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Obama Pastor Being 'Lynched,' Faithful Say

Clerics defend 'righteous rage' of inflammatory preacher

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 18, 2008 9:35 AM CDT

(Newser) – Black pastors and parishioners—including the 3,000 who packed Trinity Church in Chicago Sunday—are leaping to the defense of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who's drawn a firestorm of criticism for his incendiary rhetoric on racism, the Washington Post reports. A pamphlet circulating the pews decried Wright’s treatment in the media as a “modern-day lynching.” “We are all being vilified,” the new pastor said. “This is an attack on the African American church tradition.”

Wright was one of the foremost practitioners of black liberation theology, which seeks to apply the Bible to modern social problems. “There’s so much passion in what we do that it can overflow,” says one Dallas pastor. Wright is sometimes so stirred by rage over what's happened to poor black people, notes another liberation theologian, that "he says things most whites would find off the charts and unpatriotic. But you don't preach in sound bites."

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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, shown here with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, March 10, 2005. (AP Photo/Trinity United Church of Christ)

Barack Obama, then Democratic senatorial candidate, prays during a services at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in this Oct. 31, 2004 file photo. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

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Obama Pastor Being 'Lynched,' Faithful Say