Obama decries pastor's remarks

CHICAGO — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, is no longer affiliated with Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign after fresh scrutiny Friday about comments that Obama called "inflammatory and appalling."

Obama called the statements appearing on television and the Internet "completely unacceptable and inexcusable" in a Fox News interview and said they didn't reflect the kinds of sermons he had heard from Wright while attending services at Trinity.

Obama, a member of the church since the early 1990s, said he would have quit Trinity had such statements been "the repeated tenor of the church. ... I wouldn't feel comfortable there."

Last month, in a meeting with Jewish leaders in Cleveland, Obama, D-Ill., said Wright was "like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with."

But more examples of Wright's rhetoric surfaced this week, including a sermon the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which he suggested the United States brought them on itself.

"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," Wright said. "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."

In a letter to The Huffington Post Web site Friday afternoon — and later in TV interviews — Obama went further than he previously had in distancing himself from Wright. "All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn," Obama wrote. "They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country."

Videos of Wright's sermons have been out for years but have attracted new scrutiny recently because of a combination of factors.

These include an IRS investigation into whether Trinity should lose its tax-exempt status after a speech that Obama gave last year to church members, and last year the church's magazine honored Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan with an award in Wright's name.

In a 2003 sermon, Wright said blacks should condemn the United States. "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. 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."

Wright also once said Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn't know what it's like to be a black man trying to hail a cab in America or to be called a racial slur, said rich whites control the country and has spoken of the "U.S. of KKK-A."

He also has suggested the U.S. played a role in the spread of the AIDS virus: "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

On Friday, the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain forwarded a Wall Street Journal opinion piece to reporters in which Wright was quoted as saying, "Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run," and accusing the United States of importing drugs, exporting guns and training murderers.

In an MSNBC interview, Obama said he did not "repudiate the man" and added: "I have known him 17 years. He helped bring me to Jesus and helped bring me to church. He and I have a relationship; he's like an uncle who talked to me, not about political things and social views, but faith and God and family."

Earlier Friday, Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said Wright would no longer serve in an unpaid and largely ceremonial role on Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee.

In the MSNBC interview, Obama said Wright reflected the anger and frustration of an older generation of African Americans who came of age during the civil-rights struggle of the 1960s.

Questions about Obama's religious beliefs have dogged him throughout his candidacy. He's had to fight against false Internet rumors suggesting he's really a Muslim intent on destroying the United States; now, his former pastor's words have become an issue.

Obama wrote on The Huffington Post that he never heard Wright say any of the statements that are "so contrary to my own life and beliefs," but they have raised legitimate questions about the nature of his relationship with the pastor and the church.

He said he joined Wright's church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, nearly 20 years ago. He said he knew Wright as a former Marine and respected biblical scholar who lectured at seminaries across the country.

Obama has credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his second book, "The Audacity of Hope."

Wright was to give a public invocation on the day in February 2007 that Obama launched his presidential bid on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. But in a move interpreted by some — including Wright — as an effort by the Obama campaign to create distance between the two, Wright's appearance was canceled.

In his Huffington Post letter Friday, Obama said that because of Wright's retirement and the Obama family's strong ties to Trinity and its community, "I did not think it appropriate to leave the church."

Material from The Associated Press, McClatchy Newspapers, The Washington Post and The New York Times

is included in this report.