Obama’s minister raises a ruckus

Re “With friends like these,” Opinion, March 15

For a candidate who has made personal judgment the key campaign issue, Barack Obama’s close relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. raises troubling questions. Wright has for many years delivered sermons that have been variously characterized as inflammatory, hate-filled, anti-Semitic and anti-American. According to Tim Rutten, Obama “made a personal profession of faith in response to Wright’s preaching. Obama has said he consults Wright before making important political decisions.” This is more than a little frightening and calls into serious question Obama’s claim that he is the candidate whose judgment we can trust.

Joyce Emerson

Granada Hills

Although I don’t plan to vote for Hillary Clinton, I have to say her problem is not on the same footing as those of John McCain or Obama. Hers relates to an insensitive statement by a supporter, which she had no reason to anticipate. The problems presented by the Revs. John Hagee and Wright should have been well known to McCain and Obama before they became campaign issues. The nature and length of Obama’s association with Wright raises questions that demand explanation beyond disavowal. Voters have to ponder how much credence to place in the contrition of politicians.

Fred S. Hoffman

Los Angeles

If Obama is to be dismissed for his pastor’s rantings, how am I to judge members of the Catholic Church who still attend in spite of its crimes against children? How do I judge members of evangelical churches when their pastors cry out, “I have sinned against God”? How far do we take guilt by association? Obama’s pastor is a positive example in helping to bring Christ into Obama’s life and a negative example in his inflammatory rhetoric. To bind Obama to his pastor’s every word is absurd.

Richard Hawkins

Sherman Oaks

The Republicans will have a field day with Obama’s relationship to this minister -- and they should. His campaign has been about uniting America, but his pastor is a hatemonger. There is no way that Obama can compete against the Republicans. If I were Obama, I would grab the second spot on the ticket. This could be the event that unites the Democratic Party.

Suzanne Roth

Encino

I had the privilege of editing books by Wright, who skillfully employs the rhetorical device of hyperbole in preaching. Unfortunately, the sound bites that have been played have been disastrously divorced from their full context, and Wright has been wrongly demonized. Rutten was wrong when he characterized African American preachers as those who “mix left-wing conspiracy theories, phony Afrocentrism, remnant black power rhetoric and a rag bag of vulgar Third World sympathies.” As the daughter of one of America’s finest prophetic preachers, the late Dr. Thomas Kilgore Jr., I am incensed with this characterization. Prophetic preaching in the African American tradition has been distorted and denounced in a misdirected attempt to embarrass Obama. And shame on Obama for joining the chorus.

The Rev. Jini

Kilgore Cockroft

Los Angeles