“Obama’s church” is the Trinity United Church of Christ.  Trinity United Church of Christ is “a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.” (from their website) Their theology is progressive but generally what most Christians would consider Biblical.  Not everyone would agree with everything they do and say, but at least they’re doing something in the name of Jesus to help rid the world of injustice and oppression, which is more than I can say for most churches I’ve been associated with in any way.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. is the senior pastor at TUCC, and he has gotten Barack Obama in trouble politically by making inflammatory statements over the last several months.  There’s no need to rehash those here.  I wrote about them back in March.  Last week, though, the last straw was a guest speaker, Catholic priest Rev. Michael Pfleger, who made fun of Hillary Clinton saying she resented that “there’s a black man stealing my show,” a racially charged and controversial statement to be sure.

Here’s what I think.  I think commitment to one church by Christians is much too rare, and it’s sad that for political reasons a person can be held guilty by association with preachers who are just saying what they think God’s message for their congregation is.  I’ve criticized conservatives like Pat Robertson for claiming to know God’s will in matters that are beyond human understanding, but in this case we’re talking about oppression and justice.  The fact that these preachers in their human weakness expressed themselves in an unwise way using unwise words doesn’t change the fact that what they’re saying has at least a core truth to them.  They might have gotten carried away and taken the ideas they were preaching too far, but the basic ideas were right and Biblical.  In any case, they had a right to say it, and Sen. Obama should not have had to leave his church because of them.