Newsweek reports this week that Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama share more than a wish to see him be president: Oprah attended Obama’s church when she first moved to Chicago, and both called the troublesome Rev. Jeremiah Wright their pastor. The difference is Oprah got out while the getting was good.
Sources in Oprah’s camp says the talk-show host joined Wright’s church after moving to Chicago in 1984. “For spiritually minded, up-wardly mobile African-American living in Chicago in the mid-1980s, the Trinity United Church of Christ was—and still is—the place to be,” writes Newsweek’s Allison Samuels. Some say Oprah realized early on that an allegiance to Wright (and by implication his radical liberation theology message) could come back to haunt her, as it has Obama’s hunt for the White House.