Senator Barack Obama is ending his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation he has belonged to for about two decades and one that had become a lightning rod in his Democratic presidential bid.
Mr. Obama informed his campaign advisers of his decision today, according to people familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the candidate. Mr. Obama is scheduled to explain his decision tonight in South Dakota.
For Mr. Obama, this is the latest effort to distance himself from a church that had repeatedly drawn negative attention to his candidacy. And, in turn, Mr. Obama drew negative attention to the church on Chicago’s South Side, where he was married and his two daughters were baptized.
Last month, Mr. Obama forcefully broke with his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., after a series of incendiary remarks he made about the United States government. This week, Mr. Obama found himself responding once again to a sermon delivered from the pulpit of Trinity, when a Catholic priest and a longtime friend of Mr. Obama was captured on video last Sunday mocking Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. Obama, as he prepares for a general election campaign against Senator John McCain, was seeking to put the controversy over his church behind him. It remains an open question whether this move will do that or will simply draw more attention to his decision to be a member of the church for two decades.
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http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/obama-quits-his-church/?hp
