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Shallow Nation

June 1st, 2008 at 7:03 am

Obama Resigns from His Church: Video of Entire Press Conference 5-31-08

Barack Obama in South Dakota

The unprecedented series of controversies at Barack Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago have lead to Obama’s inevitable announcement that he and his wife Michelle Obama are resigning from their 20 year membership to the church.

“We don’t want to have to answer for everything that’s stated in the church,” the Democratic front-runner said. “We also don’t want the church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes.”

Obama said he was resigning “with some sadness.”

“This is not a decision I come to lightly,” he said.

The resignation comes days after the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest, mocked Obama’s Democratic rival during a sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois.

In the sermon, Pfleger wipes his eyes with a handkerchief and suggests that Sen. Hillary Clinton wept because she thought that as a white person and the wife of a former president, she was entitled to the presidency.

Pfleger is a Catholic priest at St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church on Chicago’s southwest side. He is also a friend of Trinity’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, from whom Obama distanced himself in April.

Source: Obama quits church, citing controversies

Time will tell if this puts an end to the controversies. Critics may always look back upon and unearth further controversial sermons and question why Obama stayed for 20 years or, criticize his departure as politically expedient. A no win situation.

Obama noted that church members have suffered and had worship disrupted.

Obama told reporters he didn’t want his “church experience to be a political circus — I think most American people will understand that, and wouldn’t want to subject their church to that, either.” He said it has been “months” since he has attended Trinity.

At a news conference in Aberdeen, S.D., after the news emerged on the blog of a black journalist in Chicago, Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, had notified the church in a letter Friday that they “were withdrawing as members of Trinity,” in part because of “a cultural and a stylistic gap.”

Obama said he also regrets “all the attention that my campaign has visited on” the church.

“We had reporters grabbing church bulletins and calling up the sick and the shut-in,” he said. “That’s just not how people should have to operate in their church.

Source: Obama quits Trinity