CNN ticker--Obama's Church and the Easter Sermon

[joeybee12]

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/

CHICAGO (AP) — The new pastor of Barack Obama's Chicago church said during Easter Sunday services that recent national scrutiny of the church is a test that will only make the congregation stronger.

"Any time you go through a crucifixion experience … eventually they have to lift you up," said the Rev. Otis Moss III, who did not shy away from the controversy surrounding his predecessor at Trinity United Church of Christ, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

Wright retired from Trinity's pulpit last month but retains the title of senior pastor. Video from some of his more inflammatory sermons has surfaced online and on television in recent weeks.

Moss said Sunday that Wright's critics and the news media "are just lifting us up to give us the opportunity to speak love to this situation

-------------------

Umm...even those of you who support Obama and Wright, don't you think this new guy could have chosen his words better? i mean, for Christians, the crucifixion not only means he was nailed to the cross and died, but that Christ took the sins of the world upon himself as he did so, suffering more than any other man ever has before or ever will. A little harsher than a week of bad press, don't you think?

[Bolo Boffin]

1. I think his words were perfectly chosen. n/t

[ellacott]

2. I don't see anything wrong with what he said

As a Chistian we are taught that we all have a cross to bear. Crucifixion was not done to only Jesus.

[ingac70]

3. Unless you are a member of that congregation....

I really don't think the content of their Easter sermon is any of your business.

[joeybee12]

11. so, according to that reasoning, no Christian should ever listen to what a Jewish rabbi

has to say or a Muslim since there's no point in trying to understand how different faiths see things.

[elixir]

4. I would imagine distancing themselves from any inflammatory or suggestive language is the

best way to go.

[uponit7771]

34. Americans are starting to figure out that most of what Wright said was correct or taken out of...

...context.

I don't care if someone thinks it's "inflamatory"

[shraby]

5. Personally, I don't care what the new pastor

preached in his church for the Easter sermon. What I DO care about is that 4000 young men have died for a lie and more will continue to die for that lie until someone calls a halt to the carnage.
I DO care about the fact that this country is broke financially and getting broker by the day.
I Do care that my country is torturing people.
I Do care that my country is wiretapping people without warrants.
I Do care that there is no habeus corpus anymore.
We've taken our eyes off the ball people and it's time to yell until congress makes these wrongs right.

[ellacott]

7. Very, very true

The sad thing is that I don't think it can be changed

[Tatiana]

13. THIS is what it's all about and what we are fighting for. Not this time. Never again. n/t

[angie_love]

6. The AP article was a blatant hitpiece. And didn't tell the whole story

[BeyondGeography]

8. Let's start monitoring every word a preacher says about another preacher

That's the way to solve what ails us in this country.

Try not to let the MSM turn you into a complete moron, ok?

[Teaser]

9. Uh, most Christians looks on individual suffering

as "taking up the cross" as well.

[joeybee12]

14. Glad you speak for most Christians...I dont see it that way because

taking up the cross and the crucifixion are two different things..Christ died for our sins and all...if we suffer, it's not like we're doing it to redeem mankind.

[ellacott]

24. Some preachers even say to nail your problems on the cross

[Teaser]

26. All suffering is to redeem mankind

Or just tell us Quakers we're infidels and be done with it.

[underpants]

10. Hagee, Roberston, Falwell, Dobson, Rushdoony.....

[Stephanie]

12. Are you people ever going to lay off the man's CHURCH???

I have NEVER in my life seen a candidate have to defend every word ever spoken in his CHURCH. It's absurd.

Accept defeat and move on, you're an embarrassment to the Democratic Party.

[joeybee12]

17. Grow up please...all I did was post this, and I have a problem with

one of his comments...the problem with you Bots is a refusal to accept that other people see things differently, and that your worldview is the only one that matters...this comment made me cringe, as did BO's comparison of his pastor with his grandmother, his own flesh and blood...

[EFerrari]

Aren't you criticizing this pastor because he sees something differently

than you do?

[Stephanie]

39. Obama is NOT HIS PASTOR - he's not responsible for every word the man says

You people are absurd. Why don't you take a look at the rightwing cult Mrs. Clinton has belonged to since 1993?

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html

Hillary's Prayer: Hillary Clinton's Religion and Politics
September 1, 2007

---snip---

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. "A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation," says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. "I don't....there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer."

***

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

***

Coe's friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe's guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protégé, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus' teachings.

The Fellowship's long-term goal is "a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." According to the Fellowship's archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship's God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton, says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.

***

These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives' group into what may be Coe's most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.

Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn't condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.

Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons' approach to faith-based initiatives "set the stage for Bush." Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right.

Liberal rabbi Michael Lerner, whose "politics of meaning" Clinton made famous in a speech early in her White House tenure, sees the senator's ambivalence as both more and less than calculated opportunism. He believes she has genuine sympathy for liberal causes—rights for women, gays, immigrants—but often will not follow through. "There is something in her that pushes her toward caring about others, as long as there's no price to pay. But in politics, there is a price to pay."

[Marie26]

15. Where is Wright, anyway?

He seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.

[ingac70]

18. He retired over a month ago. n/t

[Marie26]

21. Not because

of the "Pastorgate" scandal? That broke about a month ago, too. I'm surprised that he hasn't appeared on any of those pundit shows to defend himself, or Obama.

[ingac70]

27. This story didn't break in Feb....

That is when he retired.

[EFerrari]

29. He went on sabbatical after he retired and no, not because of Faux.

[ingac70]

31. ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8YmQUqj15g

[rox63]

36. He has retired after 37 years as a preacher n/t

[Recursion]

16. I think it's an apt metaphor

That church, which had been minding its own business and helping the poor, the homeless, and people with HIV/AIDS was run through the wringer and made to "bear the sin" of our nation's refusal to do anything about racial distrust and animosity.

[joeybee12]

20. well, when you make a speech endorsing a candidate and saying Hilary

ain't an "N" you're hardly minding your own business.

[Recursion]

37. I do think he crossed the line there by getting so candidate-specific

The "never been called a nigger" bit, however, is a perfectly fair point for a black preacher talking to a mostly black audience about how to deal with racism.

[DrFunkenstein]

19. Who Are You to Tell People What The Crucifixion Means?

People have been talking about the significance of the central event in Christian fait for 2,008 years now. What people take away personally from the passion of Christ might mean something different to a group of people who endured 400 years of chattel slavery.

[joeybee12]

22. did I tell people? no, your knee-jerk reaction interpreted it that way..

...that's the way I was raised (although I don't belong to a church anymore) but you cannot possibly fathom that chritianity is seen differently and followed differently by other people...you are as bigoted as any of the right-wing nutjobs out there if you refuse to accept people's differences.

[Tatiana]

23. Those here who ACTUALLY WATCHED THE SERMON found no fault with Moss' words.

But go ahead and keep http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5222682">recycling this lame attempted smear.

For those interested in truth, running commentary was posted here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5220551

[K Gardner]

25. For the love of JESUS ! I watched the entire sermon yesterday, every minute of it. I laughed and I

cried and I prayed and I wept, and I felt more spiritual joy than I had in a very long time. I am a Catholic. I was NOT offended. I was uplifted and overjoyed.

The media is WRONG. They ARE and HAVE crucified these people, this church. They, like the OP, has not bothered to watch the entire sermon. If anyone would, like the people here who watched with me yesterday, they wouldn't be able to write such "opinions" as those above.

Rush to judgement - that's how wrongs are commited.

Go to the Trinity website and watch the sermon, please, before you speak.

[K Gardner]

28. Rev. Moss' Prayer on Easter Sunday, from Trinity United Church of Christ

(not complete, but close)

Prayer: "We can feel that you are doing something so amazing.. people from around the country are getting a glimpse of your Son. We will tell our children that we stood on the right side of history. When forces came against us, we stood steadfast upon Your Word. We will tell them we are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We will tell our children, at one moment in time when the spotlight was on us, we used that moment to glorify You, to bless those who are on the margins. We give you thanks, Yes We Do. We thank our enemies who are confused friends. We thank you for hundreds of emails of people apologizing because they were manipulated. We thank you for the prayers of those around the country. We don't know what you are about to do, but you are about to break down some barriers, about to loose some chains. We don't know what you are going to do, but someone is about to be set free. Let your anointing fall in this place, that even when people drive by, they just have to say Thank You, because they can feel the Spirit emanating from this House. It is in your name we pray, the name above all other names. You've already been through this Lord. This is no comparison to what you did on Calvalry. We lift up your name and offer this prayer right now, in the name of Jesus, that the people of God may say, Amen !

[democrattotheend]

30. Yes, I agree

He could have chosen better words. Even though I think what he said is largely accurate.

[EFerrari]

32. Isn't that what preachers do, compare incidents in Christ's life

to illustrate human life?

[Orsino]

33. Makes sense to me...

...but the Crucifixion is a powerful symbol, and anyone who wants to be offended probably will be.

[Connie_Corleone]

35. If you don't like his words, too bad. It's not your church. Why do you care?

I seem to remember people singing in church "take up your cross and follow me".

[qanda]

38. Now every preacher has to measure their words to benefit you

I was born and raised in the church. My mother pastors a pentecostal church in one of the whitest organizations in existence. I have heard this type of example throughout my lifetime in church. Of course he wasn't speaking of a literal Crucifixion-- that's just silly. Anyone who finds fault in what he said is just looking for something to be offended by.

[NoodleyAppendage]

40. ENOUGH WITH THE PASTOR BULLSHIT. WHO GIVES A SHIT WHAT ANY PASTOR SAYS??

If our country was truly divorced from church/state encroachment problems, this continual masturbation of pastor crap would be a moot issue.

ENOUGH.

J