Obama's Pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Living the Good Life

Any USAID money go to his church?

Barack Obama sort of dumped Rev. Wright in 2008 as his campaign was firing up. Interestingly, it was over comments Wright said during church services in 2001. On the first Sunday after the Twin Towers attack, Wright told his flock:

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Wright was Obama’s pastor for twenty years, presided at his wedding to Michelle and baptized their children.

Wright also preached: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three‐strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people.”

The wily Obama was smart enough to know that his association with Wright wasn’t going over well with White America. He originally invited Wright to give the invocation at an event on February 10, 2007, at the start of Obama’s campaign. He called Wright the night before and retracted the invitation but still had Wright attend. Obama’s campaign team was skittish about the association. To the relief of all, Wright retired in 2008 from Trinty United Church of Christ. And what a retirement he got.

Wright moved into a 10,340 square-foot $1.6 million house in Tinley Park, IL, which was less than 2% black. Apparently, although a racist, he didn’t mind living among whites. His church paid for it, and he also got a $10 million line of credit.

Wright already owned the property. He bought it in 2004 for $345,000. He sold it to Trinity United for $308,000 in 2006. Those proceeds went into a living trust for him and his wife. So did he sell the property to himself?

While Obama gave the illusion that he had distanced himself from Wright, he only kind of did. Obama said: “In sum, I reject outright the statements by the Reverend Wright that are at issue.”

In the Huffington Post, Obama said: “Most importantly, The Reverend Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.”

Don’t laugh, Obama acutally said that. He left out the part where Jesus was going to try to divide the country racially and return it to the ‘60s.

What interesting about the house is that the church took out the mortgage in 2006 to build the house for Wright and managed to pay it off four years later.

Wright is still living there and preaching and teaching part-time, but he had a stroke in 2016 that has him now in a wheelchair.

But he’s not the only one living the fancy life. Senator Raphael Warnock is living rent free in a $1 million home owned by Ebenezer Baptist Church when he is not pretending to represent the residents of Georgia.

Washington Free Beacon: “Warnock now lives in the home for free. Property taxes? Well, the church, and thereby Warnock, is exempt from nearly all of them, even from those that subsidize Atlanta-area schools, libraries, parks, bonds, and local government operations, real estate records show.

“It's unclear why Ebenezer Baptist Church bought the luxury home for Warnock, who owned his own home in Atlanta when the church purchased the DeKalb property. (Warnock sold his personal Atlanta home shortly after he moved into the church-owned home, real estate records show.)” A house he would have had to pay property tax on.

“Warnock himself has not publicly disclosed his new housing arrangement. But on March 16, he urged his congregation to donate to a $3.5 million church fundraising campaign known as One Ebenezer devoted to, among other things, "reducing our mortgage debt." During that sermon, Warnock called on the members of the congregation to donate "at least" $139 on top of their 10 percent tithe in honor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church's 139th anniversary.

"So give what you would normally give. Do that first," Warnock said from the pulpit.

"Then maybe you want to give an anniversary [gift] … $139. Everybody who can … give at least that much."

"There are others who say, I can do better. I can give $500. I can give $1,000," Warnock went on. "Somebody might want to give their bonus. Why are y'all laughing? I ain't laughing, I'm serious. You might want to give your bonus. You might want to give a week's salary. All of us are blessed at different levels."

“In addition to his free Atlanta housing, Warnock earned a church salary of $31,800 in 2023 as well as nearly $461,000* in book royalties, his financial disclosure shows. A tithe on that income would have amounted to over $49,000, but it's unclear if Warnock donated anything to Ebenezer Baptist Church in 2023.”

* For those who don’t know, writers make about $5 a book. So did Warnock sell 92,200 books in 2023?

Susan Daniels is a thirty-year licensed private investigator and author of The Rubbish Hauler’s Wife versus Barack Obama: A True Story. It is available on Amazon.com.