Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., went on the defensive Tuesday, trying to distance himself from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for 20 years.
Last week, clips from one of Wright's sermons surfaced on the Internet and the cable news networks — clips in which he denounced America and whites, suggested the U.S. brought the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on itself and intentionally infected blacks with AIDS to wipe them out, USA Today reported.
Ken Blackwell, FRC Action's senior fellow for Family Empowerment, called the presidential candidate's speech "eloquent," but said it did not address the underlying issues.
"The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, like Mr. Obama, believes in a state-centered 21st century form of big-government socialism," he said. "This 21st century form of socialism is at the heart of the Liberation Theology Rev. Wright preaches from the pulpit. Today, Mr. Obama again made it clear, with all his eloquence, that he still embraces these beliefs that would require dismantling the free-market system that has made our country's economy the most prosperous in all of human history.
"In contrast to Liberation Theology, the Christian orthodoxy teaches about the nature of God, the nature of man, the relationship between the two in this life, and about the hereafter. Liberation Theology, on the other hand, is a belief system about political agendas, socialistic economic policy, and redistribution of wealth. Those are the offensive root beliefs underlying many of Rev. Wright's sermons.
"Though Barack Obama does not embrace Mr. Wright's offensive language, he does embrace this government-solves-everything-through-socialism worldview."
