http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Wright followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and enrolled at by attending Virginia Union University, with the intention of doing graduate work at the historically black seminary. But disenchanted by what he felt was an inadequate Christian response to the civil rights movement, he abruptly ended his pastoral pursuits and joined the U.S. Navy.

An encounter with a pastor as he loitered on some church steps reminded Wright of his calling. He eventually returned to Howard University to finish bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English with a focus on African spirituals. At the University of Chicago Divinity School, he earned another master’s in the history of religions with a focus on Islam. He planned to earn a doctoral degree his Ph.D. and teach at a seminary.

But his calling to teach was interrupted by a call to action. Many black Christians were leaving the church for other religious traditions, including the Black Hebrew Israelites and the Nation of Islam, who taught that Christianity was a white man’s religion imposed on them by slaveholders.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/religion/profiles/chi-070121-relig_wright,0,1492700,full.story

This is from Obama’s book:

The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.” He began with a passage from the Book of Samuel—the story of Hannah, who, barren and taunted by her rivals, had wept and shaken in prayer before her God. The story reminded him, he said, of a sermon a fellow pastor had preached at a conference some years before, in which the pastor described going to a museum and being confronted by a painting title Hope.

“The painting depicts a harpist,” Reverend Wright explained, “a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn down to the scene below, down to the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

“It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere…That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

And so it went, a meditation on a fallen world. While the boys next to me doodled on their church bulletin, Reverend Wright spoke of Sharpsville and Hiroshima, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and in the State House. As the sermon unfolded, though, the stories of strife became more prosaic, the pain more immediate. The reverend spoke of the hardship that the congregation would face tomorrow, the pain of those far from the mountaintop, worrying about paying the light bill…

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzUyZDAyMzBjMTAxMmI5NTI2OWU2NmE3OWY5YjYxMjQ=

Snip:

“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” he said in a wide-ranging interview in his office (excerpts are on my blog, http://www.nytimes.com/ontheground). He once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school, but a president is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics — and more likely to be aware of their nationalism — if he once studied the Koran with them.

Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

Moreover, Mr. Obama’s own grandfather in Kenya was a Muslim. Mr. Obama never met his grandfather and says he isn’t sure if his grandfather’s two wives were simultaneous or consecutive, or even if he was Sunni or Shiite. (O.K., maybe Mr. Obama should just give up on Alabama.)

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Did he ever do a name change… offical. Who vets these candidates anyway and where’s the information.

Indonesia was Barry Soetoro, was that a formal name change to his stepfathers name… it was for the school there.

Oh

Also remember, Wright was selling the best of… and the vids were available online… until someone decided to run and the heat turned up.

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:ipCDBX1MYOYJ:www.tucc.org/home.htm+&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us

In honor of Gore and O, Kool Aid does make Iced Tea flavors… maybe O had too much iced tea and left when these parts came up.

For twenty years.

I thought the martyr aspect was interesting, since it was close to a madrassa (especially if he took his kids there… knowing the church, sunday school/bible study is separate perhaps).

Deep thoughts: Try to go up to any black person and tell them they have to denounce their pastor and disconnect from their church… never happen. So either it was a cover for politics and something else, he feels that way or he’s dumb enough to think it’s the average black church.

Call me crazy… but I think O leaked the tape himself… Rezko trial was hot. And who the hell would even attempt to explain their pastor… come on. If he could flip him off only when pressured, it wasn’t what it appeared anyway (no matter how twisted). You don’t stay in a black church for twenty years then do that… not like this. Either you die and get your service there, get killed in another state or a monster scandal has to happen that breaks your heart re: the pastor (messing with choir members when married, etc.) We see this in Michelle, no doubt. But now we know why Obama doesn’t know scripture besides it not being preached at his church… maybe he’s not what he seems.

Sermon on the Mount is not a bible verse (debate), it’s not approving gay relations (vs. as he says some obscure passage in Romans), no Christian would say that… but a certain other type would… the same type that talks about blacks in America being slaves, blah blah. Who else uses that besides radical black nationalists? Think about it.