The Question: How should Barack Obama have responded to inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright? Are you responsible for what your spiritual leader says from the pulpit?
Barack Obama is not responsible for what his spiritual leader says from the pulpit anymore than I would assume responsibility for what my pastor says.
He is responsible for being a member of a church in which particular doctrines are preached. I’m a Southern Baptist and am very comfortable with the teachings and the biblical interpretations and ecclesiology of my church. It would be odd to be in the church and be opposed to it. So membership implies a certain endorsement.
It’s unimaginable to me that any serious political leader in America could sit silently while a pastor used blasphemy to condemn his own country and made the kind of extraordinary charges that Dr. Jeremiah Wright made. To remain in the church is, in fact, to accept those positions as responsible teaching. My advice to Senator Obama would be to flee that church and find one where the Gospel is preached, and anti-Semitic and anti-white doctrines are not propagated.
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