http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12784.htmChameleon presidential candidate Barack Obama appears to have something else in common with his mentor and spiritual inspiration, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A recently uncovered article from a credible source indicates that Wright, like Obama, was a Muslim before he Christianized. A previously unnoticed 2007 report from a senior editor in the New Republic indicates that Wright was a "former Muslim." The report indicates that Wright's background was a factor in persuading Obama to join his church and thus improve his "street cred."
But that credibility may be wearing thin for a broader swatch of the American public as the evidence accumulates that Obama, like his mentor Wright, have been working overtime to suppress and deny their Muslim roots: in Obama's case hereditary, in Wright's an ideological adoption that reflected his rejection of mainstream, middle class values reflected by normative Christian belief in the United States.
Before he came across Wright, Obama had failed to succeed in his political organizing efforts, wrote Ryan Lizza, The New Republic senior editor. It turned out that part of the problem was that the son of the communist was not really much of a churchgoer:
"From Wright and others, Obama learned that part of his problem as an organizer was that he was trying to build a confederation of churches but wasn?t showing up in the pews on Sunday. When pastors asked him the inevitable questions about his own spiritual life, Obama would duck them uncomfortably. A Reverend Philips put the problem to him squarely when he learned that Obama didn?t attend services. "It might help your mission if you had a church home," he told Obama. "It doesn't matter where, really. What you're asking from pastors requires us to set aside some of our more priestly concerns in favor of prophesy. That requires a good deal of faith on our part. It makes us want to know just where you're getting yours from."
"After many lectures like this, Obama decided to take a second look at Wright's church. Older pastors warned him that Trinity was for 'Buppies'?black urban professionals -- and didn't have enough street cred. But Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity's guiding principles -- what the church calls the 'Black Value System' -- included a 'Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.'
The crosscurrents appealed to Obama. He came to believe that the church could not only compensate for the limitations of Alinsky-style organizing but could help answer the nagging identity problem he had come to Chicago to solve. 'It was a powerful program, this cultural community,' he wrote, 'one more pliant than simple nationalism, more sustaining than my own brand of organizing.'"
It is not clear what the source of Lizza's knowledge about Wright's religious affiliation is. But if true, the revelation provides a valuable missing piece in our still sketchy knowledge of the motivations and calculations of Obama in choosing, of all people, a man like Wright to be his pastor and mentor. And why he refuses to disavow him, despite his vicious anti-American and anti-Israel comments.
For if both men were Muslims trying to realize their political ambitions, then Wright's Church provided a valuable shelter from prying questions about both men's religious and political loyalties. It would serve to whitewash their shared Muslim past, a secret both men have every reason to conceal, now more than ever.
Topic: New Republic: Reverend Wright was a Muslim turned Christian (Read 1558 times)