Activist Obama Church Enters Spotlight
Monday, March 19, 2007
(03-19) 23:22 PDT CHICAGO, (AP) --
A then 26-year-old Barack Obama walked down the aisle of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, knelt beneath a cross suspended from its rafters and, as he later explained it, committed himself to God after years as a religious skeptic.
In those early days at the self-described "unashamedly black" church, the future Democratic presidential candidate was moved to tears by a sermon from its activist pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whom he has portrayed as his spiritual mentor.
Two decades later, Obama himself would be Wright's topic of the day — but not for reasons either man would have hoped.
At a recent Sunday service, following media coverage of Obama's last-minute decision not to have Wright speak at the senator's presidential announcement last month, Wright warned his flock not to believe any reports of a rift between him and the church's best-known member.
"Barack and I are fine," Wright, 65, on an out-of-state trip, said in a recorded message played to about 2,000 attendees. "The press is not to be trusted. ... Don't let somebody outside our camp divide us."
The erudite if blunt-speaking pastor also said Obama had apologized for withdrawing the invitation to speak at the Feb. 10 announcement in Springfield.
Obama had taken "some bad advice from some of his own campaign people who thought it would not be a good idea for me to be in front of the cameras on the day he announced," Wright said, adding that he and Obama had "moved on." Wright attended the announcement, but he did not speak.
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