Chicago, USA - Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his wife, Michelle, announced yesterday that they have left their longtime Chicago church, Trinity United Church of Christ, after racially charged comments by a visiting pastor last week dragged them into yet another controversy over religion and race.
The resignation came Friday in a letter Obama sent to the church's head pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss III.
"We make this decision with sadness. Trinity was where I found Christ, where we were married and where our children were baptized," the letter said. "But as you know, our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive statements of Reverend Wright, which sharply conflict with our own view."
Obama held a news conference last night during a campaign stop in Aberdeen, S.D., after news of the resignation began to spread.
The Democratic presidential candidate said he and his wife had been discussing leaving the church since his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., made a theatrical and controversial April 28 appearance at the National Press Club.
"We had consulted with a number of friends and family members who are also connected to the church, and so this is not a decision I came to lightly, and frankly it's one that I make with some sadness," Obama said.
Obama's split with Trinity, where he had been an active parishioner since 1992, came after his campaign was dogged by new questions about a guest sermon made last Sunday by a Roman Catholic clergyman, the Rev. Michael L. Pfleger.
During that speech, Pfleger said he intended to expose "white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head," and he mimicked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) weeping over "a black man stealing my show."
When the priest's videotaped comments hit YouTube, Obama immediately said he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric." Pfleger apologized, saying the "words are inconsistent with Senator Obama's life and message."
Obama said Pfleger's comments "just reinforced that view that we don't want to have to answer for everything that's stated in a church."
He also said his heightened profile was drawing unwelcome attention to the church. "It's also clear that Reverend Moss and the church have been suffering from all the attention my campaign has visited on them."
Obama acknowledged that joining another black church, where "there's a different religious tradition or a worshiping style" might be equally problematic as his membership in Trinity. He said he probably will not make a decision about a new church until January.
"Our faith remains strong," Obama said. "I suspect that we will find another church home for our family."
Trinity Church also released a statement today, made available by Obama's campaign and signed by Moss, that said: "Though we are saddened by the news, we understand that is a personal decision."
Since Thursday, the Obama campaign had moved quickly to distance itself from the 59-year-old Pfleger, who has presided over his own parish, St. Sabina Catholic Church, since 1981.
On the Obama campaign's Web site, a "faith testimonial" from Pfleger that was online several weeks ago, in which he said Obama had the "intellect" to be president and likened him to Robert F. Kennedy, was taken down when the controversy over his comments erupted. The pastor's name was also removed from a list of more than two dozen priests and scholars on the senator's National Catholic Advisory Council, which is designed to court Catholic voters.
Pfleger voluntarily stepped down from the advisory post two weeks ago. It was unclear why he resigned, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
Obama's decision to leave Trinity might signal his final departure from a small group of politically well-connected preachers who counted themselves among Obama's earliest supporters, joining him just as the young lawyer surfaced in the hard-knocks world of Chicago politics.
Their financial and political support -- first garnered after Obama routinely met with pastors and religious leaders as a community organizer in the mid-1980s -- proved important in helping him win his first state Senate race, in 1996.
"He built a relationship with the church leaders based on their life stories, which they would share with him," said Gerald Kellman, who hired Obama as an organizer for the Developing Communities Project in 1985. "He appealed to the injustice and the inspiration, which they had encountered in their lives."
Pfleger, in particular, was impressed with Obama's work as a community organizer and supported his ideas on low-income housing and unemployment. "You have to remember, Pfleger's a community organizer, too," said Dwight N. Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago and a parishioner at Trinity. "He saw some part of himself in him."
Pfleger has donated $4,000 to Obama campaigns since 1995 and his parish was the beneficiary of $225,000 in earmarks Obama pushed through while in the Illinois Senate.
The fissure between Obama and the preachers reached a head after the release of televised sermons of Wright, his former pastor, touched off a national firestorm.
Obama first repudiated Wright's comments, in which he made critical comments about the United States and suggested AIDS was a government plot against blacks. But he refused to completely shut out Wright, a man he likened to a family member.
That changed after Wright continued to make particularly bombastic comments in late April.
"The insensitivity and the outrageousness of the statements shocked me and surprised me," Obama said after Wright's National Press Club speech.
Wright retired from the 8,000-member church earlier this year.
On Saturday, Hopkins said he was "obviously surprised" at Obama's decision to leave Trinity. "After the Wright comments came out, he seemed to say that he wasn't leaving the church because the church does such great work," Hopkins said.
Hopkins added that he thought Pfleger's comments "crossed the line" and may have pushed Obama "over the top."
"Wright, in his comments, made a distinction between the person and public policy," Hopkins said. "Pfleger's comments were more of a personal attack."
In his 1995 book, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," Obama described Trinity as a South Side Chicago institution that introduced him to Christianity and fostered his growth.
He later titled his second book, "The Audacity of Hope," after one of Wright's sermons.