BARRON YOUNGSMITH OF THE NEW REPUBLIC EMAILS:

Several Rush Limbaugh listeners have been calling us today about a New Republic piece about Jeremiah Wright’s former religion. There’s been a lot of talk about the piece, so we thought you and your readers might like a link to the original article. Here’s the relevant passage:

After many lectures like this, Obama decided to take a second look at Wright’s church. Older pastors warned him that Trinity was for “Buppies”–black urban professionals–and didn’t have enough street cred. But Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”–included a “Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness.'”

And a link to the piece: (Link)

Ryan Lizza is a former senior editor at TNR, and now the politics correspondent for the New Yorker. Hope it’s of some interest.

It may be.

UPDATE: Ralph Luker wants more information from Lizza on Wright’s alleged Muslim past, though weirdly he makes this demand of me. In my constitutional-law capacity, however, I’ll note that Luker severely misunderstands the point of the Constitution’s provision regarding religious tests, which applies only to government rules, not voters’ preferences.

To me, at any rate, Wright’s well-documented antisemitism and anti-white bigotry — and Obama’s long-term acquiescence in the same — is of more interest than an alleged Muslim past. Perhaps Luker would be willing to comment on those issues, particularly the latter, which seem more relevant to me. Somehow I think that if a white Republican were an adherent of Christian Identity theology, Luker wouldn’t be invoking the “religious test” language.