Obama's Church Rallies 'Round Wright

Typically on a glorious Easter Sunday morning, sermons in Christian churches tend to be about the Resurrection of Christ.

Makes sense.

The celebration of Jesus' death and resurrection takes place at every Catholic Mass, but certainly the message of Jesus' victory over death, His sacrifice for our salvation, God's love for us, is at the heart of the Easter service.

The sunrise service at Barack Obama's church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, had a different focus this Easter.

CHICAGO -- The new pastor of Barack Obama’s church delivered a defiant defense of its retiring reverend Sunday, comparing media coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. to a modern-day lynching that resembles Jesus’ death at the hands of the Romans.

In a sunrise Easter sermon, Rev. Otis Moss III never mentioned Wright by name, but implied that his mentor, who has delivered sermons in which he likened the U.S. to the Ku Klux Klan and declared it damned for its “state-sponsored terrorism,” is facing the same challenges Jesus did.”No one should start a ministry with lynching, no one should end their ministry with lynching,” Moss said.

“The lynching was national news. The RNN, the Roman News Network, was reporting it and NPR, National Publican Radio had it on the radio. The Jerusalem Post and the Palestine Times all wanted exclusives, they searched out the young ministers, showed up unannounced at their houses, tried to talk with their families, called up their friends, wanted to get a quote on how do you feel about the lynching?” he continued.

The criticism surrounding Wright has not softened the services at Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama has been a congregant for 20 years. Instead, Moss defiantly defended their method of worship, referencing rap lyrics to make his point.”If I was Ice Cube I’d say it a little differently — ‘You picked the wrong folk to mess with,’” Moss said to an enthusiastic congregation, standing up during much of the sermon, titled “How to Handle a Public Lynching.”

Wright’s sermons were criticized for casting the country as institutionally racist and Obama sharply condemned Wright’s remarks as racially divisive in a high-profile speech Tuesday, though the candidate would not renounce the pastor himself. Church officials said Wright, who is now on sabbatical and entering retirement after nearly 40 years of service with the church, was not attending any service Sunday.

Obama and his family were spending Easter on vacation and also were not attending services.

Though the church recently moved a once-prominent section on its Web site about the “Black Value System,” the congregation still describes itself as “unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian.” A plaque states this prominently behind the front desk.

The sermons Sunday, which kept references to Wright as a common thread, implied that the firestorm over Wright’s remarks has taken the church’s teachings out of context.

A few things:

--If members of Obama's church are OK with listening to this sort of sermon on a blessed Easter morning, that's their business. Personally, I would prefer to hear about Easter joy and the glory of God, but that's just me. If one Sunday out of the year sermons should be about the Resurrection and not politics or division, it's Easter.

--This article says that Wright was not attending any services this Sunday. What? Barring illness or some sort of emergency, I can't imagine a pastor skipping church on Easter.

--This article also states that Obama and his family were on vacation and not attending services. Does that mean they weren't attending services at the Trinity United Church of Christ? That I would understand. Does that mean his family attended no Easter services at all? That I don't understand.

"Sorry. No time to go to church on EASTER. We're vacationing."

Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the first female bishop in the AME Church, also delivered a sermon, in which she talked about visionaries like King and Gandhi and “Jeremiah” (it was unclear whether she meant Wright), and argued that their words weren’t about “anger,” but about “a passion that demands confrontation.”

“The purveyors of information are trying to be judge and jury over prophetic utterances,” she said.

The church program handed out Sunday also included an essay called “Not on My Watch” from the Rev. Samuel B. McKinney of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle. McKinney said he was “greatly disturbed” by the “media feeding frenzy that has tarnished everyone in the process.”

“Dr. Wright represents the best among us … An attack on this man of God is an attack on all those of the cloth who believe in the social Gospel of liberation. And I will not stand for it,” he wrote.

Moss issued several pleas to congregants to donate to what he called the “Resurrection Fund,” stressing that during this time of battle, money is needed to defend the church. He offered no additional specifics about the fund, telling churchgoers he didn’t want to get into it because Trinity is streaming the service live on the Web and the services are available for purchase on DVD.

He concluded with another analogy, saying, “In order to crucify him you’ve got to lift him up … he had more visibility on the cross than he did during his entire ministry.”

If this report is accurate, it doesn't appear that the Trinity United Church of Christ's focus is on Christianity.

Today, the Resurrection of Christ took a back seat to Rev. Wright and his "Resurrection Fund."

On EASTER, the most holy day for Christians?

It seems that church should be renamed the Trinity United Church of Wright.
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From the New York Times, "Obama’s Talk Fuels Easter Sermons"

This Easter Sunday, the holiest day of the Christian calendar, many pastors will start their sermons about the Resurrection of Jesus and weave in a pointed message about racism and bigotry, and the need to rise above them.

Some pastors began to rethink their sermons on Tuesday, when Senator Barack Obama gave a speech about race, seeking to calm a furor that had erupted over explosive excerpts of sermons by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

The controversy drove the nation to the unpatrolled intersection of race and religion, and as many pastors prepared for their Easter message they said they felt compelled to talk about it. Their congregants were writing and e-mailing them: some wanted to share their emotional reactions to Mr. Obama’s speech; others asked how Mr. Wright, the minister, could utter such inflammatory things from the pulpit.

Some ministers interviewed over the last several days said they would wait until after Easter to preach on it all, because Easter and headlines do not mix. But others said there was no better moment than Easter, when sanctuaries swelled with their biggest crowds of the year, and redemption was the dominant theme.

Easter Sunday services and presidential politics do not mix.



I think it's a mistake to talk partisan politics at Easter services. It's wrong to turn any Christian service into an exercise in hate speech. I'm confident that's not what Jesus would do.