Once again Rev. Jeremiah Wright has managed to pop up in the media once again at a critical juncture in the presidential campaign. This time, he shot himself in the foot, but I am sure the right wing media will some how try to link Barack Obama to this. It seems that the firebrand pastor has helped destroy a Dallas church worker’s marriage – and her job.
Elizabeth Payne, 37, said she had a steamy sexual affair with the controversial, racially divisive man of the cloth while she was an executive assistant at a church headed by a popular Wright protégé. According to media reports, when word of the unholy alliance got out, Payne’s husband dumped her, and she was canned from the plum job at Friendship-West Baptist Church, she told The New York Post.
“I was involved with Rev. Wright, and that’s why I lost my job and why my husband divorced me,” Payne said. Mrs. Payne do you honestly think any decent man would stay married to you after this?
But fellow churchgoers at Friendship-West “found out about the affair in the spring,” Payne said. At the time, she was secretary to the Rev. Frederick Haynes III, a longtime Wright disciple. According to the NY Post, in April Payne organized a series of Texas public appearances by Wright, 67. Weeks before, Obama had disavowed his preacher of 20 years after Wright’s anti-government rants came to light.
“Liz was by Rev. Wright’s side day and night during those days,” a church source said. “It’s all true,” said Payne, adding that she has filed a wrongful-dismissal claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to get her job back.
In an ironic twist, Wright last night spoke at an East Orange, NJ, church revival on the subject of “unexpected problems.” “There’s no such thing as a problem-free relationship,” he told a packed Elmwood United Presbyterian Church. “In life, you’ll have unexpected problems.”
The Post said that he punctuated his 45-minute sermon with evocative 1960s hits, including the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go,” Frankie Beverley’s “Joy and Pain,” and the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” He’s set to speak there again tonight.
Payne’s husband, Fred Payne, 64, said he learned of the affair in late February, when he discovered e-mails between his wife and Wright. “There must have been about 80 of them, back and forth,” he said. “Wright said things like he was going to leave his wife for Elizabeth.” Wright has been married to his second wife, Ramah, for more than 20 years.
But Jeremiah Wright has done this sort of thing before. He reportedly wooed Ramah away from her first husband in the 1980s, when the couple came to marriage counseling at Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
Elizabeth Payne said she has been banished by Haynes and the flock at Friendship-West. “I’m not a member of the congregation anymore; I’m not even allowed on the premises,” she said. I wonder why? Hah.
What is startling to me is that Wright has been so vocal about racism in America that the last person I would expect him to have an affair with is a white woman. Rev. Wright is a non-issue to me, but I am sure that this will be linked to Obama somehow. What Wright has done is really horrible, considering he has been the “moral authority” for his former congregants for so long. You, it is high time for these so-called pastors to stop leading double lives.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Elizabeth Payne, Ramah Wright, Rev. Jeremiah Wright
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