Obama denounced the statements in question, but critics continued to press the issue of his relationship with Wright. In response to this, he gave a speech titled " A More Perfect Union ", in which he sought to place Wright's comments in a historical and sociological context. In the speech, Obama again denounced Wright's remarks, but did not disown him as a person. Barack Obama first met Wright in the late s, while he was working as a community organizer in Chicago before attending Harvard Law School.
This sermon also was the source for themes of Obama's keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. As reported in The New York Times , [ 10 ] Wright was scheduled to give the public invocation before Obama's presidential announcement, but Obama withdrew the invitation the night before the event. Wright criticized the Times for their characterization of the incident as a distortion of the interview he had granted, where he had spoken of Obama in an extremely positive light.
In , Wright was appointed to Barack Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee, a group of over national black religious leaders who supported Obama's bid for the Democratic nomination. On May 31, , Barack and Michelle Obama announced that they had withdrawn their membership in Trinity United Church of Christ , stating that "Our relations with Trinity have been strained by the divisive statements of Reverend Wright, which sharply conflict with our own views".
Most of the controversial excerpts that gained national attention in March were taken from two sermons: one titled "The Day of Jerusalem's Fall", delivered on September 16, , and another titled "Confusing God and Government", delivered on April 13, In a sermon delivered shortly after the September 11 attacks in , Wright made comments about an interview of former U. Ambassador Edward Peck which he saw on Fox News.
Wright said:. I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox News. This is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end.
