I’ve been
impressed not by what divides us, but by all that unites us,” he
said.
“That is why I am 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.”
Obama initially declined to reject Wright, using
the row to make a wider comment about race in America in a speech in
March.
Later, however, he repudiated his former friend,
after a round of media appearances by the pastor reignited the
affair.
-- AFP
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