Obama, Oprah and Wright: Why Oprah left Trinity Church.

PHILADELPHIASen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and wife Michelle made a point during their NBC Today show interview last week they wanted to move past the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story. That wont be easy, since a lot of the weekly media is just catching up and video of Wright is still getting play on cable political shows. The latest Newsweek has a scoop: Something Wasnt Wright / Why Oprah Winfrey left Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church.” LINK

Heres an excerpt from the Newsweek story:

For any spiritually minded, up-wardly mobile African-American living in Chicago in the mid-1980s, the Trinity United Church of Christ wasand still isthe place to be. That’s what drew Oprah Winfrey, a recent Chicago transplant, to the church in 1984. She was eager to bond with the movers and shakers in her new hometown’s black community.

But she also admired Trinity United’s ambitious outreach work with the poor, and she took pride in upholding her Southern grandmother’s legacy of involvement with traditional African-American houses of worship. Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she continued to attend off and on into the early to the mid-1990s. But then she stopped. A major reasonbut by no means the only reasonwas the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.