Oh Noes! Charity in a Church!

Hugh Hewitt's lackey Duane Patterson has an odd post up introduced thusly:

This is from the "Pastor's Page" from the April 9, 2006, Trinity United Church of Christ bulletin. Barack Obama was a member of the church at the time. It is unknown if he attended services that day. Click on the image to enlarge.

You read that and you're expected to see some scandalous stuff. But what follows is incredibly unremarkable:



Yes, that's right, Pastor Wright tried to help one of his congregants get a kidney transplant and if you put his former parishoner Barack Obama in office, next thing you know churches all around the country will be, um, trying to help people. The same post also has this shocker:



Yep, there Wright goes again trying to help Katrina victims and help poor people receive the federal tax credits to which they're entitled. He's like the second coming of Elijah Mohammed, this guy. Can you imagine a white church being able to get away with engaging in charitable endeavors? Never!

This comes to me via an equally baffled Andrew Sullivan. Mostly these circular letters seem me to be a reminder of why one might have long been a member of Trinity -- most of the church's activities seem to be basically unremarkable, socially conscious engagement with the community, precisely the sort of institution a rising local politician would want to associate himself with.