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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Still a question of Wright and Wrong

In today's Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby compares his relationship with his rabbi with the relationship between democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama and his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Jacoby asserts that if his own rabbi were to make statements of the type made by Wright, either the rabbi would be fired or Jeff and others would find another synagogue. As it happens, I have known Jeff's rabbi for longer than he has - more than thirty years - and I can tell you that Jeff's rabbi is a person of integrity and character that put Pastor Wright to shame. And I've known the synagogue for even longer. Pastor Wright's views would not be welcomed by the rabbi or the synagogue. So rest assured Jeff: no need to find a new synagogue anytime soon.

But Obama refuses to find a new pastor or a new church. And that's another reason why he's not worthy of being President of the United States.

In Philadelphia yesterday, Obama gave a graceful speech on the theme of race and unity in American life. Much of what he said was eloquent and stirring, not least his opening paean to the Founders and the Constitution - a document "stained by the nation's original sin of slavery," as he said, yet also one "that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time." There was an echo there of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in his great "I Have a Dream" speech extolled "the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence" as "a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir."

The problem for Obama is that Wright, the spiritual leader he has so long embraced, is a devotee not of King, - who in that same speech warned against "drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred" - but of the poisonous hatemonger Louis Farrakhan, whom the church's magazine honored with a lifetime achievement award. The problem for Obama, who campaigns on a message of racial reconciliation, is that the "mentor" whose church he joined and has generously supported is a disciple not of King but of James Cone, founder of a "black liberation" theology that teaches its adherents to "accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy."

Above all, the problem for Obama is that for two decades his spiritual home has been a church in which the minister damns America to the enthusiastic approval of the congregation, and not until it threatened to scuttle his political ambitions did Obama finally find the mettle to condemn the minister's odium.

Read the whole thing.

Hat Tip: NY Nana

5 Comments:

At 8:21 PM, Blogger Iron Chef Kosher! said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

 
At 8:23 PM, Blogger Iron Chef Kosher! said...

Baruch HaShem for the blogosphere - hopefully, we can keep this racist out of the White House!

 
At 8:34 PM, Blogger Lois Koenig said...

Thanks for the hat tip, Carl.

Jacoby did quite a job on the contrasts between the Rabbi and the hatemonger.

I wonder why the United Church of Christ has not cut Obama's church off from the mainstream. Andover Newton Theological School is a member.

It would seem that this one church is certainly not representative, and is, in fact, a renegade offshoot.

 
At 12:12 AM, Blogger factasy.com said...

Hi my boys in my discussion forum have just start a tread about obama.
you can find it at http://www.factasy.com/civil_war/smfforum
Ann

 
At 3:38 AM, Blogger Baruch Who? said...

As Daled Amos quipped on the car ride home today, "Obama can't tell the difference between Wright and Wrong."

 

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