Mickey Kaus points out that there is still one candidate whose church ties have disturbing racial overtones.

Undernews Alert: It's hard to believe that Obama's Afrocentric church--with its troubling attack on "the pursuit of middeclassness"--isn't going to be an issue in the campaign, soon. There are already wild, inflammatory emails circulating, apparently. ... Update: Here is the offical Obama response page. Excerpt:

"There is information on the Black Values System in the new member packet provided at Trinity, and the new member classes put the Black Values System in the historical context of the civil rights movement."

Hmm. It must be understood in "the historical context." That'll reassure nervous white voters! The Obama camp would seem to be severely underestimating its vulnerability on the church issue if it thinks lecturing people on the civil rights movement will solve this problem for them in the long run.

The problem is not that Obama attends a liberal church in a liberal denomination(for the record, my wife is a former UCC pastor). The problem is not that the congregation has a strong ethnic identity, as do many older congregations in the UCC . The problem is how that identity gets expressed, and the racialist -- if not outright racist -- manner in which that identity is expressed. How deeply he subscribes to such a racial philosophy is a legitimate issue -- especially when official publications of the congregation praise Louis Farrakhan and reject the very uniting message that Barack Obama is campaigning on in his quest for the presidency.

Posted by: Greg at 11:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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