[Obama:] Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang- banger. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America.
[Brown:] Senator Barack Obama describing the Chicago church where he's worshipped for years. In his speech today, Senator Obama rejected the racially charged remarks made by his former minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But he also tried to explain their roots by talking candidly about a corner of life few white Americans see; African-American church services. It's an important angle in this story. Up close tonight, CNN's Joe Johns.
[Joe Johns, Cnn Congressional Correspondent:] At the heart of the controversy over Jeremiah Wright is a doctrine of faith. It's called black liberation theology.
[Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Trinity United Church Of Christ:] Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country...
[Johns:] Black preachers we spoke to see an attack on Wright as an attack on their freedom to preach.
[Dr. Gail Anderson Holness, Greater Washington Council Of Churches:] He is not preaching hate theology. And that should be a clear statement. It's not hate theology. It is a liberation theology. When Jesus was around, they didn't respect Jesus. They were angry with him. When he spoke the beatitudes on the mountain. They were angry with Martin Luther King when he was around, and they didn't respect him. And now he's a great hero.
[Johns:] What a lot of black parishioners hear on Sunday mornings was formulated as a response to the black power movement in the 1960s.
[Reverend Ronald Braxton, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church:] Christianity had to take up the flag of liberation, and that you could be black and Christian, because the black power movement was saying that Christianity was white, European. We can be Christians. We can follow Christ, because Christ is a liberator. He was and is a liberator.
[Johns:] The Reverend Ronald Braxton is pastor at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., where President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, attended prayer services the morning of his inaugurations. [on camera]: This congregation has been here about 170 years. The building has been here about 120. I have attended services at Metropolitan since the mid-1980s. The sermons sometimes touch on social issues. But, like most churches, it's generally about faith. [voice-over]: The AME Church ascribes to a black liberation theology, and it can lead to some passionate sermons. But hate?
[Braxton:] Yes and no. Yes, it's hate. It is hate of a system, of a society, of a politics that will not treat all persons equal, that will spend billions of dollars to fight a war, but will not spend half of that amount of money to make sure that children have health care. When you see, day to day, when people come into your office or come to your church looking for a loaf of bread, mothers come in: "Can you do anything for me, Reverend? I need some help." They come to your Bible studies. They come to your prayer services at night. And they stand at your door when you get there. It is hate for that kind of a system, because you know within your heart that this country, the richest country in the world, can provide for her people. But she will not.
[Johns:] Metropolitan AME Church is right down the street from the White House and around the corner. The pastor here is highly politically aware and careful with his words. [voice-over]: But he concedes, in the pulpit, preaching, he can get so emotional, so passionate, that even he might get carried away, like the controversial Jeremiah Wright. While all black churches are different and most sermons are different, the debate over Jeremiah Wright may go on. But what many black churches share is a core belief that the preachers are there to stand up for social justice, even if that sometimes comes across as angry words. Joe Johns, CNN, Washington.
[Brown:] Digging deeper now, I'm joined by longtime civil rights activist and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Reverend Joseph Lowery. Reverend Lowery, thanks for joining us.
[Reverend Joseph Lowery, Georgia Coalition Of People's Agenda:] My pleasure. My pleasure.
[Brown:] By now, we have all heard Reverend Wright's more controversial comments, that the United States brought the September 11 attacks upon itself, that Hillary Clinton has an advantage over Obama because she's white. But you have called Reverend Wright a scholar, a profound thinker, an electrifying preacher. Now, Obama today called his comments divisive. Do you agree? Are they divisive?
[Lowery:] Well, they certainly separate us from the people who are not of the community of faith and who do not subscribe to prophetic preaching. There are hundreds and hundreds of preachers in black churches across this country who may not use identical language, but they have a common theology with Jeremiah Wright. They're in the prophetic stream. The prophets of old, the Isaiahs, the Jeremiahs, the Amos, they spoke angrily and sometimes with cruel phrases and words, to the rulers and kings of their day. That's who they were talking to on behalf of the poor and oppressed of their day. The black church has been a place where black people take their sorrow, their travail and their longing for hope and for deliverance. They expect the preacher and thank the preacher and say, "Amen, hallelujah," to the preacher, who takes their burden to the Lord. And then they join in a movement to help bring new order and a new day into being. That's prophetic preaching, and it's traditionally the black church.
[Brown:] So are Wright's controversial statements something that's commonly heard in black churches?
[Lowery:] No question about it. The gospel itself, Jesus called some folks in his day a generation of vipers, because they were cross- cutting, undercutting the message of faith and the message of hope and the message of love. And I think in that magnificent address today that Barack Obama's most powerful statement I've heard since Martin's letter from the Birmingham jail. I think he set the record straight. And the theme running through that, which may not have been mentioned, was something we're overlooking, that he did not leave his church, just as a man doesn't leave his wife or you may not leave your country, although you have disagreement, but you stay and work it through. And that's the leadership he's offering to America. Yes, we've got differences. But we're going to work it through toward the end of reconciliation and justice. And that's the message he offers the American people. And the ball is in the American people's court to see if they're mature enough to respond to this kind of very mature, spiritual leadership.
[Brown:] All right. Reverend Lowery, you say as the pastor of a predominantly black congregation that you've repeated most of the same words that we've heard from Reverend Wright. Why?
[Lowery:] I'm sorry. I missed the last part of your question.
[Brown:] You said that you've repeated many of the same words that we've heard from reverend Wright. Why?
[Lowery:] Well, I said we might not use identical language, but we have a common theology. That is, thus sayeth the lord, to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Jeremiah got in the street to preach to the rulers and kings about justice. Amos and others, and Jesus himself, as you say, talked about he was called of God to preach the good news to the poor, to release the captives, to set the prisoner free. All of these in the context of justice. One of the things I regret so much about what we're doing, particularly in media to Jeremiah Wright's message, we are hammering over and over and over the same sound bites out of context. We're not privileged to what he said leading up to and what he said following those phrases that might be controversial and might be objected to by some people, as they were objected to by Barack Obama.
[Brown:] All right. Reverend Joseph Lowery, appreciate your time tonight.
[Lowery:] Thank you.
[Brown:] We'll continue the discussion next with Roland Martin, Faye Wattleton and Jim Wallis. And then later, can Barack Obama win over white working-class voters who have gone for Hillary Clinton in states like Ohio and are leaning her way in Pennsylvania? We've got that story ahead on AC 360.