On religion in the Whitehouse.....

At no time did i write anything even remotely resembling a claim that Lincoln was the first president to "bring up religion."

Before Lincoln, Presidents and candidates were careful not to bring up religion...

The post of mine to which you have most recently responded underlines my post prior to that, in which i wrote: "I know of no agent of government of the United States, let alone the President, who has established a religious holiday." Your reference to Washington's proclamation fails to fulfill that criterion.

RL:
This thread was nto about the Wright incident....there have been plenty of threads dedicated to Wright's sermons and Obama's connection to him. As much as many scared white people wan to soak this "scandal" up and run with it until August, it's a dead issue.

I just see in Obama open and frequent appeals and references to God and his faith. I was uncomfortable with it when Bush did it and I find myself feeling the same with Obama.

The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples

It is important to make a further distinction here among black hatred, black racism, and Black Power. Black hatred is the black man's strong aversion to white society. No black man living in white America can escape it...But the charge of black racism cannot be reconciled with the facts. While it is true that blacks do hate whites, black hatred is not racism

An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans.

"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 damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism.

"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," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

"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. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.