After months of controversy surrounding his choice of church, Barack Obama announced today that he’s resigned his and his family’s membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. “This is not a decision I come to lightly … and it is one I make with some sadness,” he said at a news conference, noting that he and his wife, Michelle, had been discussing the issue since the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial appearance at the National Press Club last month in Washington, D.C., but added, “I’m not denouncing the church and I’m not interested in people who want me to denounce the church.”

Where does he go from here? “I suspect we’ll find another church home for our family,” Obama said. Let’s pray he finds a God-centered, Bible-believing, Gospel-preaching, politics-avoiding place for him and his family to worship. Any of you know of a good Chicagoland church home you could recommend for the Obamas? I assume Michael Pfleger’s Saint Sabina Roman Catholic Church isn’t an option.

Words coming from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ continue to dog Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. This time, however, it wasn’t the preaching of Jeremiah Wright or his successor, Otis Moss; it was the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a white pastor of Chicago’s predominantly black Saint Sabina Roman Catholic Church.

Pfleger, a well-known activist in the city, chose to use his time at Trinity Sunday morning to berate and belittle Obama’s opponent in the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton (see video here): “She just always thought that, ‘This is mine. I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white.’ … And then, out of nowhere, came ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama.’ And she said, (more…)

“Like thieves who steal a car and cut it up in order to sell the parts, the radical right is now chopping up the sermons of Rev. Otis Moss III, incoming Senior Pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ, and trying to peddle the parts to generate new controversy,” declared a column in the Washington Post on Monday.

The column’s author, Susan Thistlethwaite, is the President of Chicago Theological Seminary. “Right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity used those same spare parts this past weekend to attempt a further political spin,” she said, indicating a NewsMax article and a thread in the Hannity.com forums that posted links to YouTube clips of Moss’ sermons.

To be fair, even a friendly reading of the NewsMax article does invite some incredulity. But as Thistlethwaite spends 500 words defending Moss’ analogies to thugs, pimps, and Tupac, it seems the columnist-seminarian misses what all the fuss is about.

Just as the media was moving on from the Wright controversy, Moss made several in-sermon gaffes that stirred up another hornet’s nest. “We have listened and watched as the wonderful work of our church has been vilified this week,” said Moss. “I guess we know a little something about crucifixion. This is an attack on the legacy of the African-American church.”

In other sermons, Moss repeatedly returns to themes of racial competition, implying in a number of instances that whites intentionally suppress the black population by holding them to inferior schools, insufficient health service, and inadequate legal representation. In particular, critics of Moss accuse him of emphasizing “the skin issue” as a metaphor to spiritual dominance.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe also reported Rev. Moss’ comments as harmful to the Obama campaign. “He came out last night and defended the old pastor,” Joe said of Moss. “He compared what they did to the last pastor to a crucifixion, he basically said, it’s not us, it’s the white media who is attacking us.”