He ran.
After twenty years of sitting with apparent acquiescence in the
pews of Trinity United Church of Christ, after doing a slow-motion
backslide from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright when the campaign
spotlight flickered on, a backslide that eventually ended in an
open break, Senator Barack Obama has now officially cut his ties
with Trinity UCC altogether. Faced with a choice between bringing
change to his own congregation, or simply turning his back, Obama
chose the latter.
As he would do in Iraq, so he has now done with Trinity. The
question now is, will he leave the United Church of Christ as
well?
In a halting South Dakota press conference, Obama had no answer
as to where he and wife Michelle would now be worshipping. Said the
denominational president of the UCC, the Reverend John Thomas:
“Obviously, we are saddened that Barack and Michelle Obama have
decided to resign their membership at Trinity United Church of
Christ in Chicago. And we are hopeful that, as they discern their
future church membership plans, that they will consider retaining
their United Church of Christ membership in another UCC
congregation.”
Thomas added: “It’s also important to name the painful reality
that many candidates and public officials now find it nearly
impossible to be an active member of a particular religious
community, given our divisive political culture. Faith is rooted in
community. Persons in public office should have the same
opportunity, as the rest of us, to experience the worship, prayers
and close personal friendships that congregational participation
affords.”
Poppycock.
The United Church of Christ has walked itself so far out on a
left-wing political limb that no one of any real sensibility could
not have seen this coming. Why in the world does Reverend Thomas
think that Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger were so
comfortable preaching the things they did when standing behind a
UCC pulpit in the first place? Because when the leaders of the
national UCC praise Puerto Rican terrorists, earn the UCC a
reputation among American Jews as anti-Semitic, give a pass to the
ludicrous notion that the U.S. government initiated the AIDS
epidemic as a way to control the black population, assert that the
real Axis of Evil is President Bush and the U.S. Congress and so on
and on endlessly going back several decades, why would either
Wright or Pfleger think what they were preaching would be seen as
sexist, racist bile?
Obama has yet to be asked one very simple question: Since he
could have done something about the ability of Wright or Pfleger to
be behind the Trinity pulpit, why didn’t he?
AS BOTH THE Reverend Thomas and Senator Obama are all too well
aware, even if the media is not, the very heart of UCC doctrine is
that the members run the church. At any time in the last twenty
years Barack Obama had the complete authority to say to Reverend
Wright and his fellow parishioners at Trinity: “I don’t think this
is a good idea. I think we have to stop wallowing in black
victimology. The things I am hearing from our pulpit sound racist,
divisive, hateful.” And then he could have begun an effort to
remove Wright from the pulpit, something every UCC member has the
ability to do.
He did not do it.
Obama froze. Or he chose — to do nothing. To give Wright his
“old uncle” a pass. Was it because he was afraid to damage his
political base? Was it because he was afraid he would anger Wright?
Or most interestingly of all — was it because he actually agreed
with what Wright was preaching? For that matter, since we now know
Obama was such a great friend to not only Wright but Father Pfleger
as well, is there any record of Obama objecting to Pfleger’s
activities in Chicago? Whatever the reason, the harsh and very
plain fact is that when it came to having the courage to bring
change to Trinity, to exercise good judgment, Barack Obama
displayed, as Theodore Roosevelt once said of William McKinley,
“the backbone of a chocolate eclair.”
Read again Reverend Thomas’s lament about candidates and public
officials finding “it nearly impossible to be an active member of a
particular religious community, given our divisive political
culture. Faith is rooted in community. Persons in public office
should have the same opportunity, as the rest of us, to experience
the worship, prayers and close personal friendships that
congregational participation affords.”
Catch that last phrase: “congregational participation.” When did
Barack Obama participate in the Trinity congregation by ever —
ever — standing up and saying that what was going on at Trinity
was wrong? Answer: he never did. His “congregational participation”
on one of the most important issues of our day — the moral
standing of our churches — was zero. Nada. Zilch.
“Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or
great intelligence,” said the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a
theme he picked up from his brother JFK’s classic book of heroes in
the U.S. Senate, Profiles in Courage. It is abundantly
clear that the man who has based an entire presidential campaign on
change and judgment displayed none in twenty years worth of dealing
with Trinity UCC.
IT IS VERY SAD yet equally clear that the national leadership of
the United Church of Christ is in part responsible for the damage
done to Trinity. Making its way quietly around UCC circles is the
inevitable Watergate-style statement about following the money.
Specifically, the suspicion is well out there that Trinity’s
extremism was never criticized by Thomas and the national
leadership not simply because they shared these views, but because
Trinity was the largest individual congregation within the larger
UCC denomination — and the UCC needed Trinity’s collection
dollars.
Finally, there is something else that troubles. Remember the
famous Sherlock Holmes tale about the dog that didn’t bark, the
clue that helped Holmes solve his case? When one takes a look at
the UCC website in the wake of Obama’s withdrawal from Trinity,
front and center is John Thomas’s statement about Obama’s decision.
But what’s missing? Either in Thomas’s statement or anywhere else
on the UCC
website? What’s not there is any statement whatsoever from
Reverend Thomas or anyone else in authority about the disgusting
performance from a UCC pulpit put on by Father Michael Pfleger.
And why, exactly, is that? Reverend Thomas?
As for Senator Obama and his future in the United Church of
Christ:
Senator, as written in this space as far back as June of last
year, there are many UCC members who feel the national UCC has let
itself be overtaken by its obsession with extremist left-wing
politics. These very politics have now caused you great personal
and political embarrassment. Will you stay in the United Church of
Christ? And if so, what role will you play in whatever UCC
congregation you join in helping those of us who believe it is long
past time to restore change and good judgment to the national
UCC?
Stay in the UCC, Senator. If I may borrow from someone running
for president, I think we are the change in the UCC we have been
waiting for.
