Churches should be off-limits to politics and the media, just as the church should stay a long way away from the political arena. The two have never successfully mixed, and that's why our founding fathers attempted to give us a clear separation of church and state. It's a direction we should head back towards. No politician should ever be hounded out of their church by the bunch of jackasses we call "the media."

I'm simply amazed by your post. I've been thinking of how to say the same thing...but I would have been horribly deficient. Thank you for putting my thoughts into such beautiful words.

God bless Barak Obama and his family. God bless us all.

I am sick of people saying white people just don't understand the "black church". Trinity is one church -- it is not the norm in my experience. I have been to many black churches and always felt the experience to be uplifting. I've never even heard a black minister preach politics like Obama's church. I find the services there to be somewhat bizarre and completely inappropriate. The Catholic priests rant would have been the last straw for me, just like Obama. Who says stupid, ridiculous nonsense like that in a house of worship? I don't attend church for a political rally, and anyone who uses the platform to project their views disgusts me.

If we have gotten much major sustenance, religious and/or emotional, from a pastor or a friend or a relative, we're going to put up with a certain amount of expression of what we don't care for or disagree with from them. Outsiders may not appreciate this; if so, the outsiders are fools -- not a surprise. (Yes, that is not an expression of high regard for the MSM.)

But a politician has to do what is practical. As a private citizen, I can have and express opinions that no politician would dare. Lincoln and FDR said and did things we often disapprove of; but they got the job done, we shouldn't sneer at them for the compromises.

And, with regard to inflammatory opinions, let me remark that getting endorsements from people ought to be held to a higher standard than relations with a pastor whose church one has attended for decades. I daresay partly as a matter of partisanship I can't claim to feel any comprehension of how some longstanding parishioner of Hagee's might have benefitted from him; but McCain had no reasons of well-founded personal loyalty to explain his association with the likes of Hagee.

I got as far as "The media doesn't understand the black church worth a damn." Media is plural. So the media "doen't" understand..." Secondly, you're lucky the media doen't understand the black church. If they did, we'd have been treated to all that racism and self-victimization day after day until nobody would dare vote for Obama. We've seen enough of the black church for a lifetime. But thank you anyway.

I know nothing of the African-American experience.

But I do know that the Christian experience, in it's finest form, is one of family and I bet that Trinity has been a part of Sen. Obama's family. His FAMILY - including Rev. Wright. (You know how you still love your grumpy old uncle who tells sexist jokes in public? You love him because he's family, right? And you can see the good in him, even while you cringe at the bad.)

Probably Sen. Obama knew how off-putting Rev. Wright's anger would be to mainstream America, but a church is so much more that just it's pastor. It's core is the congregation. I imagine that Sen. Obama thought of his church as a whole, not just as the one piece that is Rev. Wright. If you see his Trinity family as a whole, is it really any wonder that he took a long time to tear himself away from those who embraced him and offered him the unconditional love that Christianity is supposed to provide?

So it's heart-breakingly sad that he must leave that family. And he must. Yes, for political reasons ... Now, more than ever, our whole country needs to feel like WE are a family, and so many of us couldn't feel that way after our harsh introduction to Rev. Wright. As President Obama he'll need to be part of a more inclusive family.

What strikes me the most though, is that Sen. Obama and Mrs. Obama DIDN'T throw Trinity under the bus, their resignation letter spoke of love and sadness and goodbye.

I hope they find a new church family that they can love as much.

And to all who want to judge Sen. Obama harshly ...go to H-E-double hockey sticks!

Leaving a congregation that has nurtured you, cared for you and encouraged you is like a death. Taking your family with you including your young children from their church friends is worse than a death. He was in an untenable situation. I hope they will find a new place of worship and fellowship that welcomes them whole heartedly and in time can call it home. The media and the opposition hold nothing sacrid and never attempt to explain anything remotely complex. Shame on them.

Thank you for this post. I literally cried over the treatment of Rev. Wright and TUCC by the media. It saddens me deeply that Obama had to leave his church especially because I believe you are right

There are very few comfort zones for African-Americans in this country, places in which we feel at ease and uplifted.

I do think it's a generalization to say that the media doesn't understand the black church but I do think they do not understand this church or churches like it that have historically served as a place for black people to gather together to think and talk freely about the institutionalized, systemic oppression that plagues their everyday real life experiences. Unless you belong to a group that has been systemically marginalized, it might be difficult to understand the need to find support, relief and even strategies on how to cope. Coping can be through religion, humor, cultural creations, etc.

Scientific as you know I respect your views and positions, but I couldn't disagree more about TUCC and can probably pinpoint my strongest to the whole Reverend Wright debacle. The most offensive thing to me was that Senator Obama and friends were arguing that Trinity is just misunderstood and to criticize Trinity is to criticize and disrespect the African American Church traditions. I honestly think that's why Father Pfleger (a white Catholic priest) went up and acted the fool in the pulpit - using his sermon to mock and attack another human being. Maybe he thought he could catch everyone out on their hypocrisy if the media did not react to him the same way they did with Reverend Wright. I think we can all agree now it is the substance & manner of the vicious attack and not the race of the attacker that was so offensive.

The most offensive thing to me is to use the pulpit - a place where you are supposed to be teaching the words of God & the teachings of Christ - to go against everything Jesus Christ stood for. Where in the bible does it say mock your enemy? Where in the bible does it say inspire hatred in others? How can you be using the PULPIT to express your political views in a wholly unchristian way? And he has still not apologized to Senator Clinton for the substance of his remarks. Only to Senator Obama for offending his campaign and to people who may have been "unintentionally" offended.

People see the applause and the reaction to those sermons and if they are Christian say how is this consistent with how Christ taught us to live? That's the problem you have here. And for Obama to just distance himself from the Chruch while continuing to refuse to address the core issue shows that it is truly political. He continues to say TUCC is just misunderstood. I didn't misunderstand all those people clapping during those offensive sermons. Perhaps Senator Obama in his grand speech on race and religion should have taken a moment out to clearly distance himself from such unchristian rhetoric. Yes the media cast a spotlight on TUCC, but perhaps those at the church need to reinvigorate their bible study especially on love your enemy passages. That Church is not inidcative of African American church community at large and I view them the same way I view extremist white Chruches of Hagee and Robertson and Falwell.

Please don't tell me that Obama became a community activist without any further aspirations. You have to understand Chicago politics. One of the best ways to get the political base you need is to join one of these churches. There you get community power, money, organization, etc.

As someone who has both been a member of a UCC church (and don't go now because I moved to a place where I don't like the UCC church as well) and who was brought up Catholic (with one Catholic and one Protestant parent), it's my belief that lots of people don't quite understand the UCC. It's not a place with a central dogma. People don't go to a UCC church and expect to share precisely the same view of God as another congregant. UCC churches vary widely in the kind of services that are performed in the church - some churches experiment with many different kinds of services. People are encouraged to question and discuss religious issues - they aren't indoctrinated. The one I belonged to was attractive to me because it sparked questions on my part, not because it proposed to give answers. This kind of religious experience was obviously different than the Catholicism I was brought up with (an experience that is also still important and meaningful to me) in that Catholics tell you that there are specific things that you really do have to believe. UCC uses Christ as a central tenet, but what Christ taught, etc., is subject to discussion and interpretation, way more so than in a Catholic church or in most Protestant churches. So the idea that there is controversy in the pulpit is something that UCC people might seek out - they might want to have intellectual disagreements with their pastor - people at UCC churches don't think that's inappropriate. UCC churches are almost universally interested in helping the poor and disadvantaged in their communities, and that's something the congregation works hard together to do. (Most UCC congregations are predominantly white, although they work to be racially inclusive, and the UCC was first denomination in the US to welcome gays and lesbians.)

What is inappropriate is judging somebody on the basis of what church they go to, or to decide what kind of pastor somebody should have. There are lots of reasons people belong to churches, and lots of ways people use their religion to enrich their lives. For example, Tim Kaine, the Governor of Virginia, is a Catholic with a missionary background who is personally opposed to the death penalty and to abortion. However, he doesn't believe that his personal belief system should be legislatively imposed because he believes that the civil law is a social contract. So Democrats who are pro-choice don't see a conflict in voting for him - and wouldn't use YouTube anti-abortion rants by his parish priest to argue that he's not a fit person to vote for. Why does everyone think it's appropriate to judge Obama? How about the other presidential candidates - when did their churches (if ever) condone homosexual unions? Why aren't we flaming them and calling them out on it, if that's appropriate for Obama?

Why is this so hard for people to understand?