if the things you have posted are what the church members and preachers advocate, why aren't they on TV every night expressing themselves saying "This is exactly what we believe" followed by all the things you wrote?
They haven't received much coverage outside the black community before. The sermons on videotape which used to be available aren't anymore after ABC examined a dozen and found outrageous stuff on them. Wright is keeping himself under wraps now to avoid hurting Obama. And lets remember, the larger society - white America - is not their target audience. They aren't interested in talking to white America.
If that is really what the preachers and members of the church believe, they would surely say so in public, as often as possible. I haven't seen that from them.
You haven't seen much of anything from them. You're not part of their target audience. The tapes which have been aired, you assume are unrepresentative. But you don't know that from first hand experience. None of us do. We can read Cone's books though and thats where those vile quotes come from, and we can also read that both Cone and Wright say TUCC a prime example of a church based on his theology.
I have seen the enemies of Obama saying "this is what they believe" and in my experience, when my enemy tells me what I believe, he is usually totally wrong.
So any critical voice will get labeled "enemy" and disregarded. Thats not being open-minded.
So if the average member of that church will publicly defend all those things you've written about them, then I agree with you.
Find a member and ask them. Hint: The one who is running for President isn't likely to tell you anything offensive.
Elroy, God hates you because you're evil and real Christians (meaning black Christians) hate you too
Do you think you can produce a significant percentage of members of that church that will publicly declate their hate for me? I don't.
They already did when they cheered "God damn America" and cheered the sermon delivered right after 911 where Wright said America was getting paid back for its crimes.
Do you think any member of TUCC will publicly disavow Cone's theology? Obama could do that. Course the obvious next thing to do would be drop his church membership or move it to some other church.
Seriously, I do think Rev. Wright hates you and me and all white Americans. I do think the average member of that church does as well. Thats why they were on their feet cheering the Sunday following 911 and following Wright's "God damn America" demands. To believe this all that is necessary is to take people at their word. "God damn America" is an expression of hatred - just as it would be if you or I said GD you to one another. When people cheer "God damn America" they are indicating they feel that way too.
I don't believe Obama hates white people though. I don't think he hates America either. I think Obama belongs to that church because he is wounded over being abandoned by his worthless father and has adopted Wright as his substitute father. He needed a "black" father figure and he sought out one who talked the most "black" he could find. So while Obama isn't a hater himself, he's emotionally dependent on a hater. Not healthy imo.
-------------------------------------------------------------
McClatchy’s Wright-Obama-TUCC Expose: How Many Will Get to See It?
By Tom Blumer | March 22, 2008 - 09:57 ET
Yesterday, Gateway Pundit noticed what he called an "Uh-Oh... This wasn't supposed to happen" event for presidential candidate Barack Obama:
An amazing article appeared in the mainstream news today. McClatchy actually reported that Obama's church merges Marxism and Christian Gospel and preaches that the white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.
That they did. But how did they headline it, and how many McClatchy newspapers actually ran the story?
Margaret Talev's Thursday, March 20 description of the fundamental doctrines of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) does get right to the point. Talev even goes so far as to question the candidate's motivations for his involvement with the church.
Most importantly, which I why I've bolded the related text, Talev notes that while TUCC's radical and racist philosophies will survive the Rev. Wright's retirement, their continued presence will not deter Obama from continuing to attend:
Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.
Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama's church.
Obama's speech Tuesday on race in America was hailed as a masterful handling of the controversy over divisive sermons by the longtime pastor of Trinity United, the recently retired Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
But in repudiating and putting in context Wright's inflammatory lines about whites and U.S. foreign policy, the Democratic presidential front-runner didn't address other potentially controversial facts about his church and its ties.
..... Wright has said that a basis for Trinity's philosophies is the work of James Cone, who founded the modern black liberation theology movement out of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Particularly influential was Cone's seminal 1969 book, "Black Theology & Black Power."
Cone wrote that the United States was a white racist nation and the white church was the Antichrist for having supported slavery and segregation.
..... Cone also said he thought that Wright's successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, would continue the tradition.
..... Obama, 46, who is biracial, joined Trinity in his late 20s when he was working as a community organizer. He says he'll continue to worship there.
..... It isn't clear where Obama's beliefs and the church's diverge.
..... It's possible that Obama joined Trinity as much because it gave him credibility as a newcomer to south side Chicago's black community as for its particular theological teachings.
While it is indeed refreshing to see substantive Old Media coverage of the TUCC, Wright, and Obama's involvement, how many people have ready access to it, or will get it, is an open question.
Based on the time of the first comment reacting to the March 20 story at mcclatchydc.com, it appears not to have been released until perhaps 7 PM that evening. With Good Friday and Easter approaching, and the Obama-Wright story at least 10 days old, one has to wonder if McClatchy held the story until Thursday evening to minimize its impact.
Even considering all of that, how many McClatchy newspapers actually carried Talev's story?
To find out, I searched for the article on "Obama Wright" (not in quotes) at what I believe are McClatchy's 10 largest properties. Keep in mind that this is not definitive, because a newspaper's print edition could have carried the story even if it didn't appear at a paper's web site, and vice-versa.
Six of the ten papers I selected carried the story at their web sites:
Charlotte Observer - carried ("Provocative ideas at core of church"; posted at an unspecified time on Friday).
El Nuevo Herald (Spanish Miami Herald) - carried (translated, "The controversial church of Barack Obama"; posted, per the search result, at 11:10 p.m. on Thursday).
Fort Worth Star-Telegram - carried ("Some views at Obama's church are controversial"; posted at an unspecified time on Friday).
Fresno Bee - not found (search engine may not have been working properly; link is to an alternate search attempt).
Idaho Statesman - not found.
Kansas City Star - not found.
Macon Telegraph - not found.
Miami Herald - carried ("Provocative ideas abound at Obama's church"; posted at an unspecified time on Friday).
Raleigh News & Observer - carried ("Obama's church holds controversial views"; posted March 21 at 12:30 a.m. on Friday).
Sacramento Bee - carried ("Obama church's theology replete with controversy"; posted at midnight on Friday, appeared on Page A7).
Finally, it's hard to dispute that the headlines used by Talev and the various McClatchy papers were weaker than they could have or should have been. Either "radical" or "racist" would have been perfectly appropriate adjectives. I daresay that the headline writers would not have been so restrained in describing a "far-right" church, especially if it held white-supremacist views analogous to those Talev described.
Getting back to what Gateway Pundit said, as noted at the beginning of this post -- It's nice that the Rev. Wright's and TUCC's radicalism got some exposure, but the coverage was, despite the strong reporting, weakly timed and more muted than it should have been. And of course, the chances that the Associated Press or the three "newspapers of record" (NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times) will produce similar efforts is nearly zero.
newsbusters.org
mcclatchydc.com
en.wikipedia.org |
