There are personal reasons for staying with a church whose words don’t match one’s values in every respect. We’ve all done it. We’ve winced in embarrassment or steamed silently in anger over narcissists in the pulpit, but decided to stay seated for the larger good. We’ve voted not with exiting feet, but with selectively closed ears. Only Trinity Church knows why Father Pfleger thought his racist and sexist rant would not fall on deaf ears. I confess it is a mystery to me that he said those words, given his campaign against “disrespectful rappers.” Maybe some at Trinity United are equally puzzled. Regardless, it is their business, not the nation’s. It is the private religious business of those private citizens; most of whom, like us, will rightly not be blown out of their pew by occasional abuse of the pulpit.

But, Senator Obama is no longer like us. The days are long past when he can sit wincing, privately and anonymously, at pulpit embarrassments. Because he presents himself as beyond old racist dichotomies and above the politics of personal attack, he was right to vote with his feet. Disaffiliating from a racially defined institution and racialized ethic, however racially uplifting for some, was the only way for the senator to avoid hypocrisy. Yes, fool him twice, shame on him. But, the senator is no fool. Neither is he a hypocrite.