Obama Tries to Explain Away His Church

Barack Obama has resigned his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ, but his explanation shows that he still doesn't get it. He makes it sound as though the only reason for his resignation is to protect the church from the media, and not because he is repulsed by or disagreed with the theology that was taught there:

On the brink of the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) announced Saturday evening that he had resigned from his controversial Chicago congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ, “with some sadness.”

Obama told reporters he didn't want his "church experience to be a political circus — I think most American people will understand that, and wouldn't want to subject their church to that, either." He said it has been "months" since he has attended Trinity.

At a news conference in Aberdeen, S.D., after the news emerged on the blog of a black journalist in Chicago, Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, had notified the church in a letter Friday that they “were withdrawing as members of Trinity,” in part because of “a cultural and a stylistic gap.”

Obama said he also regrets “all the attention that my campaign has visited on” the church.

“We had reporters grabbing church bulletins and calling up the sick and the shut-in,” he said. “That’s just not how people should have to operate in their church.

Obama said he began contemplating such a move after the "National Press Club episode" in which his former pastor and longtime spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., made comments that the senator later denounced as offensive.

“We had prayed on it. We had consulted with a number of friends and family members,” Obama said. “Frankly, it’s one that I made with some sadness. Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized.”

In other words, the campaign focus-grouped the problem and it became obvious that he couldn't win in November with that church hanging around his neck. Too little, too late.