When Oprah Winfrey Left Chicago Church And Obama Stayed

Reprint

(I posted this originally on my "Silent Thunder's Heart On Fire" site. See Archives Tues., May 6, 2008)


By Rev. Lainie Dowell


Oprah Winfrey ---

Allison Samuels, of NewsWeek, was interviewed by Greta Van Susteren to talk about Samuels' article about why Oprah left Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago, IL.

(viewed on Fox News - Cable Channel 54 in the east at 10 p.m., Mon., May 5, 2008.)

Notes For future reference:

Allison Samuels has reported that Oprah Winfrey was a member of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ (Chicago, IL) from 1984-1986 and that Oprah left the church altogether in the 1990s.

And, as I recall, it was during the 1990s that I wrote to Oprah about the problems in the Black Baptist Church and the NAACP and I asked her to investigate. I never received a response from her show in Chicago, IL.

I am now recalling how, in 1985, I was a Preacher at the First Baptist Church of
Guilford (FBCG), in Columbia, MD. The Pastor is still there -- Rev. John L. Wright.

At that time, Oprah Winfrey was a noted celebrity in Baltimore, MD, at Channel 13, on a television show called, "People Are Talking," with Richard Scherr. And, she also lived in Columbia, MD.

In 1986, just before Oprah had announced she was leaving Maryland to go to Chicago, IL, she was invited to speak at an evening service at FBCG (Columbia, MD). I had never seen anything like it. When she arrived, she was escorted down the center aisle of our church. She had on dark sunglasses and the feathers from her sweater were blowing around her face, as she strutted down the aisle. She was escorted to the pulpit and delivered a message (not a sermon) pretty much in the way she acted in the movies with the "cullod" accent. I don't know how I could have forgotten that, but it just came back to my mind during Greta's interview of the NewsWeek reporter.

I guess my question is ---

How could Oprah Winfrey have been a member of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright's Church in Chicago, IL, since 1984, when she was already living in Maryland and appearing daily on a local television show? Maybe there might be a followup report on this at a later time (?)

The reporter stated she believes Oprah may have left the Chicago, IL church in the 1990s, because she did not think her tv audience would appreciate her having anything to do with the kind of Preaching that was being done by her Pastor. And, the reporter said that after Oprah left that church, Rev. (Jeremiah) Wright began lambasting her from the pulpit saying that Oprah had left because she didn't want to give up any money. What he did is called by the church as, "Preaching on people." And while the congregants laughed, the one who was being "preached on" already knows who the Preacher is talking about -- and the congregants do, too.

Obama And Oprah in Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Chicago Church Same Time

Over twenty years is a long time to sit under that kind of goings on in the church and not come away without bringing it with you. There's no way Obama could not have known. He was too close to the Pastor and the innerworkings of the church to have missed it. He was in the Pastor's inner circle of the trusted and the "helped along." I saw happening in my church with men and women coming in to be made "Wright's Preachers" for political reasons and for the sake of money and advancement with the noted personalities.

One man came into the church and was close to the Pastor, Rev. John L. Wright, and he was driving him around and going to hospitals periodically with him as if he was a minister. One day, I asked the man who was he and what did he do and why was he there? I knew that he was a local mortician and that his wife ran the funeral home. He haughtily told me that he was "MINISTER OF FINANCE." And right then and there I laid him out, because there is no such thing as that in the church. And, after that, he settled down, at least when he was around me.

God shielded me all these years and the only proof lies between the pages of all my personal journals I've kept since 1983. Too much to tell. Too much to digest. And, yet, it is all as fresh as it was over 20 years ago. It is to prove how God's Word will not return to Him void, as He has said. And, there truly is "nothing new under the sun."