The thing about Rev. Wright...

[busymom]

If it came out that Hillary Clinton had gone to a church for 20 years led by an extremist pastor who believed that...men...were the source of all that is wrong in this country...who spewed contempt for America, men and made controversial statements generally accepted as being extreme....this would be an issue too.

I'll tell you why the Rev. Wright and Obama's association with him is a problem for me (no that it matters).

I go to church too...and I took the time to seek out a church community that I felt was a good fit for me and for my family. Spiritualty and faith are deeply personal things and the leader of the church (pastor) is also someone that you go to in times of crisis and who you may look to for advice or support. The words in the sermon should speak to your heart and your beliefs.

I understand that there are people here who say "hey, I go to church and listen to my priest spew out.....and I don't leave". Well, maybe you should rethink that. I have also read arguments about not knowing your pastor's political beliefs. That may be true...but Wright has made those beliefs quite clear over the years. If you did know your pastor's views and they were that offensive, would it make you think twice?

I went to 6 churches and attended regular services before I made a decision about where I felt my needs and the needs of my family would be best served.

So here it is:

1. If Obama goes to church and listens to some wack job who he doesn't agree with give sermons every Sunday...shame on him and why did he even bother to go? Is this the same thing as the reason that I sometimes turn on O'Reilly? Because it's entertaining? Or is he so weak in his faith or feeings that he doesn't feel like he can seek out a church that is a closer fit to his beliefs and his family's needs?

or

2. If Obama goes to church for 20 years with this guy, is married by him and has him baptize his kids despite knowing how this man feels....well....perhaps it is because he agrees secretly with him.

[Captain Hilts]

1. It's not cool to say "damn the United States." nt

[skooooo]

3. you got that, mookie

No matter how you slice it. No one really wants to hear that.

[roguevalley]

39. true. but she needs to come clean about her bible group, the one

with nazis and others affiliated. The one that segregates by sex ... how feminist and democratic is that? These people have a history that sucks AND they have power. Wright is a crank with a pulpit and no influence beyond that. Does he dictate policy that affects our lives? No. He's a crank. Come on, Hillary. come clean. Then when both sides have washed the spew from their hands, the rest of us can feel better. You can't have it both ways. Both have assholery on their teams. One is just more open about it than the other.

[Tellurian]

2. Yep! Thanks for posting a well said common sense post ..

:-)

[busymom]

4. There is way too much flaming on this issue

and point of fingers away from Obama about this. It is an attempt to distract from the truth of the matter...

[Tellurian]

19. Yes, and the msn is doing it's very best to mitigate the damage to Obama

by tearing Senator Clinton down.. It don't think the public will by their cheap tricks any longer..

Listening to a wackjob minister for 20 yrs amounts to being in an abusive household. People easily identify with that concept.

[Benhurst]

5. Given the choices at the end of your post I'll sadly take Door #2.

[busymom]

7. and that is my concern as well.

I'm very turned off by the kind of extremism people like Wright spew...regardless of the issue.

[msongs]

6. maybe he goes there because OPRAH goes there nt

[busymom]

8. so he goes to church to sit with the cool kids instead of

pray and nourish himself spiritually.

hmmmmm That makes a lot of sense.

[canuk1]

9. he doesn't go to church every sunday

Like most people, and he is not most people, he does not go to church every sunday. Therefore, he doesn't hear every sermon this guy gives. I am a Catholic and priests will give sermons saying abortion is evil, gays are evil, etc...doesn't mean you agree with it. Alot of catholics have had abortions etc...are gay, whatever, and still attend church.These attacks coming mostly from the right so far are designed to help Clinton by making Obama the crazy black man. They have serious and disturbing information on Clinton which will be unleased in the GE. Info never surfaced before. It is so obvious. Do you think Rove really likes Hillary when he says kind things about her. They have a thick file of new dirt and can not find enough on Obama. That is why they are attacking him so much.

[LisaM]

41. But there are a lot of different Catholic churches

I stopped going to the one I was attending because I didn't agree with the new Archbishop there. I'm currently seeking out another. There was one I was going to attend that was gay friendly (I'm not gay, but my gay friends were welcomed there, so I thought it would be progressive on other issues) but apparently they just got a new priest from Kenya who is quite conservative on gay and women's issues, so now I'm still looking.

At the church I used to attend in Michigan, the priest openly advocated for women priests and married priests during the homily, and people associated with the church actively protested nuclear weapons, etc.

So you can be Catholic and find a church that is a good fit.

[DemGa]

10. And naming his book for the pastor's "inspirational" words

Which is it, "kooky uncle" or primary influence?

Even here Obama lacks substance.

[goldcanyonaz]

11. The obvious choice would be number 2.

[John Q. Citizen]

12. It came out long ago that Hill attends regular pray meeting with the most extreme misogynistic and

racist people in the country. They keep it pretty secret and hush hush though.

Read the article and comment please

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

[rucky]

13. People are more complicated than that.

People say stupid shit in public from time to time, and you can still respect them for other reasons.

so it's not just a choice a, choice b, kind of scenario - just like Wright's not purely good or purely evil, and Obama's not 100% on-board or 0%.

I would like to think that we can still respect people that we disagree with.

Why people go to which church is a personal decision, as well. Obama's family obviously had long ties, here. It's not like buying a new pair of shoes when the old ones don't fit as well anymore.

[Benhurst]

15. If one of our candidates were going to a right-wing church where the

preacher spouted out KKK propaganda from time to time, would you be equally willing to turn a blind eye?

I wouldn't. And I do not like what's coming out about The Reverend Mr. Wright, either.

[rucky]

18. Getting beyond the over-the-top rhetoric...

what of his message do you take issue with?

[Benhurst]

36. LOL! I find his messages easier to stomach than Obama's

touchie-feelie campaign of ill-defined "Hope" and "new politics," to say nothing of "bringing us all together" when there are legitimate issues which must be fought out with the Republicans, tooth and nail.

From time to time, Obama supporters have proudly pointed out he is not another Jesse Jackson. Hell, I like Jesse Jackson. He works for the poor, he's outspoken and he is a straight-shooter. If he were running, I'd have a candidate. Supposedly saintly Chicago politicians are bit hard for me to take seriously. But I like a fighter such as Jackson, especially one willing speak out on matters which matter. Whether you agree with Jackson or not, and I find myself mostly agreeing with him, at least you know where he stands.

The Wright controversy raises the specter of the dreaded H-word, Hypocrisy.

[rucky]

47. Then what's with the KKKomparison?

[stillcool]

14. not secretly...

you have listened to how many of this man's sermons? And yet you judge a human beings life work on this one video you availed yourself of. I think it is pathetic.

[MediaBabe]

16. This environment is where he chose to rear his children

I don't expose my children to people and attitudes that I am opposed to. Most parents don't.

People can say Obamma doesn't agree with his pastor's extremism but they can't cover up the fact that this is what he wants his children to learn.

[Nitrogenica]

17. Iggied.

Sorry, too freeper-ish for my taste.

[busymom]

20. too freeperish?

Are you kidding? Anyone who expresses an opinion that you don't share is freeperish? Seriously...this whole forum is teaming with hateful attacks and I expressed this view in a very calm way.

[SeaLyons]

21. Obama cannot come up with a convincing argument

as to why he has maintained this association, other than the fact it is what he believes. Otherwise, he's nuts.

[DefenseLawyer]

22. I'm nuts too.

I will argue all day that American foreign policy contributed to the rise of al qaeda. If I were a black man I'm guessing I would be pretty pissed off. Given the history of and current state of race relations in the country, who the fuck am I, middle class wasp from Indiana, to tell a black man not to be angry? Not to hold America in contempt? Not to demand better? Oh no, we can't have that. You colored folks should be grateful, know your place. Be Joe Louis, not Malcolm X. Obviously I am nuts for disagreeing with that point of view. I think more people should be pissed off like the reverend.

[SeaLyons]

23. Yup, you're nuts!!

Anything extreme is wrong.

[DefenseLawyer]

27. It is extreme to say black people haven't gotten a fair shake in this country?

Really? What's your non-extreme position on this issue?

[SeaLyons]

32. I think you're down playing what he said

he went way beyond saying blacks have not gotten a fair shake. Way beyond.

[DefenseLawyer]

37. And I would say slavery and lynching went way beyond not being a fair shake. Way beyond.

I just don't share your fear and loathing of an angry black man. I am amazed he isn't angrier. Muhammad Ali said "No Viet Cong ever called me a nigger." I cheered. What did you do?

[SeaLyons]

44. you should be careful of making assumptions

....I expressed no fear or loathing of angry black men.

[DefenseLawyer]

45. No, you just said their anger was "nuts"

I have no idea what is in your heart. I wouldn't begin to assume. Your comments however, express a certain level of contempt for anger in black America, i.e. they are nuts. It seems to me that your position is either 1) that the angry black man is dangerous or 2) you are more than willing to push that theme if it helps your candidate, regardless of your own beliefs.

[SeaLyons]

48. I have no contempt in my heart for anyone ....

I do believe the comments of the Pastor are very extreme (nuts was probably not a good word), and I think any extreme is dangerous. I support Clinton, but I have no agenda. I don't think propelling hate is very productive. Compare the pastor to MLK.

[amandabeech]

38. DefenseLawyer, size up your jury.

Dems generally will go out and vote for the Dem. We're not the jury.

Pukes will go out and vote for McCain. They're not the jury.

Independents will be looking for a candidate. That's your jury.

Think about how this is going to play with a bunch of middle American suburbanites and small city types who are a large part of the independent vote. A lot of the independents I know like McCain. I don't know about you, but I don't think that Rev. Wright will play well with them come October when the 527s are going nuts, and we'll need all the help that we can get.

Both Clinton and Obama were near the bottom of my candidate list. I think that they are both flawed candidates, and I am concerned about losing an entirely winnable election because of those flaws. Of course, I will vote for the dem nominee without hesitation, but I'm not sure if enough other people will join me.

[DefenseLawyer]

43. I am not sure I agree with conventional wisdom

I realize Dick Morris and Bob Shrum get paid a lot of money to tell candidates to move to the center and not rock the boat and to court the elusive "soccer mom" or whatever. I know the conventional wisdom is that there is this vast middle of non-republican conservatives i.e. "independents" we need to pander to. I am just not sure that's true. I think the average person when polled on the issues is a lot more liberal than conventional wisdom who have us believe. I also think the vast majority of people, especially those who don't even follow politics enough to have a political affiliation, are voting for the person, not the issues. I think Gore lost (or didn't win by enough) because he came across as stiff and phony, because he was trying to have that broad appeal. I think Kerry lost not because of the swift boat attacks, but because he looked like a pussy (excuse the expression)by sitting back and taking it. That's not what people want, regardless how where they stand on the issues. Obama will win or lose because people will either like him or they won't. Sure there will be racists that won't vote for him, but I think he is better served to stand up and make a strong argument about who he is and what he believes than to tiptoe through the electorate and try not to take a stand that anyone could take issue with.

[amandabeech]

46. The average person doesn't vote issues, true.

So whatever polling says about voters' views on the issues is really irrelevant.

However, the average person won't be comforable with damning America or a pastor making love to the pulpit. The repukes are going to keep smearing Obama with this until many people will automatically think Wright when they see Obama. Many people may not like Obama so much if they think of those Rev. Wright clips superimposed on Obama's face.

Most people in the middle won't even care about racism when they're in that voting booth, and unfortunately, Dems and Repukes usually have to move toward the middle in order to get enough votes. That's just the way the electorate generally looks.

All bets are off, however, if the economy really tanks and Obama comes up with a good plan to revive it. Then no one will care about Rev. Wright.

Please don't use words for which you feel you much apologize. You only look worse because it is obvious that you know you're doing the wrong thing and still you can't restrain yourself. The one you used is particularly offense to women, at least older ones like me. I'm sure, counselor, that you have a vocabulary sufficient to express yourself without using offensive words.

[kwassa]

24. but Wright is not a whack job, much of what he says it true and not extreme

This is the problem with your thesis.

It is the third unmentioned possibility.

[Omega3]

29. AIDS was started by the US Gov't, god damn America!, rich white ppl are the source of all blacks

problems? give me a break, this is damaging, and all the obots can do is attack (falsely) Hillary's religion - how Rovian, are they really Dems?

[kwassa]

34. Can you write in complete sentences?

It might make what you write more understandable.

[shockra]

25. It's easy to see how much Obama was influenced by this guy.

His inspirational preacher schtick is his main selling point.

Except he was smart enough to leave out the hate speech.

[anonymous171]

26. Yes, Obama is a closet bigot.

:sarcasm:

[Omega3]

31. implied agreement: 20 yrs member, married by this racist, kids baptised by this racist, knows what

he preaches after 20 years so if he doesn't agree why not find a different church? There's quite a few in a city of 3 million, no???

[scheming daemons]

33. Bullshit.... if true, then I have "implied agreement" with pedophilia since I'm still a Catholic....

...

Your argument is horseshit.

[kwassa]

35. There is no implied agreement, and Wright is not a racist.

Try again.

[Oilwellian]

28. Well, let's look at both candidates religion shall we?

It's important we see both sides, right?

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillary ...

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."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Omega3]

30. Karl Rove, is that you? attack a politician on a strong suit of theirs when the opponent is weak

[amandabeech]

40. You make some good points. For the primary.

For me, the argument is about whether Rev. Wright will be too much for Obama to overcome in the general election when he's courting the independents. The pukes will make a lot of hay over the most inflammatory excerpts.

On the other hand, Hillary praying with Republicans is not an issue that the Pukes will use. They're not going to attack her religiosity for fear of riling their base and for fear that some voters would like Hillary more if they knew that she was engaged in bipartisan, ecumenical prayer.

I really want to win. Both these candidates are flawed, and I just hope that by chance the voters in upcoming primaries choose the one who can win in November, whoever that is.

BTW, my guy bowed out some time ago, and I'm still depressed.

[DURHAM D]

42. The "secret" to Hillary's faith views are in her own words.

The motherjones articles is silly.

If you want to hear Hillary's own words - she gave an interview last summer. It is 30 minutes long - no visual just audio. Go to cbn.com. The interview was with David Brody. Find his page and you can listen to the interview.

It is very informative and candid. Warning: Hillary haters won't like it. She isn't the monster you want her to be. Also, if you don't have some personal knowledge of main stream religions (such as Methodism) vs. fundamentalist, evangelicals and pentecostals you probably won't understand it.