Local minister defends Obama’s former pastor (high blood pressure alert)

[Wretched Excess]

Local minister defends Obama’s former pastor

The media blitz over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s alleged anti-American and racist remarks during sermons, and his relationship with presidential candidate Barack Obama, is the result of racism, said the Rev. Allen Shelton of Montclair’s Trinity Presbyterian Church.

Shelton said the “white” media’s distortion of Wright was also perpetuated by “people who are opposed to Obama’s candidacy because they are uncomfortable with his race.

“I don’t believe it has anything to do with Jeremiah Wright or Obama’s affiliation with Wright. It has everything to do with racism,” he said.

Shelton has been pastor for seven years at his 120-plus multi-cultural congregation comprising African-American, Caribbean and white worshippers. In a letter sent to The Times last week, Shelton expressed personal outrage at what he called the media’s distortion of Wright’s ministry.

“Those responsible for this media frenzy need to own up to the real rationale behind this so-called investigation into Sen. Obama, his faith, and his minister,” Shelton wrote.

Wright is showed in YouTube video clips and sound bites saying, “Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by a rich, white people … Not God bless America, ******* America. It’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people,” referring to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorism attacks.

Shelton says those remarks were taken out of context, as Wright “told the truth uncompromisingly.”

He said, “Rev. Wright is a good American, exercising his right to free speech … sometimes spiritual truths are hard to hear.

“[Wright] loves America, which is why he speaks the truth. He loves this country and wants the country to conform to God’s righteousness,” said Shelton, a member of both the Montclair Clergy Association and the Montclair African-American Clergy Association.

“We should be comfortable with all our ethnic heritages.”

The Rev. George Ryder, minister of outreach at New Jerusalem Holiness Church on New Street, agrees that criticism of Wright was “over the top by various sources within the media.”

Ryder said he has heard Wright speak in Montclair several years ago at revivals and church services.

He said he found Wright “inspirational,” and “a great theologian.

“I just felt a great genuineness to his spirit and his person,” Ryder said of Wright. “He was not one of those who had become complacent because he had enjoyed the stream of ease of the middle class and forgotten about the backwaters of the ghetto life. He did not want anyone to think that, because of his great success, he forgot about those in the black community feeling a great sense of abandonment.”

Ryder commended Shelton, and said of Wright’s remarks: “There was not much attention given to the sermon and what led up to those particular comments and what followed. The media did not give the public the advantage of hearing the sermon in its entirety.”

Susan Newman, associate minister of Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C. who has known Wright for 20 years, told The Times that Americans should not judge Obama based on what his former pastor has said.

“We find it very difficult to accept the fact that we are a racist country, and that we have owned slaves and are uncomfortable talking about race,” said Newman, who attended Wright’s retirement party in Chicago.

“To say that is not saying you’re against white people. It is pride in our own race.”

The Rev. Walter L. Parrish III, of Union Baptist Church on Midland Avenue, said that much of what Wright said that was captured in sound bites are “not unlike what is heard in black pulpits throughout this country. “The word choice might be different. But the truth that Reverend Wright preaches is the reality that most African-Americans live,” Parrish said.

Obama’s candidacy, Parrish said, has required America to face uneasiness and unresolved issues around race. “Unfortunately, Rev. Wright has become the focus, but the focus is misplaced. The focus should really be the degree to which race still defines the American reality for all people.”

linky

waitadamnminnit.  pointing out "alleged"() racism is racist?

[Ptarmigan]

They deserve each other and in turn, Fred Phelps.

[Chris_]

So if I say "the only problem in our inner cities is them damn ******s" but later say "but Jesus wants you to love them all" then my first words were "taken out of context."

Right?

[Uhhuh35]

waitadamnminnit.  pointing out "alleged"() racism is racist?

It is if yer' a Honkey!
I've told all my Democrat friends from the start that I wouldn't be voting for Obama cause he's a Liberal. Just look at his web site, it should repulse any true conservative. They haven't given me any gruff about it (not like it would matter though).
The LibTards thought they were so smart by having a woman and a black run that they forgot to look at character. They screwed themselves.
Now if they had nominated someone like Margret Thatcher or Colin Powell nothing could stop them.

[DixieBelle]

I think Obama should stop consulting with clergymen! 

Just as the dust surrounding Sen. Barack Obama’s long-term association with controversial minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright has begun to settle comes new reports of the democratic presidential hopeful’s connection to another racially divisive public figure—the stridently homophobic Rev. James T. Meeks, an Illinois state senator who also serves as the pastor of Chicago’s 22,000 member strong Salem Baptist Church.

Described in a 2004 Chicago Sun Times article as someone Barack Obama regularly seeks out for “spiritual counsel”, James Meeks, who will serve as an Obama delegate at the 2008 Democratic convention in Denver, is a long-time political ally to the democratic frontrunner.

When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate in 2003, he frequently campaigned at Salem Baptist Church while Rev. Meeks appeared in television ads supporting the Illinois senator’s campaign. Later, according to the same Chicago Sun Times article, on the night after he won the Democratic primary, Sen. Obama attended bible study at Meeks’ church ‘for prayer’ and ‘to say thank you.’

Since that time, not only has Meeks himself served on Obama’s exploratory committee for the presidency and been listed on the Obama's campaign website as one of the senator’s ‘influential black supporters’, but his church choir was called on to raise their voices in praise at a rally the night Obama announced his run for the White House back in 2007.

Interestingly, the Chicago Sun Times has also reported that both Meeks and Obama share a history of substantial campaign contributions from indicted real estate magnate Tony Rezko.

The problem for Obama is that Rev. James Meeks, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preaches a message that appears to be directly at odds with the promise of hope, unity and bridging social, racial and political divisions upon which his campaign is built.

Over the years, Rev. Meeks has garnered significant media attention as a result of a number of racially charged remarks he's made from both behind and out in front of the pulpit. Most notably, in 2006, Meeks came under fire for an inflammatory sermon he gave in which he savaged Chicago mayor Richard Daley and others, including African-Americans who were Daley allies.

 the course of July 5, 2006 attack, Rev. James Meeks ranted:

"We don't have slave masters. We got mayors. But they still the same white people who are presiding over systems where black people are not able, or to be educated."

"You got some preachers that are house ******s. You got some elected officials that are house ******s. And rather than them trying to break this up, they gonna fight you to protect this white man," Meeks said in a sermon tape which he later defended in an interview with Chicago CBS2 reporter, Mike Flannery.

Perhaps of even more concern than race-baiting diatribes like these is Rev. Meeks disturbing history of antagonism towards the LGBT community.

More at link. Warning: it's a ghey site.

http://www.gaywired.com/article.cfm?section=66&id=18614

[Tess Anderson]

Maybe it's a good thing to shine the light on the so-called "Religious Left" - they have been cloaking themselves as respectable Christians for far too long now. I'm sick of the anti-American victim mentality - of course, the bats will bunch together when one of their elders is attacked.

[DixieBelle]

I changed my mind. I think Obama's clergymen should be upfront and center.
http://bp3.blogger.com/__bmZ2TwSHRU/R-MJgMHWC-I/AAAAAAAAAFI/kl6M9NhHa3Y/s1600-h/PastorsPage.jpg