Barack Hussein Obama & Jeremiah Wright

MORIEL MINISTRIES - Commentary by James Jacob Prasch - Originally Published on March 25, 2008

I write as director of a Christian Charity for AIDS children and HIV babies in Black Africa operated by our self-giving missionaries. These are some of the finest people I have ever met. They are nearly all White, and much of the funding comes from White people in America; the same people denounced from the pulpit in Barack Obama's church. The children whose lives these missionaries fight to save are all Black.

Arkansas Senator William Fulbright was the political mentor of Bill Clinton. Fulbright was a segregationist. Clinton came from a racist political machine. Democratic Senator Bird was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the days of Jim Crow.

Now, it is a new political and social world and consequently a new electoral landscape. Iowa, which had the first primary caucus, is a state with no Black vote. Iowa is demographically more than 96% Caucasian. The remaining less than 4% are Native American, Hispanic, and a very small number of African and Asian Americans. Yet, Obama won this primary defeating his two fellow Caucasian opponent candidates, Clinton and Edwards - because more White people voted for him than for his two White rivals. It would be similar in Vermont, Wyoming and other nearly 'all white' states. Such White heartland states are the epitome of the "White America" damned by Jeremiah Wright in Obama's church.

These electoral results confirm that white racism is no longer a major factor in American politics or society and every credible study indicates solidly that anti Black sentiment is higher among Hispanic and Asian Americans than among Euro-Americans.

Indeed, African Americans are no longer demographically even America's largest minority but now statistically Hispanics are, and figures indicate that clearly Asian Americans are the most upwardly mobile economically. This is to say nothing of Black racism against non Blacks. While so many White Americans have no qualms about voting for a Black candidate, why do polls show so many Blacks voting squarely on the basis of skin color? White America has for the most part embraced Martin Luther King's vision of an America where people should not be judged by skin color. Black America apparently has a long way to go.

The popularity of Obama among so many White Democrats (and even some Republicans) plainly shows that Jeremiah Wright, like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson etc. are living in a world that does not even exist anymore. Indeed, they must. They carved their niche by pounding on the drum of Black victimization by a White establishment that they must continue to pound even though the beat has become politically and sociologically redundant and their rhetoric obsolete in an America where there have been two consecutive African American Secretaries of State and an African American with a Moslem father who in elections can defeat Caucasian rival candidates in all White states.

For pathetic figures like Wright and Sharpton, it is their power base they are defending, and not Black America. Obama's rise proves categorically that America has moved on. Wright, Sharpton, Jackson and their ilk clearly have not.

As director of a Christian organization that operates orphanages for Black African AIDS babies and HIV children, I find Jeremiah Wright's outrageous racially connotated pulpit declarations of 'God Damn America' and 'America ruled by rich White people' to reflect his ignorance even more than it does his obvious bigotry. I would invite him to accompany me to Zimbabwe, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, or any of a dozen other Black African countries ruled by Blacks if he wants to see real oppression of Blacks. He would be hard pressed to find a Zimbabwean or a Haitian that would not do anything to live in the America that this ignorant racist Jeremiah Wright damns in what is suppose to be a church.

Black ruled postcolonial Africa is the largely self-inflicted genocidal human tragedy of the 21st century. The Hitleresque atrocities of Idi Amin in Uganda, Mugabe in Zimbabwe and a half dozen other despotic Black African leaders are of holocaust proportions and increasing in frequency and intensity. What transpired in the Huti-Tutsi wars in Rwanda would in proportionate terms eclipse Stalin. Nevertheless, it is America who stopped the killing in Liberia, and Somalia, and who is trying to stop it in Sudan that is damned in Obama's church. It is America who has spent billions feeding hungry Africans when Black African regimes in Somalia and Sudan used starvation as a weapon against their own civilian population.

As a Christian, I cannot view the Trinity church of Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama and his wife as a church in any biblical sense, but as a mere political organization misusing the name and trappings of Christianity to set forth a racist political agenda evident it its giving an award to Louis Farrakhan, a twisted, racist, and anti Semitic figure who actually claims to have flown in flying saucers.

A man aspiring to the presidency of America being a member of a church where the pulpit is a political platform to damn America is frankly sickening.

Indeed, a member of such an evil, racist, and anti American organization who has been a member of that institution for 20 years is unfit to lead our country. Even Senator Obama's wife states that she has never before been proud to be an American. It is my testimony that America has been at the forefront of fighting African AIDS, while the ANC government of South Africa (brought to power by Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu), as a political decision denied AIDS is a retro viral infection and called it a mere social disease despite every microbiologist in the world saying the opposite. I am proud of an America that fights to save the lives of Black children that the tribilist policies of their own corrupt Black governments are in effect killing on a grand scale.

As a Christians and as an American, I regarded the now thankfully nearly defunct Ku Klux Klan as an anti American, racist organization. If a 'Jim Crow' Democrat wanting to be president was a member of the Klan and said he disagrees with the Klan but likes its leader personally so he will not resign from the Klan - such a man in my view would be unfit for public office. For the same reason, Barack Obama is likewise totally unfit for public office.

Now we have the new minister of this 'church' calling the media and public reaction to this racism and anti- Americanism  "a lynching", and comparing the reaction to the opposition of Jeremiah Wright damning America to the crucifixion of Jesus.

During the era of Jim Crow, it was the racists who did the lynching; now the racist is Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan whom his 'church' honored. If one was to place a sheet over the head of Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan so their skin color would not be visible, they could easily join the Klan and fit right in with the rest of the racists.

My concern is that this wickedness is being promulgated in the name of Christianity. Where did Jesus ever teach racism? Jesus wept over His nation in Matthew 23, but where did He damn it?  

It is not his lack of experience that mainly troubles me about Barack Obama; it is rather his lack of integrity. If Barack Obama had the courage of his convictions, he would have resigned from such a so-called 'church' 20 years ago. But as it is, he is no more fit to be president than a member of the Klan (which also made the bogus claim of being a "Christian" organization).

Do not tell me that you disagree with something and be part of it for 20 years. When one's actions do not match their words as in the case of Barack Obama, that makes him a political hypocrite. When a bigot like Jeremiah Wright practices his bigotry in the name of Christianity, that makes him a religious hypocrite.

I thought Obama was supposed to represent change. We have seen the hypocrisy of the religious right under Bush.

Claiming to be Christian Bush put a Koran, a book teaching that God has no Son, in The White House and celebrates Ramadan to honor Islam after September 11th, turning his back on the persecuted Christians in Saudi Arabia for the sake of the oil lobby. Putting a Koran in the White House after September 11th is like Churchill putting a copy of 'Mein Kampf' in Number 10 Downing Street during the Blitz and handing out visas to Saudi Arabians after September 11th would in my estimation is like Roosevelt handing out visas to kamikaze pilots after Pearl Harbor.

Bush and Rice allow the Saudis to build fundamentalist Wahhabist mosques (Wahhabism decrees death under Sharia for any Moslem becoming a Christian), but a church cannot be built in Saudi Arabia. Bush places a Koran in The White House, while a bible cannot be brought into Saudi Arabia.

Bill Clinton is likewise a mega million-dollar salaried adviser to the Emir of Dubai, with the Clinton and Carter libraries and centers both likewise funded by Moslem oil money.

Irrespective of which party is elected, in Washington it is always business as usual. America indeed needs and wants change. However, does Obama actually constitute "change"?

We have had no end to religious and political hypocrisy under Bush and The Republicans and Obama claims to represent "change". But I must ask, what "change"?

Reagan, the darling of the religious right was so pro-life that he appointed a pro abortion Sandra Day O'Connor as the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the decision ordering the 10 Commandments out of the state Judicial building in Alabama. As his wife Nancy went to fortune tellers to get advice for him how to run the country while the national deficit quadrupled and his corrupt administration sold weapons to Ayatollah Khomeini's anti American/ anti Israel - Iranian terror, Reagan told naive Christians he was pro life, manipulating them to vote for him, but once in office he did the opposite. Reagan with his Republican religious right was demonstrably just another hypocrite who lied, saying one thing but doing another. 

An Eisenhower Republican Earl Warren Supreme Court ordered God out of the classroom. It was a Nixon Republican Warren Burger Supreme Court that ruled on Roe v Wade and ordered God out of the maternity ward. It was Reagan's Republican Supreme Court appointee Sandra Day O'Connor who ordered God out of the judiciary and out of the courtroom.

Obama and Clinton say they are pro abortion, but the record proves Republicans lie about it and say they are not. This is the legacy of the religious right. Of course, things have improved within the religious right. Despite Rudolph Giuliani being openly pro abortion and pro homosexual & lesbian agenda, the religious right leader Pat Robertson endorsed him for president. While Republicans still kill the unborn, at least they no longer hypocritically lie about it. At last, they just admit it like Clinton and Obama.

However, Obama is supposed to be the candidate of change who does not subscribe to traditional Washington hypocrisy.

After the hypocrisy of the religious right with Bush and Reagan, we now see the hypocrisy of the religious left with Obama. Those supporting Obama only want to exchange the hypocrisy of the religious right for the co-equally immoral and insidious hypocrisy of the religious left.

Changing one hypocrite for another does not represent change. It simply means absolutely no real change at all.

Nations get the governments they deserve. We have a spiritually and morally bankrupt nation, so we likewise get spiritually and morally abject leaders. Unless a nation's church changes, its leaders never will. As long as it has

Pat Robertson's and Jeremiah Wrights in its pulpits, it will only have treacherous scoundrels in its Oval Office.

I will pray and urge others to pray for whoever is elected. But I sanction no political candidate. Although I cannot biblically fathom how any Christian could support a pro-abortion candidate, I simply urge people to pray and vote their conscience. There is no New Testament basis to use the church for electoral purposes to endorse any politician or political party. But it is called to oppose evil.

The church is called by Jesus to be salt & light. As a nation, America so desperately does need change. But unless the church changes, a change is just not coming. 

Meanwhile, I look ahead with glee for when the real change comes. It does not take a great deal of vision or foresight to see a time on the horizon when we will no longer have an electoral choice looking for a lesser of two evils, when in actual fact a lesser of evils is an evil no less.

When Christ returns thank God we will no longer have any politicians; as Isaiah wrote:

"The Government Will Be On His Shoulders" (Isaiah 9:6)  

JJ Prasch
Moriel

 

ASIA TIMES ONLINE (Hong Kong) - By Julian Delasantellis - April 9, 2008

In the Old Testament's Book of Judges, Chapter 2, it is described how the Lord raised up judges - rulers - for the Israelites' benefit, and woe betide the people when the judges were disobeyed.

Nevertheless the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord; but they did not so.

You might think that with the current political situation in the United States, if there was one group that would be faithful to carry out biblical injunctions down to the last jot and tittle, it would be the right-wing ideologues of the Republican Party, especially since for 30 years now they have very successfully used the Bible as a sturdy truncheon to beat their opposition.

Lately, that appears not to be true. The political right has rebelled against the judges, and in much more important ways than just objecting to the legal rulings from the bench that have allowed abortion, or decriminalized homosexuality.

Just as the Hebrews served the false gods of Baal and Ashtaroth, right-wing Republicans are once again proving their undying allegiance to the false gods of Lucre and Moolah. No golden calf or other graven image is necessary for them to prove their devotion to these deities; the gold in their washroom fixtures accomplishes this just as nicely.

It was last week, when, early in the morning, I turned on my television to catch the NBC network morning happy talk chat show Today, expecting to see what natural disaster, a tornado in the breadbasket or a visit by the ex-Mrs Heather Mills McCarthy, had befallen America during the night. Instead, I was amazed - actual news on an American network news show! - - -

What was being referred to was the real crisis stalking American society, that anybody with a 10th-grade education, who wouldn't necessarily know an adjustable rate mortgage from an adjustable socket wrench, could no longer make 20% or more of yearly capital appreciation from their primary, or, for that matter, their second, third, fourth or fifth homes. It's far from easy to drive Americans' attention away from celebrity gossip, new diet books or marriage advice, but if there was one way to do it, Today's news editors probably thought this was it.

'For Sale' nightmare
Accompanying that morning's news reports of the legislative initiatives were the traditional file video clips of unoccupied suburban three-bedroom, well-gilded colonials with "For Sale" signs in front of them. (This image, more than that of the planes slamming into the World Trade Center on September 11, represents America's new national nightmare - it's the vision that comes to the middle class in the depths of the night, in John Malklovich's words in In the Line of Fire, "when the demons come") - not actual details on what the bills really contained. I resolved to do some research to see just what all the shouting was about. When I did, I discovered that this initiative, like all other previous policy attempts to assist those trapped in their subprime mortgages, indeed, like most of what passes for public policy and debate in America these days, was following a familiar pattern.

Debate on public policy in America continues to be governed by this iron rule - it's a whole lot more important to look good than to do good.

Like most products of the American legislature these days, the bill currently winding its way through Senate (the House of Representatives will take it up when the Senate finishes it, probably late in the week) accomplishes no single great goal, certainly no significant change in the vast majority of Americans' lives - the thinking apparently being, well, if Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin's villages could fool the Russian Empress Catherine into thinking he was actually doing something, doing likewise with the American people through highly publicized legislation should be a piece of cake.

There's a provision for a US$7,000 tax credit for those who buy new or foreclosed properties - c'mon you All-American house flippers and property speculators, get back in the game!

Local communities and community-based organizations have $4 billion set aside for them to buy up foreclosed properties lingering on the market, driving down prices and blighting neighborhoods. Just what these organizations will do with these properties is an open question; also, since in 2006 the Census Bureau estimated the total value of US residential real estate at $20 trillion, wouldn't $4 billion thus qualify as the quintessential drop in the proverbial bucket?

The bill's most interesting provision calls for $6 billion in new tax breaks for businesses hurt in the current downturn. (No, no, you can't call it a recession, not yet, not until, according to the arcane rules of this tradition, the private sector National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, officially calls it next year). The most obvious businesses getting slammed in the current environment are the homebuilders; from its high in the summer of 2005 to early this January, the stock of industry leader Toll Brothers was down by just under 75%.

But it is a common economic canard that subsidizing something produces more of it. Homebuilders, of course, build homes, a subsidy to them means more new homes.

More new homes? In a market drowning in the unsold inventory already existent? It is this continually growing unsold supply that is pressuring prices now, wiping out house values, and so thus preventing the subprime borrowers refinancing what could be the only thing that might save them from eventual default and foreclosure. That, of course, is the origin of the howling vortex that much of the world's financial system has fallen into, as declining values for bonds based on defaulted subprime mortgages is causing a pullback of lending and liquidity across the entire capitalist finance system.

In essence, subsidizing home construction to counter a downturn in home prices is like subsidizing purchases of Twinkies and doughnuts to fight obesity.

It is indicative of just how much power and influence the homebuilding industry, and, by extension, the entire American concept of home ownership as a sacred, ecumenical dogma that unites Americans of all creeds, colors and races, that serious Senators are actually pushing this goofy proposal. In Hollywood they say you can never be too rich or too thin, but if you are too rich you become Paris Hilton, and too thin makes you Karen Carpenter. In Washington DC, they apparently say you can never build too many homes, even if in doing so you get the subprime crisis.

My favorite part of the Senate bill is the provision of an extra $100 million of government funding for what is called "mortgage counselors."

Explain away the pain
I think this means that people will be employed to tell borrowers that they have to pay their mortgages back on time, but what if it's not? What if, much as the name implies, it's just another manifestation of what is called the therapeutic society, the current ethos that defines American virtue not by how much good one does, but by how much pain one feels? If so, a session with the "mortgage counselor" my go something like this.

Soon to be ex-homeowner: "Mortgage counselor, I'm depressed."
Mortgage counselor: " Why? Tell me how you feel. Don't hold anything back."
STBE-H: "Well, in a month, my family and I will be homeless."
MC: "Yes, and what does that mean to you?
STBE-H: "We'll be spending our days and nights on the streets!"
MC: "Are you afraid of the streets? Did you fall and skin your knee on a street as a child?"
STBE-H: "Me and my kids will be sleeping in a cardboard box!"
MC: Do you have unaddressed issues as regards to cardboard boxes? When you were young were you abused by one?" - - - -

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Senator believes in resurrection, not sure Jesus only way
WORLDNETDAILY - March 6, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton has "felt the presence of the Holy Spirit" in her life and believes in the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ, but she is ambivalent about the necessity of belief in Christ for salvation, according to segments of a New York Times interview that either went unused or received little attention at the time of publishing.

Christian Broadcasting Network reporter David Brody unearthed the quotes, which came from New York Times reporter Michael Luo's interview with the senator in July.

Clinton declared: "I believe in the father, son, and Holy Spirit, and I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions in my years on this earth."

Luo then asked, "Can I ask you theologically, do you believe that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened, that it actually historically did happen?"

Clinton replied, "Yes, I do." - - -

Clinton, raised in the United Methodist Church in suburban Chicago, has spoken of her faith on the campaign trail, including in a speech to an AIDS conference at Rick Warren's evangelical Saddleback Church in Southern California in November.

"My own faith journey is approaching a half century, and I know how far I have to go," she told an estimated 1,700 in attendance. "But I have been blessed in my life, starting with my family, and in the church of my childhood, to be guided every step of the way."

The senator pointed to a number of significant influences on her faith: "A mother who taught Sunday School and a mother who made sure that my brothers and I were there the moment the church doors opened; a father who kneeled by the side of his bed every night of his life to say his prayers; a minister of our youth fellowship who took it as part of his mission to show this group of white, suburban, middle class kids that there was a bigger world outside; a prayer group that formed for me shortly after I came to the White House, a group of extraordinary women, both Democrats and Republicans, whose love and support sustained me."

Clinton told the Orange County church conference she's often asked if she's a "praying person."

"I've always responded that I was fortunate enough to be raised to understand the power and purpose of prayer," she said.

"But had I not been," the senator quipped, "probably one week in the White House would have turned me into one."

"It's wonderful to know that the sustaining power of prayer is there for so many of us," she said.

Clinton said in the November speech one of her favorite passages of the Bible is the book of James' admonition that "faith without works is dead."

"But I have concluded that works without faith is just too hard," she said. "It cannot be sustained over one's life or the generations. And it's important for us to recognize how, here in what you are doing, faith and works comes together."

At the November meeting, Burns Strider, Clinton's senior adviser and national director of faith-based outreach, told WND he's convinced the senator's faith is genuine.

"What I find and know about the senator is very real and very honest," he said. "You know, there's a life of works and deeds. --- There's an amazing connection there between what Senator Clinton believes and the way she carries it out. I do find it authentic."

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Democrat maintains famous speech by Christ 'more central than obscure passage in Romans'
WORLDNETDAILY - March 3, 2008
With voting just hours away in "Super Tuesday II," some remarks by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama linking same-sex relationships to Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount are raising some eyebrows in the Christian community.

During a Sunday campaign stop in Nelsonville, Ohio, Pastor Leon Forte of Grace Christian Center in Athens, Ohio, asked the Illinois senator to address social concerns.

"Your campaign sets a quandary for most evangelical Christians," Forte said. "They believe in the social agenda that you have. They have a problem with what the conservatives have laid out as the moral litmus test about who is worthy and who is not."

As part of a lengthy videotaped response, Obama referred to the speech by Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew, as well as some anti-homosexuality statements made by the apostle Paul which he called "obscure":


The Sermon on the Mount includes a list of people blessed by God, and a statement by Jesus to follow God's instructions: "Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:19)

The "obscure passage in Romans" Obama referred to reads:


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Claimed in church newsletter Jews building 'ethnic bomb' that 'kills blacks, Arabs'
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - April 28, 2008
JERUSALEM - Indicted Illinois businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a key fundraiser for Sen. Barack Obama, was bailed from jail last week in part with surety posted by a pro-Palestinian activist who penned an open letter in Obama's church newsletter that labeled Israel an "apartheid" regime and claimed the Jewish state worked on an "ethnic bomb" that kills "blacks and Arabs."
 
The open letter by Ali Baghdadi, who served as a Middle East advisor to the Nation of Islam, landed Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in hot water last month amid multiple other reports of controversial pieces published on the official "Pastor's Page" reserved for Obama spiritual adviser Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.  
 
Baghdadi was listed among about 30 family members and friends of Rezko who reportedly put up cash or offered properties as surety to secure Rezko's $8.5 million bail. Baghdadi offered the court a two-story retail property in Chicago.
 
Baghdadi also appeared at the Chicago federal court on April 18 to state he would be willing to post his home as collateral toward Rezko's bond. Baghdadi was quoted telling the court he had known Rezko for 20 years through their work with Arab charities.

The move may evince closer links between Baghdadi and Obama's earlier fundraising circles in which Rezko reportedly played a major role.
 
Last month, WND reported Obama's church newsletter published Baghdadi's piece, titled, "An open letter to Oprah," referring to talk show giant Oprah Winfrey, who last year accepted an invitation to visit Israel offered to her by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Winfrey had been a member of Obama's church but reportedly departed in 1986.
 
"I must tell you that Israel was the closest ally to the white supremacists of South Africa," wrote Baghdadi. "In fact, South Africa allowed Israel to test its nuclear weapons in the ocean off South Africa. The Israelis were given a blank check: they could test whenever they desired and did not even have to ask permission. Both worked on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs."
 
The June 10, 2007, newsletter, which is still available at Obama's church's website, identifies Baghdadi as an Arab-American activist, writer and columnist who "acted as a Middle East advisor to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, as well as Minister Louis Farrakhan."
 
Bagdadi's letter stated Palestinians face "genocide and ethnic cleansing ... every hour of the day."

"For many centuries, Jews escaped the discrimination and death they were subjected to in Europe, and found safety and refuge among us," writes Baghdadi.

Baghdadi's letter originally was printed in the Palestine Times, a pro-Palestinian newspaper published in London. It was first noticed in the Obama church newsletter by the Sweetness & Light blog.

RezkoWatch, a blog dedicated to following the links between Rezko and Obama, asked, "Who would have guessed that the same Ali M. Baghdadi who wrote the vile letter published by Obama's anti-American, hate-spouting pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, would turn out to be a good friend to Tony Rezko, currently on trial in federal court for corruption?

"Who would have guessed that the same Palestinian-American Ali M. Baghdadi, who accompanied Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to Mali in 1997, and served as his Middle East advisor, was only one-degree of separation from Sen. Obama?"

Rezko is on trial in federal court on charges arising from a multimillion-dollar hospital contract scandal. Scores of media reports describe Rezko as an Obama friend and a key campaign fundraiser and networker for the presidential candidate. - - - -

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'If God is not for us and against whites --- we had better kill him'
WORLDNETDAILY - March 17, 2008
Barack Obama's suddenly radioactive pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has defended himself against charges of anti-Americanism and racism by referring to his foundational philosophy, the "black liberation theology" of scholars such as James Cone, who regard Jesus Christ as a "black messiah" and blacks as "the chosen people" who will only accept a god who assists their aim of destroying the "white enemy."

"If God is not for us and against white people," writes Cone, "then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill gods who do not belong to the black community."

Wright has not talked to media since video segments of his sermons over the past decade surfaced last week - including one in 2003 in which he encouraged blacks to damn America in God's name. But in a 2007 interview replayed on the Fox News Channel's "Hannity and Colmes" show Friday, he repeatedly fended off Sean Hannity's questions with an appeal to authority, asking if the host had read any of the books of Cone, professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary, or Dwight Hopkins, professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School, notes the Asia Times columnist who writes under the pseudonym Spengler."

Obama, who has spoken of his pastor of more than 20 years as his mentor and moral compass, "wants to talk about what Wright is, rather than what he says," notes Spengler, by referring him as a "respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago."

But Spengler says "that way lies apolitical quicksand."

Cone, he points out, was the most prominent theologian in the "black liberation" school in the 1960s, teaching that Jesus Christ himself is black.

The theologian explains:


Rather than viewing God as a sovereign being who does as he wills according to his purposes, Cone insists God must do what we want him to do, or we must reject him.


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THE WASHINGTON POST [Wash Post Group/Graham] > Rough Sketch Blog by Dana Milbank - Posted by Eric Pianin - April 28, 2008
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, explaining this morning why he had waited so long before breaking his silence about his incendiary sermons, offered a paraphrase from Proverbs: "It is better to be quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Barack Obama's pastor would have been wise to continue to heed that wisdom.

Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."

Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls." - - - -

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Candidate's spiritual mentor, role model charged U.S. is 'No. 1 killer in the world'
WORLDNETDAILY - March 14, 2008
In another controversial sermon pulled from the archives of Barack Obama's longtime pastor and mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. called America the "No. 1 killer in the world" and blamed the country for launching the AIDS virus to maintain affluence at the expense of the Third World.

The Chicago minister who married the Obamas and baptized their daughters said in a January 2006 sermon at his alma mater, Howard University, "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world. --- We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers."

Speaking at the Washington, D.C., school's Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, Wright said, "We started the AIDS virus. --- We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty."

The pastor reportedly said in a sermon just after 9/11, "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

In a 2003 sermon, reported yesterday, Wright encouraged blacks to damn America in God's name and blamed the U.S. for provoking the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by dropping nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II and supporting Israel since 1947. - - - -

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ABC NEWS [Disney] - By Brian Ross, Avni Patel, and Rehab El-Buri - April 24, 2008
Rev. Jeremiah Wright says his sermons were deliberately taken out of context by the news media "for a political purpose" and to "paint me as some sort of fanatic."

"When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That's not a failure to communicate," he told Bill Moyers in his first interview since ABC News Good Morning America first broadcast portions of his sermons. The Moyers interview will be broadcast tomorrow evening on PBS.

Wright says the use of the his controversial statements- -saying the US brought on the 9/ll attacks and that Black Americans should sing God Damn America instead of God Bless America-were "unfair" and "unjust" and were used "for some very devious reasons." - - -

Left out of the original sound bites broadcast on Good Morning America were Wright's version of how America was built on terror, his description of the United States "as an arrogant, racist, military superpower," and comments on the wealth or success of Oprah Winfrey, Colin Power, Condoleezza Rice and Tiger Woods. - - - -

Reverend Wright Transcript
From "The Day of Jerusalem's Fall" 9/16/2001
Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday, did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, did you see him John, a white man, and he pointed out, an ambassador, that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammed was in fact true, America's chickens&are coming home to roost. We took this country by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arowak, the Comanche, the Arapahoe, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Granada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers, and hardworking fathers. We bombed Qaddafi's home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock. We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hardworking people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children from school, civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost.


From "Confusing God and Government" 4/13/03
Rev. Jeremiah Wright:

The British government failed, the Russian government failed, the Japanese government failed, the German government failed, and the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese decent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. The government put them in chains. She put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in sub-standard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law, and then wants us to sing God Bless America&no, no, no

Not God bless America, God damn America. That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent. Think about this, think about this.

For every one Oprah, a billionaire, you've got 5 million blacks who out of work. For every one Colin Powell, a millionaire, you've got 10 million blacks who cannot read. For every one Condoskeeza Rice, you've got 1 million in prison. For every one Tiger Woods, who needs to get beat, at the Masters, with his cap, blazin' hips playing on a course that discriminates against women. God has his way of bringing you up short when you get to big for your cap, blazin britches. For every one Tiger Woods, we got 10,000 black kids who will never see a golf course. The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.

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Video shows him introducing YouTube piece that mocks Christ
WORLDNETDAILY - April 21, 2008
Another Barack Obama adviser is under scrutiny for showing disdain for America's mainstream, this time after the unearthing of video footage in which the candidate's key technology guru gleefully introduced a YouTube piece that mocks Jesus Christ.

Larry Lessig is shown at a 2006 seminar for Google employees introducing a clip that depicts an effeminate Jesus singing Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." The Jesus figure throws off his robe, revealing a diaper-like covering, and eventually is run over by a bus as he sashays through city streets, reports Erick Erickson of the blogsite RedState.

Lessig prefaces the music video saying, "This is a little bit touchy to some people. I don't get it, so just chill. The underlying message here is that Jesus does survive."

The Google employees laugh throughout the presentation, and Lessig concludes by assuring them there's a sequel making clear Jesus survived the accident.

As WND reported, Obama's military adviser and national campaign co-chairman, Merrill A. McPeak, recently suggested U.S. politicians are afraid of Jewish voters and that American Jews are impeding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. - - -

Other advisers who have created problems for the Obama campaign include top foreign-policy adviser Samantha Power, who resigned after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster," and economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, who reportedly confided to Canadian officials that Obama's position on the North American Free Trade Agreement was merely political posturing. - - - -

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THE DETROIT FREE PRESS [Knight Ridder] - By Niraj Warikoo, Free Press Staff Writer - April 25, 2008
A prominent Muslim leader from Dearborn Heights is calling for the support of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the controversial pastor from Chicago who was Sen. Barack Obama's religious mentor.

Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, head of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, said that during his sermon this afternoon at his mosque he plans to "condemn the unfair treatment" that he says Wright "received by some media members who are ignoring this faith leader's decades of dedication and services to this country and nation."

Elahi said in a release that he plans to make his remarks during today's Friday sermon, which is traditionally the most attended service in Islamic centers, ahead of Wright's talk Sunday in Detroit at an NAACP dinner.

Wright has been criticized for making remarks some say are anti-American.

Original Report Here

CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE [CNSN.com]  - By Pete Winn - April 23, 2008
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is fond of quoting a particular passage of Scripture. The quote, however, does not appear in the Bible and is "fictional," according to biblical scholars.

In her April 22 Earth Day news release, Pelosi said, "The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.' On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children's children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature."

Cybercast News Service repeatedly queried the speaker's office for two days to determine where the alleged Bible quote is found. Thus far, no one has responded.

Distinguished biblical scholars, however, cast doubt on the existence of the passage.

John J. Collins, the Holmes professor of Old Testament criticism and interpretation at Yale Divinity School, said he is totally unfamiliar with Pelosi's quotation.

"(It's) not one that I recognize," Collins told Cybercast News Service. "I assume that she means this is a paraphrase. But it wouldn't be a close paraphrase to anything I know of."

Claude Mariottini, a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Cybercast News Service the passage not only doesn't exist - it's "fictional."

"It is not in the Bible," Mariottini said. "There is nothing that even approximates that."

Other scholars agree that nothing remotely resembling it can be found in any version of the Scriptures - Old Testament or New Testament.

"The quote does not exist in the Old Testament, neither in the New Testament," said the Rev. Andreas Hock, a doctor of Scripture who teaches in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Denver's St. John Vianney Seminary.

"Even in pieces or bits, (it) cannot be found in the Old Testament," he added.

Interestingly, Pelosi has mentioned the quote before, Mariottini noted.

"In truth, (she) has used this 'passage' in many different ways, and all of those usages have nothing to do with the Bible whatsoever," he said.

Indeed, Cybercast News Service has learned that Pelosi has repeatedly used the quote:



[Ed. note: More quotes included]

Mis-remembered? Mis-paraphrased?

Is Pelosi's alleged quote merely an attempt to express a biblical principle about man's need to care for the environment? The scholars differed slightly on that question, but none believe the case for environmentalism comes directly form Scripture, as Pelosi indicated.

Eric Jenislawski, a professor at Virginia's Christendom College, said that the Bible teaches in Genesis that man was placed on earth "to till it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). But just a few verses earlier, he pointed out, God also commanded man "to fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). - - - -

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Christian Coalition supports expanded carry provision
WORLDNETDAILY - March 5, 2008



WASHINGTON - The Georgia Christian Coalition is getting behind a state bill to expand gun-carry laws into company parking lots and churches.

State Rep. Tim Bearden is sponsoring the bill with the support of the National Rifle Association. It is being opposed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce as a violation of private property rights.

The bill is currently in a House-Senate conference committee.

Christians began recognizing the threat for mayhem in the pews after an armed rampage in Colorado recently. After killing two people at a Christian training center in Arvada, Colo., 24-year-old Matthew Murray went to Colorado Springs intending more murder and mayhem.

Murray shot and killed two girls in the New Life Church's parking lot, then headed inside the building where thousands of worshippers were concluding a service.

A volunteer security guard, Jeanne Assam, confronted him almost immediately and fired at him. He fell, and an autopsy later said he had shot himself.

In fact, church shootings have been on the rise in the U.S.

A tabulation of church shootings, or those closely related to a church setting, was done by Gary Cass, chairman of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, and included 10 such attacks over the last four years, including Murray's two attacks. - - - -

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