Obama's Church Still Political

The Rev. Otis Moss III, the successor pastor to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ -- the church President Obama felt forced to flee as a result of Wright's inflammatory and racist remarks -- is apparently picking up where Wright left off.

At the Friday night opening of the UCC's 27^th General Synod, this year in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Moss used his Friday night sermon to attack both Rush Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Said Moss, standing at the podium that serves as the UCC pulpit for the duration of the Synod:

Don't get angry with the haters, the Rush Limbaughs. Next time you hear them, just say, "COMMA!" When you see Dick Cheney, just say, "COMMA!" Remember, there used to be a period on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The comma reference is to a church campaign entitled "God Is Still Speaking," the comma at the end of the phrase representative of God's plans for humanity as always ongoing, never having an end.

So more hate politics from the President's ex-church., heedless that the larger UCC denomination -- to which Moss was speaking -- is filled with Limbaugh listeners and Cheney voters who believe the only hatred here comes from Moss and his mentor, Jeremiah Wright. One has to wonder whether Moss understands the impression he leaves as just another UCC minister afraid to leave the UCC's intellectual plantation of 1960s liberalism. Were he a black UCC minister who had, say, the beliefs of Justice Clarence Thomas or Dr. Thomas Sowell, surely Moss understands he would never be given time at the podium/pulpit of the national gathering of the UCC.

One of the things that interests me about this story is that I hear no clamoring from the left about the political speech coming from the pulpit and the conflict between religion and politics. A big deal was made during the 2004 election cycle, and to a lesser degree in 2008, about "Right Wing Conservative Churches" and the political speech that may or may not have been coming from pulpits across America. Many on the left called for the revocation of the tax exempt status of any church that said something that could be remotely political in nature, and in fact an organized group of liberals, athiests and Democrats (often all in the same person), attended church services across the country prepared to press charges and testify if the line between politics and religion was crossed.

In Obama's Church, no such line exists. The political endorsements for the left have been going on for more than 20 years, shaping the theology and philosophy of our current leader without so much as a whimper from the ACLU. Oh, the hypocrisy. 

Religion is under fire in America. But not just any religion. Only conservative, right-wing, "dangerous" religion. That religion that endorses a secular humanistic world view is safe from scrutiny and criticism.