Campaign trail | Obama blasts his pastor’s remarks

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday denounced inflammatory remarks from his pastor, who has railed against the United States and accused its leaders of bringing on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by spreading terrorism.

As Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s remarks have aired widely on radio, television and the Internet, Obama responded by posting a blog about his relationship with Wright and his church, Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, on the Huffington Post, a liberal Web site.

Obama wrote that he has looked to Wright for spiritual advice, not political guidance, and that he’s been pained and angered to learn of some of his pastor’s comments. A campaign spokesman said later that Wright no longer is on Obama’s African-American Religious Leadership Committee, without elaborating.

“I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies,” Obama said. “I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue.”

Among other things, Wright once railed that Hillary Clinton doesn’t know what it’s like to be a black man trying to hail a cab in America. He has said rich whites control the country. He has spoken of the “U.S. of KKK-A.”

In a sermon on the Sunday after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Wright suggested the United States brought on the attacks.

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Wright said. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards.”

In a 2003 sermon, he said African-Americans should condemn the United States.

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God d--- America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God d--- America for treating our citizens as less than human. God d--- America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

He also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus, promoting his candidacy and downplaying Clinton.

Questions about Obama’s religious beliefs have dogged him throughout his candidacy. He has faced false Internet rumors suggesting he’s really a Muslim intent on destroying the United States, and now his pastor’s words uttered nearly seven years ago have become an issue.

Obama wrote on the Huffington Post that he never heard Wright say any of the statements that are “so contrary to my own life and beliefs,” but that they have raised legitimate questions about his relationship with the pastor and the church.

He said he joined Wright’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, nearly 20 years ago. He said he knew Wright as a former Marine and respected biblical scholar who lectured at seminaries across the country.

“Reverend Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life,” he wrote. “... And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor and to seek justice at every turn.”

Obama said Wright’s controversial statements first came to his attention at the beginning of his presidential campaign last year, and he condemned them. Because of his ties to the 6,000-member congregation church — he and his wife were married there and their daughters baptized — Obama decided not to leave the church.

Obama also has credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

“With Reverend Wright’s retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good,” he wrote.

Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., said it’s difficult to know how much the controversy would hurt Obama, but that “it can’t help.”

“Everyone’s got clerical people who say wacky things,” Silk said. “That said, it’s not as if this is just some pastor who’s decided last week to endorse Obama. This is his guy.”

Obama’s “whole persona ... is not in any sense being the angry black guy. On the other hand, because Obama is a black guy out of Chicago with an alien-sounding name who people don’t know very well, because of rumors floating around, some maliciously spread by e-mail ... if I were him I’d be concerned about that.”

Also Friday, the United Church of Christ issued a 1,400-word statement defending Wright and his “flagship” congregation. John H. Thomas, United Church of Christ’s president, lauded Wright’s church for its community service and work to nurture youth. Other church leaders praised Wright for speaking out against homophobia and sexism in the black community.

“It’s time for all of us to say no to these attacks and to declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends,” Thomas said in the statement.

Associated Press religion writer Eric Gorski and McClatchy Newspapers’ Margaret Talev contributed to this report.