Rev. Pfleger: "America is the Greatest Sin Against God"

June 01, 2008 10:46 PM

In another excerpt from Rev. Michael Pfleger's sermon last Sunday, May 25, from the pulpit of Sen. Barack Obama's now former church, Trinity United Church of Christ on the South side of Chicago, the longtime Obama associate condemns America for racism in fairly harsh terms.

Watch HERE.

"Racism is still America's greatest addiction," Pfleger says. "I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God."

There seems to be a mixed reaction to that from the pews. But Pfleger explains:

"If the greatest command is to love, than the sin against love must be the greatest sin against God who IS love and who calls us to love one another. So that this greatest sin against God, racism, it's as natural as the air we breath."

Obama, of course, resigned from Trinity on Friday, saying he didn't want to be held accountable for every word spoken from the pulpit at the church, and he didn't want the church to continue to have the media disrupting its worship. The last straw may have been Pfleger's mocking of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, from the pulpit in this same sermon.

But Obama's relationship with Pfleger -- who is the priest at a different, Catholic, church -- spans decades.

In September, the Obama campaign brought Pfleger to Iowa to host one of several interfaith forums for the campaign. Pfleger has given money to Obama's campaigns and Obama as a state legislator directed at least $225,000 towards social programs at St. Sabina's, according to the Chicago Tribune. Pfleger appears to have been scrubbed from the Obama campaign's page that features the testimony of faith leaders, but you can see the cached version HERE.

UPDATE: Asked for a response to this newly-posted excerpt from the sermon, the Obama campaign has re-released the same statement it issued last week after the video of Rev Pfleger's mocking of Sen. Clinton was released: “As I have traveled this country, I've been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that that unites us. That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause.” - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois