Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a wide-ranging interview today with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters and editors, said she would have left her church if her pastor made the sort of inflammatory remarks Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor made.

"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."...

"You know, I spoke out against Don Imus (who was fired from his radio and television shows after making racially insensitive remarks), saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that," Clinton said. "I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving."


While Hillary is absolutley right on Rev. Wright making those offensive remarks, I still take issue with her point of "choosing your own pastor." Do you really get to do that? Or should you even want to do that?

In the Pentecostal arena (where I grew up), folks were "led" to a pastor, to someone who could feed them the Word of God and teach them how to grow. In this current religious and political climate, it seems more that folks are choosing who they want to lead them, what they want them to say and how they should say it and if they don't get their way, they're subject to hold them hostage until they do. Leading people is more about dictating and directing. When the spiritual leaders of my day were your authoritarian's, they were more concerned about your well being and how you fared spiritually than just telling you what to do. So when someone "chooses" a pastor, are they really choosing someone to lead them or someone they can lead?

What do you think?