CNSNews.com – President-elect Barack Obama said in 2004 – while he was a state legislator running for a U.S. Senate seat – that he attended services at Trinity United Church of Christ every week.
 
This is in contrast to what Obama, as a presidential candidate, said this year after controversial anti-American remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced. Obama then told news outlets that he did not attend the church frequently and was not aware of Wright’s comments.
 
The comments from Obama about his church attendance appeared in the transcript of an interview posted Tuesday on the religious news Web site Beliefnet.com. The interview was conducted on March 27, 2004 by Chicago Sun-Times religion writer Cathleen Falsani for a story on Obama’s faith, but the interview was not released in its entirety until now.
 
“One of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ,” Obama said in the interview. “And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church.”
 
Obama began attending the church in 1988 and formally joined Trinity in 1992. Falsani asked, “Do you still attend Trinity?”
 
Obama answered, “Yep. Every week. 11 o’clock service. Ever been there? Good service.
I actually wrote a book called ‘Dreams from My Father,’ it’s kind of a meditation on race. There’s a whole chapter on the church in that, and my first visits to Trinity.”
 
That is in direct contradiction to what he has said throughout this campaign year.
 
After the controversy over Wright and Trinity United erupted, Obama gave an interview to the Fox News Channel that aired on March 17. One of the questions that reporter Major Garrett asked was, “As a member in good standing, were you a regular attendee of Sunday services?”
 
Obama answered: “You know, I won’t say that I was a perfect attendee. I was regular in spurts, because there was times when, for example, our child had just been born, our first child. And so we didn’t go as regularly then.”
 
In a July 21, 2008 Newsweek article, Obama explained that he stopped going to church as often after he and wife Michelle had children.
 
“As young marrieds, Barack and Michelle (who also didn’t go to church regularly as a child) went to church fairly often—two or three times a month. But after their first child, Malia, was born, they found making the effort more difficult. ‘I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of taking young, squirming children to church, but it’s not easy,’ he says.
 
“‘Trinity was always packed, and so you had to get there early. And if you went to the morning service, you were looking at—it just was difficult. So that would cut back on our involvement.’
 
“After he began his run for the U.S. Senate, he says, the family sometimes didn’t go to Trinity for months at a time. The girls have not attended Sunday school.” 
 
The Wright controversy threatened to be a stumbling block in Obama’s quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. On March 14, he released a statement on the matter that said he was not in church when Wright made his inflammatory statements about the United States and 9/11.
 
“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation,” Obama said in his statement. “When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign.
 
“I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church,” Obama added.
 
Obama’s first interviews on the matter came in March when video clips of Wright’s sermons were being aired. The clips showed the pastor refer to America as, “the U.S. of K.K.K. A.”
 
In another sermon Wright said, “No, no, no. Not God bless America. God d— America. It’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God d– America for treating us citizens as less than human. God d— America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme.”
 
A clip of a sermon Wright delivered after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks shows him saying, “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 to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”
 
Also in the Sun-Times interview posted on BeliefNet.com, Obama speaks of another controversial clergyman when Falsani asked him, “Do you have people in your life that you look to for guidance?”
 
Obama answered: “Well, my pastor [Jeremiah Wright] is certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for. I have a number of friends who are ministers. Reverend (James) Meeks is a close friend and colleague of mine in the state Senate. Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely.”
 
Pfleger, a white Catholic priest, made news earlier this year when he delivered a sermon at Trinity mocking Obama’s Democratic primary opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.
 
Pfleger told the Trinity congregation that Clinton apparently was thinking, “‘I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white and this is mine.’ … And then out of nowhere, ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama.’
 
“And she said, ‘Oh damn. Where did you come from? I’m white. I’m entitled. There’s a black man stealing my show. … She wasn’t the only one crying. There was a whole lot of white people crying,” Pfleger added.

CHICAGO (AP) ―

In a Sunday address celebrating President-elect Barack Obama, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Obama has a God-given capacity to handle any burdens he’ll face as the nation’s leader.

Farrakhan added that Obama will only be able to make positive changes with help from "God and people of good will," and he urged the Chicago-based movement’s followers to do their part.

"President-elect Obama has energized all segments of the depressed, downtrodden, rejected and despised," he said in a 90-minute speech at Mosque Maryam on the city’s South Side. "Now it is up to us to take the new energy that he has given us … and channel that energy into making ourselves better."

Dressed in intricately decorated red and gold robes and matching fez, the once-ailing 75-year-old leader spoke to more than 1,000 followers in an address called "America’s New Beginning: President-elect Barack Obama."

Farrakhan, who said Obama draws a "oneness of spirit" from all people, admitted he stayed quiet about his support for Obama during the past few months out of fear his words would harm the Illinois senator’s bid for the White House.

In February, Farrakhan praised Obama calling him "the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better" at a Saviours’ Day event in Chicago.

But Obama quickly distanced himself from Farrakhan, denouncing the minister’s support during a presidential debate with then Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama said he objected to Farrakhan’s past statements about Judaism, which many have considered anti-Semitic. Nation of Islam officials have said Farrakhan’s comments are often taken out of context.

On Sunday, Farrakhan said Obama faced unfair scrutiny for his associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor who was shown making fiery statements about the U.S. government in widely circulated video clips. Obama was also criticized because of the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a Chicago priest who mocked Clinton at Wright and Obama’s former church, Trinity United Church of Christ.

"For nine months, I kept quiet because I saw that the good words that I spoke about this beautiful young man at our Saviours’ Day convention and the way they were misused," Farrakhan said of Obama. "I decided it would be better for me to just be quiet rather than be drawn into the controversy that was swirling around his pastor, Father Pfleger, and others."

Farrakhan then added with a smile, "I feel freer today to say the things that are in my heart."

Farrakhan said Obama’s historic win as the nation’s first black president does not make the Nation of Islam — which espouses self-reliance and black supremecy– and civil rights organizations, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, irrelevant.

"All of us have been risen by his rise," Farrakhan said. "It is not for Mr. Obama to do the job for us. Now we must shoulder the responsibility to raise our people up. We have to double our effort to get our people ready for whatever opportunity can be provided for all Americans to benefit from and not look for special favors."

He thanked black leaders including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, for laying the foundation for Obama’s victory, which he called Divine.

"Because if God is involved, and He is, then it is God who has laid on this young man this horrible burden at the worst time in the history of America and the world," he said. "But it was also God that has given this young man, this tremendous capacity to handle what God has put on his shoulders."

In 2006, a gravely ill Farrakhan ceded leadership of the movement to a board as he recuperated from complications due to prostate cancer. Months later, he quietly retook full responsibility.

This year, appearing healthy but more subdued than his past speeches, he has made several public appearances, including one last month at a rare open-to-the-public event at Mosque Maryam deemed a "new beginning" for the movement.

Farrakhan delivered a message of unity and encouraged followers to get back to the basic tenants of the religion. But he did not lay out specifics for a shift in direction for the movement, which has been marked by divisions since it was founded in the 1930s.

Last week, in a private sermon at the mosque, which was called the second part of the "new beginning" speech, he further clarified his message.

He said Nation of Islam mosques "are committed first and foremost to the resurrection and transformation of the Black people in America and throughout the world," according to the movement’s newspaper The Final Call.