Wright blasts foes who portray him as 'fanatic'
FORMER OBAMA PASTOR | Says his remarks have been taken out of context
In his first interview since his sermons became a problem for his famous parishioner, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's former pastor says he has wrongly been painted "as some sort of fanatic."
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright told PBS' Bill Moyers that snippets from his sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ, on the South Side, have been taken out of context by various pundits, presenting a faulty picture of his views.
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"I think they want to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech," Wright said in the interview for "Bill Moyers Journal." "And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint? That's what they wanted to communicate."
The show will air at 9:30 tonight on WTTW-Channel 11.
"They know nothing about the church," Wright said, ticking off a list of Trinity's outreach programs. "They know nothing about all we try to do as a church, and have tried to do, and still continue to do as a church that believes what [religious scholar] Martin Marty said -- that the two worlds have to be together."
When he saw clips from his sermons on TV, Wright said: "I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt ... those who were doing that were doing it for some very devious reason."
Wright, who'll retire from Trinity in June, also said that being "a target of hatred" was "something very new and something very, very unsettling."
Obama has distanced himself from Wright since the video clips surfaced last month of sermons in which Wright blamed American foreign policy for contributing to the attacks on the World Trade Center. In one clip, Wright says, "God bless America? No, God damn America!"
While the candidate has made a point of not disavowing Wright himself, he has condemned his longtime spiritual adviser's words and his "profoundly distorted view of this country."
Speaking of Obama's now-famous speech regarding his ties to Wright, in Philadelphia last month, the minister said: "He's a politician. I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. But they're two different worlds."
