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By J. MATTHEW COBB ON THE CONSCIOUS OF MOST AMERICANS during this important and crucial voting season, as eyes face onward to the 2008 presidential election, are subjects and topics that drive close to home including homeland security, foreign policy, global warming, immigration, the economy, the Iraq war and healthcare. But the major talk of the town, in the heat for the Democratic presidential nomination, makes an about shift towards religion. Whomever said church and state couldn’t work together should be arrested for lying under oath, because every major news network and media outlet focuses their attention on the ministry of Dr. Jeremiah Wright, the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ; a popular African-American pastor that received major political attention for its close association with presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama. So close are those connections that Obama happens to be a member of the prestigious of over twenty years. And Wright’s influence on Sen. Obama has been nothing but extraordinary. Wright is accredited to be the inspiration behind the title of Obama’s best-selling book The Audacity of Hope and also presided over Obama’s wedding - even baptizing his children. And you can even sense throughout Sen. Obama’s speeches that he has a strong connection to faith and has learned from the master preachers of modern Christianity. That’s probably why it felt quite unusual to hear Sen. Obama utter his distaste towards certain inflammatory rhetroic echoing from sermons preached by his mentor; which circulated heavily across the Internet and on ABC and FOX newscasts across the globe. When the remarks initially hit the press, Obama’s position towards his pastor remained defensive and aimed to bring understanding to Wright’s compassionate agenda. But the messages continued to leak to the public through cycles of replays on TV and with millions surfing posts made on YouTube and the message became clearer. Clips of Wright declaring that believers should pray that “God damn America” for its history of racism and general accusations of governmental-funded genocide on African-Americans by creating the HIV virus and also accused the government of flooding black communities with drugs. At a Dallas theology summit on Saturday, Reverend Abery Hendricks, a professor of biblical interpretation at New York Theological Seminary spoke on patriotism and its relation to the black community; in light of Rev. Wright’s remarks. "Patriotism should not be some version of 'America, love it or leave it,’ but 'America, love your neighbor as yourself.' Not only should we say, 'God bless America,' but like the kind-hearted Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, we should say, 'God bless us every one.'”Rev. Wright was supposed to appear on the summit’s panel this weekend but failed to attend citing security concerns amidst the troubling controversy surrounding his comments. Overwhelmingly across the polls, African-Americans have showed their support for the Illinois senator - not just because of race - but because of Obama’s inspiring messages. And you can see the big advertisements endorsing Obama even on gospel-related online magazines - from GospelCity.com to GospelFlava.com. But a divide is sure to be present as the rhetoric of Rev. Jeremiah Wright now becomes the center of attention and may possibly put a dent in the belief that Obama can help unite the country if elected president. Obama has distanced himself publicly from Wright and even announced on Thursday last week during a taping of the popular day-time talk show The View, that while he never heard of messages with that kind of tone in his history attending the church, that he would left Trinity if Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright had not retired. That taping was broadcast on Friday. Sen. Obama, after Sen. Hilary Clinton, his only rival for the Democratic presidential bid, announced she would have left the church as well if her pastor spoke against the country as Wright did. During a live press conference, Obama described the history of injustice that fueled Wright's comments, while also condemning his pastor's statements and acknowledging the resentment of whites. It may have been the biggest blow to hit below Obama’s belt for his presidential campaign. An adviser of Obama spoke to a fund-raising lunch in New York’s Manhattan about how serious the Rev. Wright controversy was to their campaign. “Probably the low point in the campaign occurred last Saturday . . . with the Rev. Wright experience, and everybody was asking ourselves, 'How much damage would it do and why and could it be repaired?'" said Greg Craig, one of Obama's chief foreign policy advisers. Craig spoke at a sold-out, $1,000-a-person fund-raising lunch in Manhattan headlined by Obama."And I can tell you the campaign was running around just as much on a roller coaster as the rest of us were,” said Craig. The tapes continue to surface even after last week’s scare as sermons from Trinity’s pulpit fueled with racial tension and even greater hostility towards Sen. Hillary Clinton blasted across the Internet. NBC reported Thursday that bulletins published by Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side included "anti-Israel" material and a piece calling Italians "garlic noses" and references to "White supremacists" who "run the U.S. government." The “garlic nose” reference was even discussed by The View co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck on their Thursday taping - right before Obama sat down with the crew. “I think any sort of classification and bigotry to any group is not okay,” Hasselbeck commented. “And we are learning more and more things that he [Wright] has said. That poses the challenge to Obama: does he have to keep defending him from time to time.” Rev. Wright has been praised for years for his service to the African-American community and for his spellbound dramatic sermons. And while his retirement from full-time ministry may be one of the events that will best be remembered by his beloved church family, a new generation of religion followers will unfortunately remember for the rest of their lives the opinionated Anti-American sound bytes that the media focused on. At home, Wright is a hero. Abroad, many Americans, regardless of skin tone, may not feel the same way. And it’s all because in reality there is a very thin line between church and state. OTHER VALUABLE RESOURCES TO LOOK INTO:
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