Obama resigns from his church

On March 16, 2007 I stated the position that I thought the country should adopt on the question of Barack Obama and Trinity United Church of Christ:

Obama belongs to a church with an anti-white racial ideology. In the absence of strong statements and actions by him to the contrary, possibly including his dissociation of himself from that church, it must assumed he shares that ideology, and therefore is unqualified to be president of the United States.

Today at 7 p.m. Yahoo reported that Obama has resigned from his church. There were no further details on the reasons for the step from the Obama spokesman who made the announcement, which comes a few days after a leftist guest preacher during a homily at TUCC issued a crude racial attack on Hillary Clinton. Also, Obama’s campaign website did not mention the resignation.

Does this mean, as per my March 2007 statement, that Obama has now expunged his disqualification for the presidency? No, of course not. When I wrote that, I knew only the bare bones of his church’s philosophy as posted at its website, not the much more shocking things we learned a year later about TUCC’s black-racist theology which identifies the white race with the principle of evil, as well as about Jeremiah’s Wright’s 30 year career of crude hate-mongering and Obama’s many affirmations of the central importance of Wright in his life as his moral and spiritual guide. In light of that fuller picture of the church and of Wright and of Obama’s relationship with him, Obama’s departure from the church at this very late date cannot cleanse him of the racist theology he has followed for most of his adult life. There are certain things that simply disqualify a person from the presidency of the United States.

But of course the leftist mainstream media will not see it like that. They will joyfully declare that Obama has wiped out his past and is now as innocent as a new born babe, a purification that opens the path to a Democratic Restoration:

Now is the early spring of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of Africa;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon his candidacy
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

The MSM will further argue that since Obama has resigned his church, it is illegitimate, divisive, and racist for anyone to bring up again the question of his membership in it. They will say—as Obama has said many times—that to demand of him an explanation of why he was a devout attendee at that hate-filled congregation for 20 years is a “distraction” from the issues that really matter to America.

Thus, under liberalism, the guilt of white racism remains forever, no matter what heroic sacrifices whites perform to be forgiven of it, but the guilt of black racism is erased with a single press release.

However, the messiah may still not be out of the woods. If it is now the official liberal position that Obama’s dissociation of himself from America-reviling black racists is both necessary and sufficient to remove his disqualification for the presidency, then to be qualified for the presidency he must also dissociate himself from his charming wife.

The meaning of that last comment is partly literal, partly figurative. As a result of Obama’s own conscious choices and commitments, his adult life has been formed by and immersed in theological black racialism, anti-whiteness, and radical leftism. He married himself to those things, and it is far too late for him to pretend otherwise.

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Paul K. writes:

Notice that Obama can’t even quit his creepy, radical church without casting blame on the rest of us, while accepting none for himself:

Obama told reporters he didn’t want his “church experience to be a political circus—I think most American people will understand that, and wouldn’t want to subject their church to that, either.”

Obama said he also regrets “all the attention that my campaign has visited on” the church.

“We had reporters grabbing church bulletins and calling up the sick and the shut-in,” he said. “That’s just not how people should have to operate in their church.

LA replies:

Here he comes closest to the truth:

Obama said he has “tremendous regard” for the church community, but said he could not live with a situation where everything said in the church, including comments by a guest pastor, “will be imputed to me, even if they conflict with my long-held, views, statements and principles.”

Half the truth is here: that the TUUC is unacceptably offensive, which he’s never admitted before.

But half the truth is concealed, which is that he committed himself to and has been a full participant in that unacceptably offensive church for most of his adult life.

LA writes:

There is a lively thread beneath the Politic article, many of the comments echoing this one:

You quit the most racist church in America 20 years too late.

And a commenter reminds us of an early Obama slogan that has been rather spectacularly canceled out over the last couple of months:

NO MORE DRAMA VOTE OBAMA.

How much advertising surrounding this candidate has been exposed as false? How much more remains? American politics is about finding out!

Larry G. writes:

I’m sure I’m not the only person who is deeply troubled not just by Obama’s behavior, but by that of his church’s entire congregation. Here we see the cream of the crop of black America engaging in weekly orgies of racial hatred, mockery, and blaming their inadequacies on others. These are not thugs and ghetto dwellers, these are members of the “talented tenth” that is supposedly capable of operating in society on a par with whites, and yet this is how they behave and think when whites aren’t listening. It doesn’t matter what kind of “good works” the church may be engaged in; I’m sure the KKK did good works in the community back in the day, as Hamas and Hezbollah do today. It doen’t change who they are, deep down in their souls.

Some black commenters say that most black churches are like this—which means that most blacks behave like this—while others deny it and say they’ve never encountered such a thing. We don’t really know. But as a result of this revelation, many white people will now be very suspicious of the goals and motives of blacks they previously would have considered trustworthy.

Kevin writes:

I don’t agree with you on this one. You said:

Here he comes closest to the truth:

Obama said he has “tremendous regard” for the church community, but said he could not live with a situation where everything said in the church, including comments by a guest pastor, “will be imputed to me, even if they conflict with my long-held, views, statements and principles.”

Half the truth is here: that the TUUC is unacceptably offensive, which he’s never admitted before.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see him saying this. Rather he seems to be saying that he doesn’t want the liability of being associated with everything said in church such as by a guest pastor. He is saying that individual people who speak there will say things he supposedly disagrees with, but in no way is he saying that the church itself and its basic teachings are unacceptably offensive. The other point that he seems to be emphasizing according to the article is that all this attention that the church is getting because of him is disruptive for the church and not fair to the church. So he doesn’t want to be attacked because of the church, and he doesn’t want the church to be attacked and suffer because of his campaign. I still don’t see where he is in any way admitting that the church itself and its basic theology are offensive.

LA replies:

He’s not saying directly that TUUC is unacceptably offensive. But I think he’s at least strongly implying that things keep being said at TUUC that are unacceptably offensive. Why would it be a problem for the things said in the church to be imputed to him, unless they were unacceptable? He previously himself strongly attacked Pflegger’s (sp?) comments as something completely out of keeping with his own views of what is right and true. And he does the same here, though less strongly.

Of course, he throws in that other stuff, as you point out, that the church is somehow an innocent victim.

I may be over-reading it, but I think his comment is at least a tacit admission that there’s a problem with this church as a church, which is something he never said before.

Adela G. writes:

It’s not enough for Obama to resign from his church or even jettison his grievance-mongering black wife to demonstrate that he has rejected black racism. If the lengthy quotations Steve Sailer has posted from one of Obama’s autobiographies are any indication, he was already anti-white as a teen, long before his marriage or his immersion in the black community of Chicago. In essence, Obama would have to repudiate his entire identity in order to be free of black racism. His genetic identity is bi-racial but his personal and social identity are those of an anti-white black.

LA replies:

Not having read his whole book, we don’t know if when he got older he criticized his more youthful views.

Also, his ridiculous “punch in the stomach” shock at his grandmother’s blameless fear of the black panhandler was not different in kind from what a lot of oversensitive young white people would feel at some “racist” comment by their parents.

I do think he should be strongly criticized and questioned over both the passage in the book and even more over his despicable treatment of that episode and his further comments about his grandmother in his race speech and subsequent comments in 2008. But again, what he said there is not different in kind from the standard anti-white attitude of many white left-liberals and leftists, so I don’t know that that would be disqualifying, at least from the point of view of the contemporary “centrist” American consensus, which now of course includes left-liberalism.

More damaging than what we’ve seen in his book, and sufficiently supportive of your main point, is his long membership in that vile Farrakhanite church. That’s what really gets me, and, frankly, personally angers and disgusts me. And that’s what—even by the debased, leftist standards of today’s America—I thought would be generally seen as disqualifying. But, to my shock, it turned out that it was not generally seen as disqualifying. Thus the new consensus is that life-long membership in a Farrakhan-type, white- and America-hating church is not a bar to the presidency.

Adela G. replies:

You write: “But again, what he [Obama] said there [in one of his autobiographies] is not different in kind from the standard anti-white attitude of many white left-liberals and leftists, so I don’t know that that would be disqualifying, at least from the point of view of the contemporary centrist American consensus, which now of course includes left-liberalism.”

The fact that Obama’s attitude is no different from the standard anti-white attitude of many whites themselves is no argument in its defense. A person seeking to govern a white-majority nation should not entertain anti-white ideology, period. As his marriage, decades-long membership at TUCC and various “radicial” associations attest, his anti-white ideology is no mere youthful flirtation but a lifelong committment.

Forgive my bluntness but my only interest in any spurious “centrist” American consensus (including, of couse, left-liberalism) is in detecting its vulnerabilities so it can be destroyed.

When I refer to Obama’s life-long antipathy toward whites as disqualifying him to hold political office in America, I mean disqualifying him in the eyes of the majority of white Americans who I believe would revile him were they as aware of his views as we political junkies are.

LA replies:

I understand Adela’s point. But my point was not to say why conservatives should oppose Obama for the presidency; it was to say why even the “mainstream” liberal consensus of America ought to disqualify Obama for the presidency.

John D. writes:

Regarding Obama’s quitting TUCC, we should keep in mind that Obama has quit his church, not denounced it. In fact, just the opposite:

At his press conference, Obama was asked about whether he was denouncing Trinity.

“I am not denouncing the church. I am not interested in people who want me to denounce the church because it’s not a church worthy of denouncing. And so if they’ve seen caricatures of the church and accept those caricatures despite my insistence that’s not what the church is about, then there’s not much I can do about it,” Obama said.

You state:

I may be over-reading it, but I think his comment is at least a tacit admission that there’s a problem with this church as a church, which is something he never said before.

The above quote by Obama might disprove your statement. He continues to defend the church as being “caricatured” when in fact we know that these controversial statements by Wright, Pfleger…etc.are the quintessence of TUCC and its Black Liberation Theology along with the racist diatribe that we see being approved of by the thousands of applauding congregants including the current Rev. Moss. Obama’s twenty year association cannot be dismissed just because he perceives that we want it to be so, and he knows it.

LA replies:

Well, I wouldn’t expect him to denounce his own church, would you? Isn’t that asking a bit much? Would you respect someone who denounced the church he had belonged to for 20 years?

It’s a mixed picture. Obama is a profoundly dishonest person, a narcissist whose life consists of a series of constructed identities. And like any dishonest politician, he issues contradictory statements to cover different bases. I agree the paragraph you quote sounds as though he’s defending the church completely; and I’m disgusted at his calling the criticisms of his church “caricatures.” But in other passages he does clearly imply that there is something problematic about this church that made him feel it was necessary to leave it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 31, 2008 11:42 PM | Send