Full content of Obama's response to the Pastor Wright controversy, published in The Huffington Post:

Barack Obama: On My Faith and My Church

The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He's drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.
Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.
Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context.
As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Let me repeat what I've said earlier. All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn. They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.
With Rev. Wright's retirement and the ascension of my new pastor, Rev. Otis Moss, III, Michelle and I look forward to continuing a relationship with a church that has done so much good. And while Rev. Wright's statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States.

Reverend Wright: This week's albatross

Ah. Religion. For all the benefits religious faith may bring, there are days when the recent best seller "God is not Great", an eloquently written atheistic take on religious faith, seems to come into its own. If you haven't seen any of the clips of Obama's pastor delivering his political take on whether or not God should bless America, the following will do just fine: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4443230.



Teflon won't do here. Obama's written response on his website is far more eloquent than his soft backpedaling about Wright being like an awkward relative that mouths off, but we all know that a video is worth 10 million words. If whispering Barack's middle name can be damaging to the susceptible ear, these video's will be a hot poker to the susceptible eye.



I'd love to hear some ideas for damage control. Step one, no one says it better than Barack on his own website, I'll be referring people to it whenever possible. Many of us that are present or former Catholics have experienced based knowledge that the actions and words of a pastor (e.g. divorce, birth control, sexual predation) do not reflect the convictions of the individual church goer. It is quite clear that Obama found solace and conviction in his particular church, many can empathize with the more positive aspects and social responisibility that his church did seem to have.



In the end, though, it will have to be Obama that either stumbles on Pastor Wright, or reveals his own strengths in a new way. Best now rather than in the middle of the presidential campaign with McCain that we all hope to see occur.

Fire it up! Possibly Ready to Go!

Nothing creates quite so steep a learning curve as trying something completely new. Setting up a blog, for me, fits in just exactly that category. Watch words, then, from readers, are tolerance and patience, not to mention forebearance. I'll start this posting with a personal note as to what would induce me to go to the second political campaign event in my life (an Obama campaign organizing meeting at the Bend library, 3/11/08). The first meeting I ever attended was a campaign whistle stop (yes, at a real train station, in Orange County, CA) with Barry Goldwater. Eleven at the time, I was a bit awestruck, especially when I got to shake Goldwater's hand. As far apart as Goldwater and Obama are on some (definitely not all) issues, Goldwater's campaign slogan gives a definite yank on the heartstrings 44 years later: "In Your Heart, You Know He's Right". Strikes me that "Right" is a definite double entendre, but not to detract: I'm interested in Obama because he speaks to both my brain, and my heart.

A short personal political history. As you might infer from the fact that I accompanied my mother to a Goldwater campaign event, I did not start out in life with a progressive point of view. My father detested the civil rights movement, and hated MLK. "Better to be dead than Red" was a frequent utterance in my home. My mother was a tree-hugger that voted Republican for her entire life. The technical term for this is cognitive dissonance. I was what can only be called an orthodox Catholic, at one point enrolled in a Franciscan seminary. As a young physician, I wouldn't write prescriptions for birth control pills, because "they sometimes work by not letting the fertilized egg implant", i.e. a very quiet form of abortion. I read, as a boy, every issue of The National Rifleman (official publication of the NRA), and was far more impressed with the 2nd Amendment than the 1st.

From there.... to an Obama event in Bend, Oregon. How does one make such a journey? Same as any other, first one step, then one foot in front of the other. Train stations along my personal railway journey include Georgetown School of Medicine, whose area of reknown happens to be medical ethics (clever, those Jesuits). Internship and residency in Central California, where there were NO ethnic majorities, only many minorities. Envision sticking to the "no birth control pill" point of view while providing care to migrant worker women who had six children by age 25, and looked as though they were 45. The residency experience, which included working with an influx of 10,000 Hmong refugees (from the Laotion genocide that followed the Vietnam War) into our town of 35,000 over a two year period, was rich in human drama, pathos, and cross-cultural challenge. Some say "what doesn't kill you makes you strong". I'd say it makes you grow.

Next stop: three years on an Indian reservation. Working on a reservation is an intense lesson in history. I love my country. My country's history of working with Native Americans is a crash course in what happens when you hand the reigns of government to people who are not of good will. It was also my first experience of being a despised minority by the local majority. Not uncommon for an Indian (don't ruffle your feathers, on my reservation "Indian" was the preferred word for self description) to introduce him/herself by saying "you should know, I hate white people." It didn't kill me. It did make me grow.

One more train station of note: I became the "go to" doctor if you were a person with AIDS or HIV in my community (Merced, CA) at a time when there was only a single drug for treatment, and the mortality rate for AIDS was over 95%. No better place in history for a homophobic Catholic boy to be. I learned, with time, to enjoy being hugged by my homosexual patients (male and female, for that matter). One also learns, unless you wear blinders 24/7, about the damage done by laws that don't grant protection to same sex partnerships. As my patients died, I grew.

Finally, from my "Father is the head of the household, women should not enter the workplace" upbringing, I've moved to being classified as a Third Wave Feminist (look it up) by my daughter. My daughter (29) feels that the way to pick a life partner is by their qualities, not their gender. My wife is someone that makes gender equality an unquestionable tenet by who she is, and by what she does (middle school teacher extraordinaire).

Which (when will this guy shut up!) circles back to Obama. I'm fatigued by duplicity, by end justifies the means, by a brand of nationalism that gives life to Oscar Wilde's note that "patriotism is the virtue of the vicious". I want a new patriotism that respects many nations and perspectives, not to mention the planet. I don't want governmental positions to be won by a competition of the clever. I want a coalition of people of good will to write a chapter in our nation's history that is just beginning to be imagined. It is we who will write that chapter, and it is Obama that I want to help turn the pages. Let me hear you own stories. Yes, all my further posts will be shorter.