Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is at the center of massive controversy.

Barack Obama’s controversial pastor and the church he’s served for 36 years may be in hot water over statements he has made from the pulpit in support of the Illinois senator’s run for the White House.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. preaches that he follows the righteous path, but when it comes to the federal tax law, his Trinity United Church of Christ may have crossed the line.

Although Wright delivered what was billed as his final sermon last month on his path to retirement, prior to his departure he delivered commentary from the pulpit now being scrutinized in which he praised Obama.

“There is a man here who can take this country in a new direction,” Wright said during his Jan. 13 sermon, according to recordings obtained by FOX News.

It was not the first time Wright appeared to endorse Obama, who was baptized at Trinity United, has been an active member of the church for two decades and receives spiritual mentorship from Wright.

The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was taken from a sermon by Wright.

During a Christmas sermon, Wright tried to compare Obama’s upbringing to Jesus at the hands of the Romans.

“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said. “Hillary would never know that.

“Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”

“I’m still In Bible country,” is what Jeremiah Wright said as he spoke of a “a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” and began to describe Christ as a black man. Watch the video excerpt of the controversial sermon.

Privacy Maven can’t help but note the irony of Jeremiah Wright angrily shouting that Jesus taught him to “love the hell out of my enemies.” It is a bit earthier than the King James English we are more accustomed to, “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and [to] the evil.” (Luke 6:35).

In the final analysis, actions really do speak louder than words. Jesus Christ healed the servant of a Roman centurion, and thus seemed to be able to cope with living under the rule of “rich white people.” Jeremiah Wright would do well to explore that part of “Bible country.”

Last year, Jeremiah Wright appeared on Hannity & Colmes, to explain his views.

ABC News has also examined Jeremiah Wright’s controversial theology.

Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor says blacks should not sing “God Bless America” but “God damn America.”

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side, has a long history of what even Obama’s campaign aides concede is “inflammatory rhetoric,” including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own “terrorism.”

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial.” He said Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with,” telling a Jewish group that everyone has someone like that in their family.

The article continues.

Jeremiah Wright’s controversial theology aside, infusing his sermons with politics is jeopardizing the church’s tax exempt status, a serious matter indeed. From a WSJ article,

Mr. Wright, who will be ending his 36-year tenure as the church’s senior pastor in June, has previously been criticized for comments deriding President George Bush and lauding Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Now Mr. Wright’s and his successor’s repeated enthusiastic promotion of their famous parishioner may be running afoul of federal tax law, which says churches can endanger their tax-exempt status by endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

Sen. Obama’s campaign issued a statement saying that he has repeatedly stressed that personal attacks “have no place in this campaign or our politics, whether they’re offered from a platform at a rally or the pulpit of a church.” The statement also said he “does not think of the pastor of his church in political terms. Like a member of his family, there are things he says with which Senator Obama deeply disagrees.” Mr. Wright declined to comment.

Trinity’s national parent, the United Church of Christ, recently disclosed that it’s being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service for a speech Sen. Obama gave to 10,000 people at a church conference in June in Hartford, Conn., in which he mentioned his candidacy and parts of his platform, namely health-care reform.

Scholars and attorneys say that a growing number of congregations are delving into issue advocacy and partisan politics, a trend dating back to the 1980s, when the religious right enlisted churches to fight abortion. An increasing number of complaints to the IRS over church politicking have triggered agency probes into both liberal and conservative religious groups. A Baptist church in California has acknowledged it’s under IRS scrutiny after a watchdog group complained that the church backed Republican Mike Huckabee in his recently ended bid for the White House.

“There have never been more audits than in the last three or four years” involving churches, says Marcus Owens, an attorney who represents some congregations and is a former director of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division. But while the agency has issued dozens of warning letters aimed at halting advocacy for political candidates, it has only twice revoked a church’s tax-exempt status since the tax law was amended in 1954, a spokeswoman said.

According to Fox News,

In a certified letter, Marsha Ramirez, IRS director, EO Examinations, wrote:

“Our concerns are based on articles posted on several Web sites including the church’s which state the United States Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama addressed nearly 10,000 church members gathered at the United Church of Christ’s biennial General Synod at the Hartford Civic Center, on June 23, 2007. In addition, 40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside the center to promote his campaign.”

The church and the Obama campaign have denied that any inappropriate political advocacy occurred during this speech.

The continuing uproar over the NFL’s heavy-handed prohibition of large-screen Super Bowl gatherings at churches (citing Federal copyright law) has caught the attention of a member of Congress.

After reading several stories about how preachers sacked the annual event to comply with NFL rules, former Washington Redskins quarterback turned Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., fired off a letter Friday to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell asking for an exemption for churches.

“As a former player and an active church member, I have participated in several of these fellowship events. I know that they offer a safe and friendly environment for families and friends to gather and enjoy the game,” Shuler wrote.

An NFL spokesman responded via email that Commissioner Goodell has been trying to reach Shuler by phone to discuss the issue but added that the league would not make exceptions for churches.

The threat of legal action has caused dozens of churches to cancel or alter their plans for Super Bowl parties this year.

Last year, Pastor John D. Newland of the Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis received a cease-and-desist letter from the league telling him that the church was in violation of league rules by charging $3 a person to watch the game and munch on snacks. He canceled the event, and this year the church is doing in-home parties combined with Sunday school classes.

“I was surprised because these events have been going on for years and years around the country,” Newland told ABCNEWS.com. “Everyone knows churches were not out to make a buck but to attract people to church.”

During halftime, Newland shows videos featuring football players talking about their faith and he gives a Gospel presentation “for the express purpose of how they could become a follower of Christ.”

Newland contemplated legal action but decided not to pursue the matter. Yet he remains disappointed with the NFL’s action, citing the fact that many African-American churches use these events to reach out to youth.

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler

The article continues. Under the threat of NFL legal action, many churches across the country have had no other alternative but to cancel Super Bowl gatherings. Read more here and here and here.

Adhering to copyright laws, the NFL is disallowing churches the right to hold big-screen Super Bowl gatherings.

For years, as many as 200 members of Immanuel Bible Church and their friends have gathered in the church’s fellowship hall to watch the Super Bowl on its six-foot screen. The party featured hard hitting on the TV, plenty of food — and prayer.

But this year, Immanuel’s Super Bowl party is no more. After a crackdown by the National Football League on big-screen Super Bowl gatherings by churches, the Springfield church has sacked its event. Instead, church members will host parties in their homes.

Immanuel is among a number of churches in the Washington area and elsewhere that have been forced to use a new playbook to satisfy the NFL, which said that airing games at churches on large-screen TV sets violates the NFL copyright.

Ministers are not happy.

“There is a part of me that says, ‘Gee, doesn’t the NFL have enough money already?’” said Steve Holley, Immanuel’s executive pastor. He pointed out that bars are still allowed to air the game on big-screens TV sets. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

The Super Bowl, the most secular of American holidays, has long been popular among churches. With parties, prayer and Christian DVDs replacing the occasionally racy halftime shows, churches use the event as a way to reach members, and potential new members, in a non-churchlike atmosphere.

“It takes people who are not coming frequently, or who have fallen away, and shows them that the church can still have some fun,” said the Rev. Thomas Omholt, senior pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in the District. Omholt has hosted a Super Bowl party for young adults in his home for 20 years. “We can be a little less formal.”

The NFL said, however, that the copyright law on its games is long-standing and the language read at the end of each game is well known: “This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent is prohibited.”

The league bans public exhibitions of its games on TV sets or screens larger than 55 inches because smaller sets limit the audience size. The section of federal copyright law giving the NFL protection over the content of its programming exempts sports bars, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said.

The article continues and points out that the NFL’s policy, odious as it is in this context, could be challenged on legal grounds.

On the legal flip side, the NFL’s big-screen ban could end up landing the league in trouble.

John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville civil liberties group that focuses on religious freedom issues, is threatening to sue the NFL on behalf of an Alabama church that wants to host a big-screen Super Bowl party. He is also seeking sponsors for federal legislation to exempt churches from the ban.

“It’s ridiculous,” Whitehead said. “You can go into these stores now and buy 100-inch screens. The law is just outdated.”

In Massachusetts, a church’s decision to cancel their Super Bowl gathering drew comments from an NFL spokesman.

North River Community Church was all set to hold a big Super Bowl gathering this Sunday, with the Patriots-Giants game on a giant video screen in the family-friendly atmosphere of the evangelical congregation’s worship center.

The Rev. Paul Atwater and his staff have canceled the event, however, to avoid getting flagged by the National Football League for copyright violations.

Atwater said he reluctantly made the decision after he checked the NFL’s policies and news reports of churches that were threatened with legal action for planning similar showings for the 2007 Super Bowl.

Because the North River event would be in a larger venue with a bigger screen than the 55-inch diagonal size the NFL allows, “we knew that doing this would not comply with NFL rules,” the pastor said.

“Even though we think this is a stupid law, we are going to abide by it.”

Instead, North River is encouraging church members to invite friends to their homes to watch the game. Members are also invited to wear Patriots jerseys and other team gear to the 9 and 11 a.m. Sunday services.

NFL communications vice president Brian McCarthy said he regretted hearing of the North River cancellation, but said the league is following decades-old federal copyright law.

“We have absolutely no objection to churches and others hosting Super Bowl parties,” he said. “We’ve never stopped a church from doing anything like this, as long as they aren’t trying to attract 400 or 500 people.”

While a free church event of that size might seem harmless, he said thousands of such non-commercial showings would significantly reduce network TV ratings, and thus cut the ad revenue on which Fox and the NFL are counting — an estimated $275 million for Sunday’s game.

In the final analysis, it seems the NFL is relying on a scriptural defense: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24). And it is clear which master the NFL has picked.

Amidst mounting pressure from Congress, civil liberties and religious organizations, the Bureau of Prisons has reversed its decision to remove what it had determined to be unapproved religious books:

The bureau had said it was prompted to remove the materials after a 2004 Department of Justice report mentioned that religious books that incite violence could infiltrate chapel libraries.

After the details of the removal became widely known this month, Republican lawmakers, liberal Christians and evangelical talk shows all criticized the government for creating a list of acceptable religious books.

The bureau has not abandoned the idea of creating such lists, Judi Simon Garrett, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message. But rather than packing away everything while those lists were compiled, the religious materials will remain on the shelves, Ms. Garrett explained.

In an e-mail message Wednesday, the bureau said: “In response to concerns expressed by members of several religious communities, the Bureau of Prisons has decided to alter its planned course of action with respect to the Chapel Library Project.

“The bureau will begin immediately to return to chapel libraries materials that were removed in June 2007, with the exception of any publications that have been found to be inappropriate, such as material that could be radicalizing or incite violence. The review of all materials in chapel libraries will be completed by the end of January 2008.”

As Privacy Maven noted earlier, there were two New York Times articles, published on September 10 and September 21, which brought this story of the purge of religious books from prisons and the concomitant denial to prisoners of their Constitutional right to freedom of religious expression to widespread attention and outrage.

In a second New York Times article, Laurie Goodstein reports that there is mounting outrage from religious organizations and elected officials across the political spectrum over the federal Bureau of Prison’s decision to remove selected religious books from prison libraries.

The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of some of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, sent a letter on Wednesday to the bureau’s director, Harley G. Lappin, saying, “We must ensure that in America the federal government is not the undue arbiter of what may or may not be read by our citizens.”

Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said in an interview, “Anything that impinges upon the religious liberties of American citizens, be they incarcerated or not, is something that’s going to cause House conservatives great concern.”

The bureau, the target of a class-action lawsuit by prisoners because of the book purge, is hearing criticism from a broad array of religious groups and leaders. Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group based in Washington, sent an alert to its members, who within 48 hours sent the bureau more than 15,000 e-mail messages urging it to scrap the policy. The issue is also a hot topic on conservative Christian talk radio shows.

Spokesmen for the Bureau of Prisons said it was not reconsidering its policy. The bureau said it was prompted to act by a report in 2004 from the inspector general of the Department of Justice, which mentioned that since most prisons did not catalog their library materials, radical books that incite violence and hatred could infiltrate the shelves.

Initially, the bureau set out to take an inventory of every book and item in its chapel libraries. When the list grew to the tens of thousands, the bureau decided instead to generate lists of acceptable books and materials — about 150 items for each of 20 religions or religious categories. It calls that plan the Standardized Chapel Library Project.

Needless to say (except to the Bureau of Prisons officials who haven’t gotten the message), it is a violation of prisoners’ Constitutional rights, under the First Amendment, and once again, for the second time this week, (previously, in the case of Andrew Meyer, subject to tasering) we quote from the document:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We do not find any exception for prisoners. While the Constitution never explicitly spells out a “right to privacy” it does not allow any curtailment of freedom of religion and religious expression. While we must advocate that our Internet surfing not be subject to data mining, and that our financial data kept more securely and not so often and so readily lost in data breaches, we should still be able to count on inalienable rights, regardless of whether or not we are behind bars. In weighter matters of faith, belief and salvation, the government must not impose hardships, barriers or penalties. No, not even to fight terrorism, as the Bureau of Prisons maintains it is doing, as reported by the New York Times, in an article earlier this month.

Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency was acting in response to a 2004 report by the Office of the Inspector General in the Justice Department. The report recommended steps that prisons should take, in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, to avoid becoming recruiting grounds for militant Islamic and other religious groups. The bureau, an agency of the Justice Department, defended its effort, which it calls the Standardized Chapel Library Project, as a way of barring access to materials that could, in its words, ”discriminate, disparage, advocate violence or radicalize.”

Ms. Billingsley said, ”We really wanted consistently available information for all religious groups to assure reliable teachings as determined by reliable subject experts.”

But prison chaplains, and groups that minister to prisoners, say that an administration that put stock in religion-based approaches to social problems has effectively blocked prisoners’ access to religious and spiritual materials — all in the name of preventing terrorism.

”It’s swatting a fly with a sledgehammer,” said Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian group. ”There’s no need to get rid of literally hundreds of thousands of books that are fine simply because you have a problem with an isolated book or piece of literature that presents extremism.”

There is a long history of prisoners finding faith and redemption, and successfully turning their lives around. Numerous ministries are devoted to that very purpose. The well-known Charles Colson, formerly a Watergate conspirator, founder of Prison Fellowship is one such example.

It’s quite disturbing to learn that the federal Bureau of Prisons, with a panel of experts, whose names have not been made public, have decided which religious books are suitable and which are not:

The Bureau of Prisons said it relied on experts to produce lists of up to 150 book titles and 150 multimedia resources for each of 20 religions or religious categories — everything from Bahaism to Yoruba. The lists will be expanded in October, and there will be occasional updates, Ms. Billingsley said. Prayer books and other worship materials are not affected by this process.

The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller.

Those are strange omissions, indeed. We don’t see much extremism in those theologians that would lead to terrorist activities. Not from Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man: a Christian Interpretation, or Schuller’s The Be Happy Attitudes. We can only hope that the concerted efforts of religious organizations, members of Congress, and the ensuing lawsuit can bring a stop to this.