The controversy over presidential candidate Barack Obama?s former pastor hit home in Baltimore County when Del. Emmett Burns Jr. told his congregation the Rev. Jeremiah Wright “spoke the truth.”
“His major infraction and infringement on the American ideals were the harsh words Jeremiah Wright used,” Burns, pastor at Rising Sun First Baptist Church in Woodlawn, told about 200 people from the pulpit Easter Sunday.
“Yet he spoke the truth.”
Wright, longtime pastor for U.S. Sen. Obama, D-Ill., has become the source of controversy after videos of his sermons appeared on television news stations and Web sites.
In excerpts from some sermons, Wright, who is now retired, accuses the United States of bringing the Sept. 11 attacks on itself, and claims the government invented the HIV virus as a “means of genocide against people of color” and lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ?God Bless America?? ” Wright says, according to one video excerpt.
“No, no, no. Not God Bless America. God d— America! That?s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God d— America.”
In a speech this past week, Obama called Wright?s controversial comments “wrong” and “divisive,” but likened the pastor to a member of his own family.
“As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me,” Obama said.
Burns, D-Baltimore County, invited the area?s news media to his church, saying he planned to address the controversy.
Burns said Wright?s comments, while profane, were “providential” because they gave America the opportunity to examine its race relations.
The lawmaker said many white churches have a “priestly” tradition ? in which ministers deal with the everyday needs of their congregation ? while black churches have a “prophetic” tradition, prompting preachers to speak out against racism and war.
“It is only the prophetic tradition that has brought about social, economic, political and educational change in our nation,” Burns said, as the church burst into applause.
