What Did Obama Know About Wrights Past Sermons?

One thread about this wasn't enough for ya, Miller?

Very Interesting commentary from Frank Schaiffer about Wright...

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.


Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.

Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:



If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.


And this:


In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....


Then this:



There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...

Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).

Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.

Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."

We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html )

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

snood, very interesting for sure.

I thought it was interesting that Reverend Wright said, "Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack," Wright told the Times. "One of his members had talked him into uninviting me."

Now "Shabbos" is the term that Orthodox Jews refer to the Sabbath (that starts at sundown Friday). What does this mean? Has his church adopted a Jewish Christian identity? I don't know, but I thought the use of this term was interesting.

All practicing Jews will refer to the Sabbath as Shabbat, not only Orthodox Jews.

Obama disappointed me here....his response was too "cut and run". We have gotten into some dangerous ground where free speech is not defended, were it is punished. I would like to have heard Obama say " I do not agree with the words spoken by Rev W on this issue, but as an American and as your next president I defend his right to speak his mind". We have gone down a very bad road by letting the squeamish decide the boundaries of public discourse by claiming offense to words they don't want to hear. Generally, the right response is to tell the offended "If you don't like the subject that we are talking about, then kindly go away".

Kind of like Bush and the run to the Iraq war. Either your with me or against me.

As I understand it, Ashkenazi Jews using Ashkenazi Hebrew always wish practicing Jews a Good Shabbos (or Gut Shabbos if one came from Yiddish speaking European shtetles (villages)). Sephardic Hebrew which is spoken in Israel puts "t" on endings of words, to replace the Ashkenazi ending. So, a Bar Mitzvah became a Bat Mitzvah, and Shabbos became Shabbat.

Reverend Wright was just using the term used by Ashkenazi Jews, not Sephardim.

Needless to say, I would prefer Reverend Wright use Ashkenazi words.

No, a Bar Mitzvah is for boys, and a Bat Mitzvah is for girls.

I got it wrong initially, I think. There is also a Bas Mitzvah, which I think is the Sephardic term for the Ashkenazi spelling of Bat Mitzvah.

My only point was Shabbos, is the term for Shabbat, used by Ashkenzi Jews that came here in the late 19th and early 20th century, where Yiddish was their language.

While in Israel, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews may have a degree of interaction, my observation is that in NYC the two groups are fairly separate.

Obama's Crisis and MLK's Hard Truths link

I wonder. Would Obama rather talk about his pastor who is about to leave his ministry or Rizko who may have gotten him a break on his dream home. I notice that some are saying it was only $300,000. When I had a job that was 10 years work for me. So much for his common roots.

His wife makes $220,000 a year right??? Why would the obama's put his future at risk in a shady deal over a measly couple hundred grand??

Rezko didn't have anything to do with the final price -- it was a standard negotiation. The Obama's made a bid a certain amount below the selling price, which was rejected by the sellers, then a higher bid, etc., until they both agreed. The sellers confirm that the Obamas paid a fair price and that Rezko wasn't involved with that transaction. (He bought the adjoining lot, which was being sold separately, from the sellers in an independent transaction).

I don't know, why would a convience store robber risk 10 years in jail for an armed robbery for a few hundred bucks?

It must never happen huh?

This the difference between us old folks and you Obamaites. $300,000 is chump change to you but to me its big bucks which is one reason that I wont vote for him. He docent know what its like to be unable to pay your water bill. And don't give me that garbage about him knowing about the pain of being poor because he used to help the poor. If you haven't lived it you cant know it. But if your a politician you learn early what looks good to the populace.

I guess that you are not voting this time around then, unless it be McCain because he married money instead of earning it himself
http://nymag.com/news/politics/encyclopedia/personalwealth/

Obviously I low balled Michelle's income

No, his wife when last worked, made about $325,000/year at the U of C.