Preacher says Bill Clinton did to Obama's race the same thing he did to Monica:
>By Michael Hill | Sun Reporter
January 16, 2008
CHICAGO - The packed house at Trinity United - some 3,000 in all - had been in the pews for almost two hours, energized by a 200-voice choir and a rousing dance performance Sunday, when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright stepped up to speak.
Wright is well-known in Chicago and in the black church world for taking over a small United Church of Christ congregation in 1972 and turning it into an 8,000-member powerhouse. More recently, his name has become familiar as the longtime spiritual mentor of Barack Obama, who joined the church in 1988 - a move Obama says was important to shaping his identity as an African-American.
The connection has thrown a spotlight on some of Wright's more controversial remarks in a church that advertises itself as "unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian" - at times espousing a black liberation theology that can sound as exclusionary as Obama's message is inclusionary. He has also equated Zionism with racism.
On Sunday morning - amid intensified crossfire between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Obama over the use of race in the Democratic presidential campaign - Wright was preaching from the Gospel of John, using his powerful style to link the story of the loaves and fishes to a contemporary political message.
Man should not put limits on what God can do, but that's what people always do, he told the crowd. Just as God made five loaves and two fishes feed thousands, God has provided liberators for blacks in the past - from Nat Turner to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and now Barack Obama. But, Wright said, there were always reasons not to follow them.
Some argue that blacks should vote for Clinton "because her husband was good to us," he continued.
"That's not true," he thundered. "He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky."
Many in the crowd were on their feet, applauding - amazed, amused and moved by the fiery rhetoric of their preacher.< |
