Obama’s church founded on radical creed

The church where Sen. Barack Obama has worshipped for two decades publicly declares that its ministry is founded on a 1960s book that espouses “the destruction of the white enemy.”

Trinity United Church of Christ’s Web site says its teachings are based on the black liberation theology of James H. Cone and his 1969 book “Black Theology and Black Power.”

“What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love,” Mr. Cone wrote in the book.

Mr. Cone, a professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, added that “black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”

Mr. Obama’s campaign, which for weeks has weathered criticism about inflammatory racial language by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. at Trinity, said the candidate “vehemently disagrees” with those tenets.

“It’s absurd to suggest that he or anyone should be held responsible for every quote in every book read by a member of their church,” said Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin.

“Barack Obama is not a theologian, and what he learned in church is to love Jesus Christ and work on behalf of his fellow man, regardless of race, class or circumstance. This is a faulty and disingenuous approach to a church, and a flawed way to judge a candidate,” he said.

Mr. Obama has been a member of Trinity, on Chicago’s South Side, since finding religion there 20 years ago under Mr. Wright’s mentorship. Mr. Wright married the Obamas and baptized their children, and a sermon of his inspired Mr. Obama to title his book “The Audacity of Hope.”

There is no evidence to date in any of Mr. Obama’s public comments or speeches that he espouses the radical features of the black liberation theology practiced at his church.

Critics say Trinity’s message verges on separatist philosophy and at the very least advocates exclusively for blacks.

“The liberation theology and the black-values system to which his membership ascribe is a clear commitment to the social and spiritual enhancement of only the black race,” the Rev. Corey J. Hodges, who is black, wrote last year in the Salt Lake Tribune. “Even more troubling is Wright’s use of the pulpit to perpetuate racial division.”

For years, Mr. Wright delivered sermons and endorsed articles in the church bulletin that called the United States and Israel racist regimes.

The bulletin’s “pastor’s page” included essays that said Israel and South Africa “worked on an ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs,” compared Israel to Nazi Germany and quoted leaders of the terrorist group Hamas calling Israel a “deformed modern apartheid state.”

In a bulletin last year, Mr. Wright lashed out at the news media for scrutinizing the church, blaming “racist United States of America” and “white arrogance” for distracting the country from more important issues, such as the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina victims.

The church declined to comment for this article, but the Rev. Otis Moss III, the church’s junior pastor, who took over for Mr. Wright, wrote in the bulletin in October that media conglomerates “operate with contempt and disdain for the black community, women, and people of the African Diaspora.”

Story Continues →