Obama may have left Trinity, but he’s still on the Left.

By Stanley Kurtz

Having now left Trinity United Church of Christ, can Barack Obama
escape responsibility for his decades-long ties to Michael Pfleger and
Jeremiah Wright? No, he cannot. Obama’s connections to the radical-
left politics espoused by Pfleger and Wright are broad and deep. The
real reason Obama bound himself to Wright and Pfleger in the first
place is that he largely approved of their political-theological
outlooks.

Obama shared Wright’s rejection of black “assimilation.” Obama also
shared Wright’s suspicion of the traditional American ethos of
individual self-improvement and the pursuit of “middle-classness.” In
common with Wright, Obama had deep misgivings about America’s criminal
justice system. And with the exception of their direct attacks on
whites, Obama largely approved of his preacher-friends’ fiery
rhetoric. Obama’s goal was not to repudiate religious radicalism but
to channel its fervor into an effective and permanent activist
organization. How do we know all this? We know it because Obama
himself has told us.

A Revealing Profile
Although it’s been discussed before (because it confirms that Obama
attended Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March), a 1995 background piece
on Obama from the Chicago Reader has received far too little
attention. Careful consideration of this important profile makes it
clear that Obama’s long-standing ties to Chicago’s most rabidly
radical preachers call into question far more than Obama’s judgment
and character (although they certainly do that, as well). Obama’s two-
decades at Trinity open a critically important window onto his radical-
left political leanings. No mere change of church membership can erase
that truth.

By providing us with an in-depth picture of Obama’s political
worldview on the eve of his elective career, Hank De Zutter’s, “What
Makes Obama Run?” lives up to its title. The first thing to note here
is that Obama presents his political hopes for the black community as
a third way between two inadequate alternatives. First, Obama rejects,
“the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation — which helps
a few upwardly mobile blacks to ‘move up, get rich, and move
out. . . . ’ ” This statement might surprise many Obama supporters,
who seem to think of him as the epitome of integrationism. Yet Obama’s
repudiation of integrationist upward mobility is fully consistent with
his career as a community organizer, his general sympathy for leftist
critics of the American “system,” and of course his membership at
Trinity. Obama, we are told, “quickly learned that integration was a
one-way street, with blacks expected to assimilate into a white world
that never gave ground.” Compare these statements by Obama with some
of the remarks in Jeremiah Wright’s Trumpet, and the resemblance is
clear.

Having disposed of assimilation, Obama goes on to criticize “the
politics of black rage and black nationalism” — although less on
substance than on tactics. Obama upbraids the politics of black power
for lacking a practical strategy. Instead of diffusing black rage by
diverting it to the traditional American path of assimilation and
middle-class achievement, Obama wants to capture the intensity of
black anger and use it to power an effective political organization.
Obama says, “he’s tired of seeing the moral fervor of black folks
whipped up — at the speaker’s rostrum and from the pulpit — and then
allowed to dissipate because there’s no agenda, no concrete program
for change.” The problem is not fiery rhetoric from the pulpit, but
merely the wasted anger it so usefully stirs.

Obama’s Network
De Zutter gives us a clear glimpse of Obama’s radicalism. Obama is
called “progressive,” of course, and is said to yearn for “massive
economic change.” That could simply mean an end to widespread poverty,
rather than social restructuring. Yet Obama is also described as
holding “a worldview well beyond” his mother’s “New Deal, Peace Corps,
position-paper liberalism.” De Zutter lays out Obama’s ties to radical
groups like Chicago Acorn, as Acorn’s lead organizer, Madeleine
Talbott, is quoted affirming that: “Barack has proven himself among
our members . . . we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a
fellow organizer.” In “Inside Obama’s Acorn,” I explore Obama’s links
to this radical group, and to Talbott, who practices the sort of
intimidating and often illegal “direct action” Acorn is famous for.
(For more on Talbott’s affinity for “direct action,” see “Where Do We
Begin?”)

De Zutter also touches on some other key elements of Obama’s network.
Obama’s early organizing work for the Developing Communities Project
was “funded by south-side Catholic churches.” Clearly, this early work
cemented Obama’s close ties to Father Pfleger, whose support formed a
critical component of Obama’s grassroots network. Precisely because of
this early link, Pfleger threw his considerable support behind Obama’s
failed 2000 bid for Congress. By the way, Pfleger’s political
influence in Chicago is such that Mayor Richard Daley actually
declared his 2002 candidacy for a fourth full term as mayor at
Pfleger’s St. Sabina church. In “Inside Obama’s Acorn,” I explore the
possibility that Obama’s seat on the boards of a couple liberal
Chicago foundations may have allowed him to direct funds to groups
that served as his de facto political base. De Zutter quotes Woods
Fund executive director, Jean Rudd, praising Obama for “being among
the most hard-nosed board members in wanting to see results. He wants
to see our grants make change happen — not just pay salaries.” No
doubt, Obama was sincerely supportive of the sort of leftist
organizations favored by the Woods Fund. However, if Obama was in fact
looking to some of the groups supported by the Woods Fund as a
personal political base, his unusually active board service would make
all the more sense.

Black Churches
The threads of this political network are pulled tighter as Obama
turns to a “favorite topic,” “the lack of collective action among
black churches.” Obama is sharply critical of churches that try to
help their communities merely through “food pantries and community
service programs.” Today, Obama rationalizes his ties to Wright’s
Trinity Church by citing its community service programs. Yet in 1995,
Obama was highly critical of churches that focused exclusively on such
services, while neglecting the sort of politically visionary sermons,
local king-making, and political alliance-building favored by Pfleger
and Wright. Obama rejects the strictly community-service approach of
apolitical churches as part of America’s unfortunate “bias” toward
“individual action.” Obama believes that what he derogates as “John
Wayne” thinking and the old, “right wing...individualistic bootstrap
myth” needs to be replaced: “We must unite in collective action, build
collective institutions and organizations.”

Obama sees the black church as the key to his plan for collective
social and political action: “Obama . . . spoke of the need to
mobilize and organize the economic power and moral fervor of black
churches. He also argued that as a state senator he might help bring
this about faster than as a community organizer or civil rights
lawyer.” Says Obama, “We have some wonderful preachers in town —
preachers who continue to inspire me — preachers who are magnificent
at articulating a vision of the world as it should be.” Obama
continues, “But as soon as church lets out, the energy dissipates. We
must find ways to channel all this energy into community building.”
Obama seems to be holding up people like Wright, Pfleger, and James
Meeks (who he has listed as his key religious allies) as positive
models for the wider black church — in both their rhetoric, and in
their willingness to play a direct political role. If anything, Obama
would like to see the political visions of Wright and Pfleger given
greater weight and substance by connecting them to secular leftist
political networks like Acorn.

End Run
By the end of De Zutter’s piece, Obama’s distinctive vision comes
clear. While in his years as a Chicago organizer and attorney, Obama
took care to maintain friendly ties to the Daley administration, in
Obama’s campaign for state senate, he specifically avoided asking the
mayor or the mayor’s closest allies for support. Obama’s plan was to
make an end-run around Chicago’s governing Democratic political
network, by building a coalition of left-leaning black churches and
radical secular organizations like Acorn (perhaps with de facto help
from liberal foundation money as well). This coalition would provide
Obama with the flexibility to play out a political career some
distance to the left of conventional Illinois democratic politics. And
sure enough, Obama’s extremely liberal record in Illinois vindicated
his strategy.

The De Zutter story sheds considerable light on the debate over the
significance of Obama’s ties to Pfleger and Wright. For the most part,
that debate plays out with a relatively apolitical notion of church
membership in mind. Obama’s defenders say that he should not be held
responsible for the occasional political excesses of his preacher.
Critics point out that the extremism of Wright and Pfleger is long-
standing and well known. At some point, this line of thinking goes,
the radicalism of such preachers ought to become intolerable. And what
does it say about Obama’s judgement that he actually built his own
national reputation by pointing to his appreciation of Wright’s
sermons? Obama’s critics also see his decision to join Wright’s church
as an opportunistic move by a politically ambitious secular humanist
in search of a respectable religious home.

I agree with all of these criticisms of Obama. Yet De Zutter’s article
shows us that the full story of Obama’s ties to Pfleger and Wright is
both more disturbing and more politically relevant than we’ve realized
up to now. On Obama’s own account, the rhetoric and vision of
Chicago’s most politically radical black churches are exactly what he
wants to see more of. True, when discussing Louis Farrakhan with De
Zutter, Obama makes a point of repudiating anti-white, anti-Semitic,
and anti-Asian sermons. Yet having laid down that proviso, Obama seems
to relish the radicalism of preachers like Pfleger and Wright. In
1995, Obama didn’t want Trinity’s political show to stop. His plan was
to spread it to other black churches, and harness its power to an
alliance of leftist groups and sympathetic elected officials.

So Obama’s political interest in Trinity went far beyond merely
gaining a respectable public Christian identity. On his own account,
Obama hoped to use the untapped power of the black church to
supercharge hard-left politics in Chicago, creating a personal and
institutional political base that would be free to part with
conventional Democratic politics. By his own testimony, Obama would
seem to have allied himself with Wright and Pfleger, not in spite of,
but precisely because of their radical left-wing politics. It follows
that Obama’s ties to Trinity reflect on far more than his judgment and
character (although they certainly implicate that). Contrary to common
wisdom, then, Obama’s religious history has everything to do with his
political values and policy positions, since it confirms his affinity
for leftist radicalism.

Sense of Mission
It could be argued that the new and supposedly moderate, “bipartisan”
Obama of 2008 is the real Obama. Unfortunately, that argument is
unconvincing. Again and again, De Zutter reports that Obama’s true
passion, deepest calling, and most authentic sense of mission is to be
found in his early community organizing work. Obama’s own vision for
himself as a legislator is as a kind of super-organizer/activist,
extending the “progressive” quest for “social justice” to society as a
whole.

I see no reason to doubt Obama’s self-account, and many reasons to
accept it. As De Zutter notes, Obama gave up a near-certain Supreme
Court clerkship to come to Chicago and do community organizing. It’s
also easy to imagine Obama joining one of the many other less radical
black churches on the south side of Chicago, if that was all he needed
to launch a political career. Clearly, given his good relations with
the Daley administration, Obama could have asked for its support in
his bid for the Illinois State Senate. Yet at every turn, Obama took a
riskier path. That suggests he was operating from conviction. Trouble
is, the conviction in question was apparently Obama’s belief in the
sort of radical social and economic views held by groups like Acorn
and preachers like Wright and Pfleger.

Obama was certainly more rhetorically smooth, and no doubt less
personally embittered than some of his mentors. Yet what stands out
after a consideration of Obama’s larger personal and political history
is the general convergence of political orientation between Wright,
Pfleger, Acorn, Chicago’s “progressive” foundations, and Obama
himself. Obama in Chicago was a man of the Left, doing his level-best
to assemble a coalition free from the constraints of conventional,
middle-ground Democratic politics.

Obama Speaks
If there is any doubt about the accuracy of De Zutter’s detailed
account, we get the same message from this too-little discussed but
revealing and important piece by Obama himself. This chapter from a
1990 book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois was
originally published in 1988, just after Obama joined Trinity. The
piece is called, “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner
City,” and it shows exactly what Obama hoped to make of his
association with Pfleger and Wright.

Obama begins by rejecting the false dichotomy between radicalism and
moderation:
The debate as to how black and other dispossessed people can forward
their lot in America is not new. From W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T.
Washington to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, this
internal debate has raged between integration and nationalism, between
accommodation and militancy, between sit-down strikes and boardroom
negotiations. The lines between these strategies have never been
simply drawn, and the most successful black leadership has recognized
the need to bridge these seemingly divergent approaches.

Of course, even James Cone, the radical founder of black-liberation
theology, sees himself as synthesizing the moderation of Martin Luther
King Jr. with the radicalism of Malcolm X. Obama here seems to be
calling for an inside/outside strategy like the one he would have
learned working with Chicago Acorn. Note Obama’s reference to the
controversial tradition of “direct action” favored by Acorn (and
earlier by Saul Alinsky, whose tradition of radicalism the book is
meant to carry on). Obama offers radicalism with a moderate face.

Obama sketches out a vision in which a politically awakened black
church would ally with “community organizers” (like Obama and his
friends from Acorn), thereby radicalizing the politics of America’s
cities:

Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the
traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources,
membership and — most importantly — values and biblical traditions
that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church is clearly
a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape of cities
like Chicago.

After expressing disappointment with apolitical black churches focused
only on traditional community services, Obama goes on to point in a
more activist direction:

Over the past few years, however, more and more young and forward-
thinking pastors have begun to look at community organizations such as
the Developing Communities Project in the far south side [where Obama
himself worked, and first encountered Pfleger, SK]...as a powerful
tool for living the social gospel, one which can educate and empower
entire congregations and not just serve as a platform for a few
prophetic leaders. Should a mere 50 prominent black churches, out of
thousands that exist in cities like Chicago, decide to collaborate
with a trained and organized staff, enormous positive changes could be
wrought....

Give me 50 Pflegers or 50 Wrights, Obama is saying, tie them to a
network of grassroots activists like my companions from Acorn, and we
can revolutionize urban politics.

Mystery Solved
So it would appear that Obama’s own writings solve the mystery of why
he stayed at Trinity for 20 years. Obama’s long-held and decidedly
audacious hope has been to spread Wright’s radical spirit by linking
it to a viable, left-leaning political program, with Obama himself at
the center. The revolutionizing power of a politically awakened black
church is not some side issue, or merely a personal matter, but has
been the signature theme of Obama’s grand political strategy.

Lucky for Obama, this political background is unfamiliar to most
Americans. There are others who share Obama’s approach, however. Take
a look at this piece by Manhattan Institute scholar Steven Malanga on
“The Rise of the Religious Left,” and you will see exactly where Obama
is coming from. Malanga ends his account by noting that religious-left
activists often partner with groups like MoveOn.org and attend
gatherings featuring speakers like Michael Moore. After the 2004
election, there was some talk of the Democratic party “purging” MoveOn
and Moore. Far from purging its radical Left, however, the Democratic
party is now just inches away from placing it in the driver’s seat.
That is the real meaning of the fiasco at Trinity Church.

===========
Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy
Center.