I know this is hard for DU

[againes654]

Many here do not agree/understand church specifically Christianity, but it is possible to go to a church, even for a number of years, and not follow the pastor around blindly agreeing with everything. It is possible to attend church regularly, even pay a significant amount of money, listen to each sermon intently, and not always agree, but still come back the next weekend.

Church is not a cult, well not always, I realize that there are exceptions, but I promise you that Obama's church is not one of them. Obama doesn't have to agree with EVERY WORD Rev. Wright said. My pastor has said many things that I don't always agree with. I can think for myself, and so can Obama.

This is RW rhetoric, and if you buy into this pastorgate crap, then you are beyond help.

[David Dunham]

Many Americans wonder why Obama was a church member for 20 years

[againes654]

6. Ummmm

I didn't realize that attending a church for 20 years was a bad thing.

[sudopod]

8. Many Americans think the Sun revolves around the earth.

Many Americans are pretty damn stupid. :3

[merwin]

14. Many Americans still think GW Bush is a good president.

Not a lot, but many do.

[backscatter712]

31. The pastor is not the church.

The pastor speaks for the church, provides leadership and direction, but he is not the church.

The congregation - the people that come together to pray and worship, are the church.

If Obama did what so many demand of him - leave TUCC, he doesn't just leave Rev. Wright, but he leaves the entire TUCC community.

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to go to church to be part of the community, not just to be led by the nose by the preacher.

It is possible to continue to go to the church, even though you disagree with the preacher, to be a part of the church community.

[againes654]

34. Exactly

Thank you!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. Only dumb, shallow, bigoted ones.

:shrug:

[olkaz]

39. Many Americans find "Larry the Cable Guy" funny.

[WCGreen]

1. I believe that Obama was involved with his church for

the community outreach and all the good they brought to the community...

In many minority communities, the church is the only stable institution...

I know that is the way it is in Cleveland...

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Do Obama people ever get tired of frantically trying to convince

the world that he isn't full of shit up to his ears?

[againes654]

7. A shit load of DELAGATES

[sudopod]

9. OH SNAP nt

[rucky]

23. We're trying to convince you

to address the possibility that he may be our nominee against John McCain (remember him?)

[Neshanic]

27. No. They never do. It's amazing.

[againes654]

37. That is ALL you have to add to this conversation?????

Great, thanks you your meaningless addition.

[Alter Ego]

51. Do Hillary people ever get tired of trying

to rationalize her incredibly controversial voting record and the filthy campaign she's run so far?

Personally, I have no problem defending someone who won't throw his principles under the bus to satiate the fucking media.

[Swamp Rat]

3. k&r

:hi:

[usregimechange]

4. You should apologize and denounce every such thing your pastor said! How dare you!

:sarcasm:

[rodeodance]

5. BO brought this onto himself. Get used to it and stop blaming others!

[againes654]

10. Exactly whom did I blame????

Can you calm down just a bit, I know that this race is getting rough, but you must have my post confused with someone else.

Jeeeezzzzz

[rodeodance]

11. you blamed the RW. But they only took advantage of BO poor judgment of

20 year association. but BO did it by him self.

[babylonsister]

28. Now you're defending the r/w? Oye. Says a lot about you. nt

[Alter Ego]

52. Yeah, you're right

Barack should have just encapsulated himself in a bubble from the day he was born to make SURE that the media would have nothing damning from his past when his planned-for run for President FINALLY happened, all according to THE PLAN.

Not like Saint Hillary, who shits cinnamon rolls and is in NO way associated with any unsavory individuals. :sarcasm:

[2rth2pwr]

12. If DU is this worked up, imagine middle America

there are many church going people in this country, I have a feeling that they

won't be very happy to hear that he was there for 20 yrs soaking it in.

[chknltl]

16. Well if that be the case what should I do? Lemme guess:

Vote for your candidate because he or she is obviously better off than my chosen whackadoo. Guess what? I'm stickin to my whackadoo! Maybe you should stick to your whackadoo and perhaps Middle America will find a nice comfy spot around one or the other of these nutters on their own terms. As long as they don't select mCcain, we can both be somewhat happy.

How's that? Think we might get back to the real issues now, (you know, like the fake war and the dieing economy and stuff), or do we need to keep distractin ourselves with this? Tomorrow is an American Idol night. I suspect Middle America will be much more intrigued with the stuff Simon Cowell will be saying than the stuff we here in DU will still be kicking and screaming about over and over and over.... Why do I see a pattern here??? DU-American Idol... American Idol-DU....hmmmm
Is it me or is there sumthing similar going on between these two. Perhaps I am just too distracted to see it but I am sure there is a conection....
:patriot:

[theredpen]

24. DU has a well-established anti-clerical bias

I don't think DU reflects the tenor of church-going middle Americans. Chruch-going middle Americans understand that after you've been at a church for many, many years, it's difficult to just up and leave. Church-going middle Americans understand how you can get attached to a pastor, even if that pastor occasionally says things you strongly disagree with.

[againes654]

30. Thank you

You get the point of my post.

[IndependentDem]

13. do we know what Obama's definition of "being a member of the church" is...

im just curious. i have many family members who "go to church" and have a particular church they consider themselves members at... but that doesnt necessarily mean they go every week. maybe Obama is associated with the church and its community outreach programs and things of that nature but doesnt attend on a weekly basis. maybe the whole being a member of the church thing has just been a big cover-up to hide the fact that he is really a muslim!! j/k

[chknltl]

18. Well, well well! I didn't know that Sen. Obama was a Muslim!

The things one learns in the great DU!

[ossman]

15. K&R

[Window]

17. K/R.

:kick:

[TML]

19. When I used to go to church

There were a total of six different services per week, and the same priest did not preside over all of them.

[theredpen]

25. Good point. TUCC has three different preachers.

[girl gone mad]

20. True. I went to church for 18 years..

Sunday school, bible study and catechism, too.

And, yet, I am and always have been an atheist.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

21. Has Hillary denounced the United Methodist Church consideration of divestment from Israel? nt

[barack the house]

22. BRAVO *standing o* \o/

[Exilednight]

26. A long time ago, when I use to actually go to church, I had two pastors, one that I agreed with.....

and another I did not. I still liked the pastor that I didn't usually agree with, but I attended my church because of the pastor I did agree with, and I was forced to.

[againes654]

32. I go to church to worship God

Again, I realize that this is foreign on DU. When I go to church, it has absolutly nothing to do with the preacher, the members, the clothing, or the music. I go for God. I think that is why DU is having a hard time with this.

[Scurrilous]

29. Good post.

:thumbsup:

[jasmine621]

35. But we would not excuse Falwell, Dobson, or Robertson or their

associates or their political candidates, would we?

[stillcool]

38. So you compare one sermon...

where a Black Pastor speaks about life as a black man in a white world to the long-running commentary provided by Dobson, Falwell, and Robertson. I don't know about you, but I would need a tad more information before I would be willing to add Reverend Wright to the distinguished honor these other men hold. Actually, come to think of it. Reverend Wright's sermon could be a response to the sermons put forth by those very same 'white' men, of the same era. Now that would be an interesting story. Tracing back the roots of all these people you wish to lump together.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

43. Do you progressives really take issue with the heart of Wright's prophetic critique?

I'm surprised to be reading all this here.

Guess we're destined to a long life of white men with shellacked hair and the personalitly of life insurance salesmen who run their political lives by holding up their wet fingers feeling for the breeze for president.

[stillcool]

50. I don't. .

I think those fanning the flames of racism are from both the Clinton Campaign and the Right wing. A double-whammy of creating a false reality. I don't think anyone wants to talk about the validity of Reverend Wright's claims. There is no place for the unvarnished truth in our Politics or in the media.

Reverend Wright is a pastor of a church in a community. He speaks of the life he has known. I think he was spot on, about how our foreign policy has effected the people of the world, and what that means for our future. Perhaps it would have been better if he had put it this way:

Blowback
excerpted from the book
Blowback The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
by Chalmers Johnson
Henry Holt, 2000
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blowback_CJohnson/Blowback_BCJ.html

p8
The term "blowback," which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use, is starting to circulate among students of international relations. It refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of "terrorists" or "drug lords" or "rogue states" or "illegal arms merchants" often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.
p9
One man's terrorist is, of course, another man's freedom fighter, and what U.S. officials denounce as unprovoked terrorist attacks on its innocent citizens are often meant as retaliation for previous American imperial actions. Terrorists attack innocent and undefended American targets precisely because American soldiers and sailors firing cruise missiles from ships at sea or sitting in B-52 bombers at extremely high altitudes or supporting brutal and repressive regimes from Washington seem invulnerable. As members of the Defense Science Board wrote in a 1997 report to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. In addition, the military asymmetry that denies nation states the ability to engage in overt attacks against the United States drives the use of transnational actors that is, terrorists from one country attacking in another."
The most direct and obvious form of blowback often occurs when the victims fight back after a secret American bombing, or a U.S.-sponsored campaign of state terrorism, or a CIA-engineered overthrow of a foreign political leader. All around the world today, it is possible to see the groundwork being laid for future forms of blowback.
------------------------------------------
Terrorism(by definition)strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The innocent of the twenty-first century are going to harvest unexpected blowback disasters from the imperialist escapades of recent decades. Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price-individually and collectively-for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene. Before the damage of heedless triumphalist acts and the triumphalist rhetoric and propaganda that goes with them becomes irreversible, it is important to open a new discussion of our global role during and after the Cold War...
------------------------
"Blowback" is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown. Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States. But it is blowback in its larger aspect-the tangible costs of empire-that truly threatens it. Empires are costly operations, and they become more costly by the year. The hollowing out of American industry, for instance, is a form of blowback-an unintended negative consequence of American policy- even though it is seldom recognized as such. The growth of militarism in a once democratic society is another example of blowback. Empire is the problem. Even though the United States has a strong sense of invulnerability and substantial military and economic tools to make such a feeling credible, the fact of its imperial pretensions means that a crisis is inevitable. More imperialist projects simply generate more blowback. If we do not begin to solve problems in more prudent and modest ways, blowback will only become more intense.

The American Empire: 1992 to present
from the book
Killing Hope
by William Blum
2004 edition
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/American_Empire_KH2004.html

Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.
Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with Iraq.
This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed
And that is the way the empire grows-a base in every neighborhood, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-eight years after world War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty ears after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea.
"America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before," US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared in February 2002. Later that year, the US Defense Department announced: "The United States Military is currently deployed to more locations then it has been throughout history."

A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.

[BlackVelvet04]

36. This is about agreeing on something so fundamental as

hate of "whitey". When I was 17 years old I walked out of a church in a small southern town because a deacon said he didn't want any n*****s in his church. The church was taking a vote on whether or not to invite the black Baptist church to a Christmas gathering.

At 17 I had the courage of my convictions and walked out and suffered the consequences of white anger in this little town. Does Obama not have any courage to stand up for his supposed convictions? Does he have any convictions?

Actions speak louder than words.

[againes654]

40. Sometimes "standing up for your convictions"

doesn't mean you should walk out. This church has been cast in a light that is not fair. This church is not saying that white people are not allowed in the church, as was the church in your comparison. The church as a whole does ALOT of good work for the community.

I know MANY on DU feel that bushco either knew or had direct involvment in 9/11. There is a whole forum devoted to it. If you dare venture down there, good luck LOL. So if I were to hear a pastor say that 9/11 is America's chickens coming home to roost, I would probably agree, not walk out.

I understand why you would walk out of the church you spoke about. That is discrimination. Much different that what Rev. Wright said.

I attend an all black church in Texas. I am the ONLY white person that is a member of this church. My pastor often talks about helping the black community, or black youth. He stresses what adults should be doing to help. I don't walk out because he speaks only of the black community, I realize that is his base.

If I walked out of every place that something was said that I didn't like, I would stay at home all the time. You mean to tell me that you ALWAYS agree with everything that is said around you? You always agree with you boss?

[BlackVelvet04]

42. I don't think it's much different from what Wright said at all.....n/t

[againes654]

44. Why?

point me to a quote, and a link where Wright said "he didn't want white people in his church?"

[BlackVelvet04]

53. I didn't say he said the same thing...

I said it just doesn't sound different. hate is hate no matter how you couch it.

[againes654]

55. Not true

but nothing I say is going to make a difference to you so...........

[BlackVelvet04]

56. If you are trying to justify hate then no there isn't any point.....

hate is hate...period. Whether it is white for black or black for white, it's hate.

[againes654]

58. But what he said isn't hate

I am not justifying hate. I walked out of my job recently because of what I did consider hateful conversations towards gays. But you wouldn't know that about me. I know what hate is, I have been pulled over by the cops because my black husband, my hispanic child, and my white self were driving through the wrong part of town. What Rev. Wright said is not hate, but you seem to live in a black and white only world, is there no grey area?

[Texas Hill Country]

41. you oversimplify. They were close, he was the mentor, and you dont choose these churches if you...

dont believe some, or all, of that stuff.

[againes654]

46. Wow that is a broad assumption.

[leftstreet]

45. Can we PLEASE get back to separation of church and state?

Hello?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion....

[againes654]

49. Feel free to start your own post on that subject

This is my post, and I wrote about what I wanted to write about.

[goddess40]

47. If you don't speak up when you don't agree the church takes it as a nod

Church goers, as well as anyone that belongs to any organization, has a duty to speak up when their leader is off base. By saying nothing you are giving your stamp of approval to whatever nonsense is being said.

[againes654]

48. I never said that I don't speak up

I am not going to detail on DU what my pastor says that I don't agree with, or how I handled it. It is no ones business here. If you miss my point, then that is your loss.

I don't need anyone on this website to validate my religion, my beliefs, or my convections. I only wrote this post to explain a different side that I don't often see discussed here.

Feel free to leave the discussion if you are disgusted with your assumptions of my church, or my post.

[goddess40]

57. Sorry, my post should have been more general

I just meant to point out that if you belong to any organization and don't like a position they take if you don't speak up than the fact that you attend means you approve. It really isn't even about religion, it's about holding our representative responsible.

[LittleClarkie]

54. My pastor is more conservative than I am

He believes the rhetoric about Chavez, and voted for Bush in 2000. Not sure who he voted for in 2004, but he said he couldn't vote for Bush again. Wasn't sure he could vote for Kerry though, because he'd absorbed some of the smear vet stuff.

He's a simple man. Likes tractors. Sometimes I think he'd be a farmer if he wasn't a pastor.

So some things I listen to him on, esp. biblical scholarship, and some things I take with a grain of salt, like his political views.

[againes654]

59. Yep mine too

I have kind of a funny story. He is very involved in mission work in Hatti. When he first started, he would add an s to the end. I don't even think he was doing it on purpose. He would say .....Hattis, which sounded like hades, which is hell. It was always funny to me.

Sometimes he will get to preaching hard, and say "amen benches". Which sounds ok when I type it, but he has a strong southern accent, so it sounds like "amen bitches". It is so hard for me to not laugh out loud.

[Unbowed]

60. The Catholic church has been riddled with scandal and there have been some pretty

outrageous statements by high-level bishops and even the Pope. Should all Catholics leave the Church? What about gay Catholics or Catholic women who believe in a woman's right to choose? The Church is also a rather sexist institution. AS a matter of fact, the Bible itself is sexist. There are more than a few outrageous statements in the Bible. Nobody is going around rejecting the Bible or Catholic or Christians though.

Everything needs to be taken in context. And taken selectively. Most Christians don't believe everything in the Bible as literal truth. Well, the fundies do...