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Local African-American church leaders weigh in on Obama, Wright relationship

BY LOUIS MEDINA, Californian staff writer
e-mail: lmedina@bakersfield.com | Tuesday, Mar 18 2008 5:19 PM

Last Updated: Wednesday, Mar 19 2008 10:03 AM

Local African-American church leaders had much to say Tuesday about Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race in America and his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Wright has been under the national news microscope recently for his incendiary statements against an America he sees as racist and deserving of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

By association, Obama, who has relied on Wright as a spiritual mentor for two decades, was married and had his daughters baptized by him, and found inspiration for the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” in one of Wright’s sermons, has also been under voters’ and the media’s watchful eye.

In Philadelphia on Tuesday, Obama condemned Wright’s remarks while saying he could not disown the man who has been like family to him, and called for Americans to try to understand such core issues of race relations as anger and resentment.

“I think that Sen. Obama did a wonderful job in fluidly bringing to America’s attention the delicate issue of racism and, without confrontation, allowing Americans to know that this is an issue that we can deal with if all parties are willing to come to the table and be honest,” said Marisa Banks, administrator for Compassion Christian Center on Fourth Street.

The Rev. Victor Airiohuodion, pastor of Citygate Christian Center on White Lane, said he had not heard Obama’s speech, but talked about Wright’s fiery comments on race, which the recently retired pastor delivered on more than one sermon to his Chicago congregation, the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ.

“For me personally, I don’t think the pulpit is the right place for him to say those things,” Airiohuodion said. “The pulpit is the place where you teach about love and acceptance and forgiveness and healing and letting go of the past.”

Even though the realities of slavery, prejudice and segregation suffered by blacks cannot be undone, he said, “the message (Wright preaches) should be of unity and forgiveness. As a pastor he should be above that.”

Shirley Craig, financial secretary for Jerusalem Mission Community Church of God in Christ on Cottonwood Road, said she and her whole family are staunch Obama supporters.

Craig, who was born in Oklahoma but came to Bakersfield as a child more than 60 years ago, said, “I know what discrimination is all about,” but she said she doesn’t agree with what Wright preaches on race and said Obama should not be judged by it.

“Everybody has their own opinion,” she said. “Everything that my pastor speaks in church doesn’t mean I agree with it. Whatever my pastor says, they shouldn’t hold it against me.”

She said Obama, who “wants people to see him as a man, not as a black man,” did right in distancing himself from Wright by disinviting him from saying the invocation at his presidential announcement in February 2007, and by dropping him from his African-American Religious Leadership Committee earlier this month.

“If somebody is going to hurt you, get rid of ‘em,” she said. “If you feel like they’re going to pull you down, you just get rid of ‘em.”

Airiohuodion, who is originally from Nigeria and has lived in Bakersfield for about 20 years, also said it was good for Obama to distance his campaign from Wright.

“They are not on the same wavelength,” he said. “Senator Obama, I would probably think, is a uniter. His pastor probably has the spirit of division. That’s my perception. Obama likes to view people as people, not for their color. That speaks volumes about who he is.”

Banks, whose church hosted a local visit by the Rev. Al Sharpton last year — Sharpton expressed concern last year at Obama’s commitment to his pastor — did not say whether she agreed or disagreed with Obama’s actions to distance himself from Wright.

“I understand his actions are for the greater good,” she said, “but I will have to say that I applaud him today for not denouncing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and stating that this is the man who led him to Christ.”

She said Obama’s speech made it clear to her that Wright’s controversial statements concern “the types of things that the African-American church needs to address.” “So to me,” she said, “it spoke that today we still have a black America and a white America coexisting.”