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Rev. Pfleger: "America is the Greatest Sin Against God"
June 01, 2008 10:46 PM
In another excerpt from Rev. Michael Pfleger's sermon last Sunday, May 25, from the pulpit of Sen. Barack Obama's now former church, Trinity United Church of Christ on the South side of Chicago, the longtime Obama associate condemns America for racism in fairly harsh terms.
Watch HERE.
"Racism is still America's greatest addiction," Pfleger says. "I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God."
There seems to be a mixed reaction to that from the pews. But Pfleger explains:
"If the greatest command is to love, than the sin against love must be the greatest sin against God who IS love and who calls us to love one another. So that this greatest sin against God, racism, it's as natural as the air we breath."
Obama, of course, resigned from Trinity on Friday, saying he didn't want to be held accountable for every word spoken from the pulpit at the church, and he didn't want the church to continue to have the media disrupting its worship. The last straw may have been Pfleger's mocking of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, from the pulpit in this same sermon.
But Obama's relationship with Pfleger -- who is the priest at a different, Catholic, church -- spans decades.
In September, the Obama campaign brought Pfleger to Iowa to host one of several interfaith forums for the campaign. Pfleger has given money to Obama's campaigns and Obama as a state legislator directed at least $225,000 towards social programs at St. Sabina's, according to the Chicago Tribune. Pfleger appears to have been scrubbed from the Obama campaign's page that features the testimony of faith leaders, but you can see the cached version HERE.
- jpt
UPDATE: Asked for a response to this newly-posted excerpt from the sermon, the Obama campaign has re-released the same statement it issued last week after the video of Rev Pfleger's mocking of Sen. Clinton was released: “As I have traveled this country, I've been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that that unites us. That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause.” - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois
June 1, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (370)
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I have served this great nation. My belief as a combat wounded veteran, is to dispense with all the religious and political bs and take care of your fellow man. These are the only recovered text written by Jeshua, Jesus, There is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend. In Aramaic. This is the new creedo for my Green Beret Command in THE MIDDLE EAST
Posted by: Ian Leslie Simser | Dec 11, 2008 1:24:43 PM
I have served this great nation. My belief as a combat wounded veteran, is to dispense with all the religious and political bs and take care of your fellow man. These are the only recovered text written by Jeshua, Jesus, There is no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend. In Aramaic. This is the new creedo for my Green Beret Command in THE MIDDLE EAST
Posted by: Ian Leslie Simser | Dec 11, 2008 1:24:37 PM
to all oboma when you went to see grandmother did you get your birthcirtifit and powell said iraq had wepion of masdestruction what a liler he is to
Posted by: jillbug | Oct 30, 2008 2:55:50 PM
Hopefully, this man will never run for a public office. In fact, it might be useful for no one to ever report on his sermons again. After all, the sermon was supposed to be for a limited audience. Now I know and really... I don't care. After all, it's RELIGION folks. Religion is for people who have no internal directional controls. Thus, they need someone outside themselves to steer them. Sorry. I have no need for someone to steer me. I'm an adult.
Posted by: Mark | Oct 30, 2008 1:00:53 PM
Many blacks act as if America is the only country that ever practiced slavery. In Africa, long ago, blacks enslaved each other all the time. They would have a war and the winners would take the losers home to be slaves.
Posted by: helen | Oct 30, 2008 11:37:41 AM
"Fathers have eaten sour grapes, and their children's teeth are set on edge." The Bible says that this verse is NOT true. God judges us as individuals.We should do the same. Pfleger is a creep.
Posted by: mm | Oct 30, 2008 11:22:50 AM
The Rev. Pfleger is a wonderful man and Minister, he just will share the truth about a White female that should stay home and not want to do a mans job, like being a President. More Men need to stand up and share how they feel about the females trying to take over in the United States, Men need to keep their wife's at home and not out working and take away jobs from a Man.
There is only one Father and that is the heavenly Father God. No man on the earth should be called a Father. Why and how the Catholics get calling a minister Father. There is Dad for a parent and Mom for Mother, not father.
James
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Posted by: James Staley | Oct 30, 2008 10:40:41 AM
Phleger was thinking about the dropping of the atomic bomb by a US president as the most infamous attack by GOD on mankind.
Posted by: HarryO | Sep 19, 2008 8:50:10 AM
Racist are ridiculous. Rev. Wright didn't preach the same sermon every Sunday for 20 years. 9/11 didn't even happen 20 years ago. He preaches verses in the Bible. He preaches about injustices. Every human being is responsible for himself. Obama is not Rev. Wright. I disagreed with my father on political issues. I didn't move out of the house.They are just using this as an excuse because they don't want Obama to win the election.
Posted by: Luther Voss | Jun 27, 2008 3:33:21 AM
Rev. Wright is not a racist. He does not preach hatred. He loves his country. Don't believe the devils lie. Satan packages his lies in beautiful wrapping paper. Don't be deceived. Churches in America preach love,forgiveness, salvation and truth. Some Americans can't handle the truth., and the injustices they have caused. That's the problem. They know what Rev. Wright says is true. They are in denial.
He said God Dam America because he was
upset that young American men and women wwere returning from Iraq with their
faces blown off. The war was unnecessary.
Posted by: Ben Smith | Jun 27, 2008 3:15:54 AM
Churches and ministers in America do not preach hatred. Rev. Wright does not preach hatred and the 8000 members of his church, which includes some white people, are not racist. This is the devils lie trying to destroy Jesus's church. It's like the snake in the garden tempting Adam and Eve. Don't be fooled.
Posted by: Arnie Soltice | Jun 27, 2008 3:07:40 AM
This priest is apparently eaten up with guilt. I am not. No one can maniplate me by calling me racist or falsely accusing me of things that I did not do.
I love America and I will not vote for a fake who slags my country.
Posted by: Will | Jun 25, 2008 9:53:15 PM
I cannot believe the Democratic party has sunk so low as to have someone like Barack Obama as their party's pres. nominee. I said the same about Hillary Clinton, so don't call me names _ I am no racist. It is amazing to see them scraping the bottom of the barrel. I see the end of the party before long. More and more Dems. are going Independent.
Posted by: Lisa Again | Jun 25, 2008 8:17:17 PM
Father Pfegler and Rev Wright should be quiet because Americans can't handle the truth. They want you to tell the things that will make them feel good. There was no slavery, or extermination of the Indians, or bombing Hiroshima, or invading Iraq without a cause, or hanged Sadam Hussein, killed his two sons and grandson, or that other countries call us the "Ugly Americans" because of our arrogance. Don't say anything bad, only the good things.
Posted by: Prince Naynor | Jun 25, 2008 7:40:11 PM
This tune dedicated to the Bill & Hillary Campaign Legacy.
So long sad times, go long bad times....we are rid of you at last......cause.....Happy days are here again!
Posted by: kiotikid | Jun 4, 2008 7:55:35 AM
As a catholic I am offended that a priest would make those remarks when church history has shown us that the Catholic Church is by it's action in the past been a "little" racist and we do not have to go back too many years, only back to the 1940's. I believe Christ said let he without sin cast the first stone. And as the joke goes the Holy Mother does not have a stone in her hand.
Posted by: Carl | Jun 3, 2008 2:40:20 PM
Can_We_All_Get_Along? said: "In conclusion, you should remember that Dr. Martin Luther King--a man of JESUS--who worshipped JESUS as a defender of social justice--you should remember that Dr. King was murdered soon after he began to instigate mass protest against the ECONOMIC injustices of the capitalists. Capitalists like the health insurance industry, the service industry, the prison-military-industrial complex, the oil industry."
To Can_We_All_Get_Along?,
Dr. King stated that he'd read Marx and Engels, and that he had come to realize that Communism and Socialism were dogmas that rationalized slavery. That without the individual liberties, rights and freedoms that America stands for, without the right to self determination, all men and women are slaves.
There is nothing wrong with regulated capitalism. When we had regulated capitalism, all boats rose. What you advocate is not freedom or liberty, but the exploitation of the suffering of others, channeling that suffering into something you can use for your own personal agenda. People like you are no different than Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Mussoline, Mugabe, and so many other monsters who sought to enslave people.
Rev. Wright, and Father Pfleger are purveyors of hatred. Liberation theology isn't about liberating people, it's about using them, nothing more.
Why does Rev. Wright expect his congregation to pay 15 million to build him a mansion in a gated community? This is the same man who told his congregation to shun middle class values, the right to live in safe communities with good schools, the right to earn a fair wage and be treated with respect? One can only surmise that he feels such things are for elites like himself.
I am an Obama suppporter, a Christian and a member of the Abenaki people, a native person. What I see is Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger preaching hatred and intolerance, contradicting Christ's teachings. If Father Pfleger believes that seeding hearts and minds with hatred is acceptable, then he is NOT a Christian, in fact he is a corrupt sham who poses as a Christian. He is as false as pederast priests, hiding behind his collar and vestments as a wolf in sheeps clothing.
He and Wright are working for one thing alone, to put their congregations into the harness, with a whip at their backs.
Hatred is a sin against God, and that sin has been a human crime, across all countries, among all races and ethnicities. It is not a white thing. There are good and bad people, skin color is not a determinate of ones character. Those who preach lies like Wright and Pfleger are the proponents of hate, and no different than the KKK, the Nazis, the fascists, the Marxists and other villains worldwide. They should be shamed and forced to beg the forgiveness of all those they have exploited and harmed.
Their followers who emulate their frauds are no different than a cult.
Posted by: Jenny | Jun 3, 2008 12:18:07 PM
Can we just get along. Looking into the past is always good to prevent making the same mistakes over and over again. However, dwelling on past mistakes and ignoring progress is not healthy or useful. What Rev. Wright and others like him do is to use the past to generate wealth and power for themselves.
So, it appears that Mr. Wise's article proposes that any actions committed by folks in the present is justified because of past racial injustice. Interesting theory...I think I saw a Law and Order episode that attempted to use that premise. I don't think it will fly with the American public except for those individuals with a massive "white guilt" complex.
Posted by: J in MD | Jun 3, 2008 11:14:16 AM
Apache, Your words are worth reading over and over as a guide to a life worth leading. However, many of us are trying to understand this man that we know so little about who wants to be POTUS. In the absence of a long history in national politics or even higher office in state politics, other areas need to be assessed. Who Senator Obama chooses to associate with, the types of people that he selects as his mentors, and the organizations he joins are all factors that can assist us in making the decision. These all point to a man's character.
Posted by: J in MD | Jun 3, 2008 10:33:20 AM
Food for Thought:
Excerpt from:
Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia:
Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama, and the Audacity of Truth
By Tim Wise
"What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock--though make no mistake, they already knew it--is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that "everything changed." To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.
Posted by: Can_We_All_Get_Along? | Jun 3, 2008 9:41:25 AM
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