Jeremiah Wright

Barack Obama and his mentor, Jeremiah Wright.

The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. was the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, a large Chicago church with a black congregation.

He had a relatively privileged upbringing in Philadelphia, where his father was a Baptist minister in the Germantown section and his mother was Vice-Principal at the prestigious Philadelphia High School for Girls. Jeremiah Wright himself attended the Central High School for Boys, which was a selective school that ranked among the very best in the United States. After attending 2 years of college Wright dropped out and joined first the United States Marine Corps and then the United States Navy.

Jeremiah Wright is a staunch supporter of the Nation of Islam. Wright received an award from Louis Farrakhan.

Rev. Wright is now a popular traveling guest speaker. He was in Washington for the inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama and gave a Sunday sermon, January 18 at Howard University.

Relationship to President Obama

See also: Barack Obama and Liberation Theology

Obama went to Wright's Church for almost many years and almost certainly had a connection.

Wright was the mentor of President Barack Obama during his days in Chicago. Wright married Obama and his wife, baptized his children and had been a close spiritual adviser to Obama for twenty years. Wright even inspired the title of Obama's book The Audacity of Hope.

When it became politically important, Obama finally distanced himself from Wright.

Barack Obama claims that he didn't know that Jeremiah Wright held hateful sermons but went to the church for at least several years.

Wright says he voted for Obama in November and doesn't have any regrets over his severed relationship with President Obama. He suggested White House advisers were keeping the two separate, "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me."

Inflammatory statements

Wright implied that

• the HIV virus was spread by the United States government to wipe out the black population
• 9/11 was "the chicken's come home to roost."
• the Jews were preventing him from speaking with Barack Obama. He later claimed he was referring to Zionists, not all Jews, and he later issued an apology to the Jewish community via Facebook.
• [America] "The land of the greed and the home of the slave."

On December 7, 2008, while the majority of America was observing the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Wright referred to December 7, 1941 as the day America bombed Hiroshima.

Criticism

Wright associates "with Louis Farrakhan, one of the biggest racists and anti-Semites in the country".

Wright came under fire for anti-American statements he has made. Wright's comments were condemned across America.

Support

Liberal defenders of Obama like to point out that not everyone was shocked at Wright's preachings and that he was actually defended by Mike Huckabee.

• Mike Huckabee stated: "We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."

Huckabee went on to say that

• "...no one can defend the content of Wright's statements."

It is worth noting that Mike Huckabee was not defending the content of Jeremiah Wright's words, but the reason behind them.

External links

• The Gospel According To Wright