Obama headed to church this Father’s Day Sunday in his hometown of Chicago — the first time he’s been to church since he severed relations with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The Obama family attended services at Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, one of the city’s largest African American congregations and just six and a half miles from Obama’s former place of worship, Trinity Church of Christ.

Longtime church leader Bishop Arthur Brazier greeted his “good friend” warmly and touchingly noted, “[Obama] has done something [in] this country that I never thought I would live to see.” He continued, “I am filled with emotion because I have lived through some very tough times in America. But the America today is not the America of yesteryear. And I don’t think, I don’t think it behooves us well to keep talking about the past. The Apostle Paul said forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out to the things that are before.”

Brazier recalled words Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a speech, that we would “reach the promised land.” Of the historic political moment, Brazier said, “I can tell you now that America, we in America have crossed over the River Jordan, we’re out of the wilderness, and we are in the promised land.” Both Obamas, Brazier said, were “true patriots.”

Obama took to the pulpit to deliver a speech on fatherhood, a tenet that should be strengthened, he observed. “Too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL. Missing from too many lives and too many homes. They’ve abandoned their responsibilities, they’re acting like boys instead of men, and the foundations of our family have suffered because of it. You know and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African American community,” he said, delivering his straight-talking message to the African American congregation.

While Obama noted that some of the problems within the community have been ignored, if not exacerbated by the government, he said, “We can’t simply write these problems off to past injustices. Those injustices are real. There’s a reason why our families are just in disrepair, and some of it has to do with a tragic history, but we can’t keep on using that as an excuse.”

He recognized that the government has to change in order to improve the economy and schools, which is why he’s running for president. But, he added, “The change we need is not just gonna come from government. It’s not just gonna come from a president. It’s gonna come from us. It’s gonna come from each and every one of us. We need families to raise our children. We need fathers to recognize that responsibility just doesn’t end at conception. That doesn’t just make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

At the end of his speech, Obama thanked Apostolic for their hospitality and urged them to pray for him and for Michelle. The senator left the sanctuary before the actual sermon to be delivered by Bishop Brazier’s son Byron Brazier and didn’t get a chance to hear Apostolic’s prayer for him.

With his head bowed, the younger Brazier said as worshipers joined hands, “We ask that you give him great wisdom, knowledge, power and understanding. We pray that you give him the mind of Christ, so that when he speaks, demons will tremble, mountains will be removed, and when the firing guards of the enemy are flung his way, that the prayers of the saved protect him and let the world know that no weapon formed against him shall prosper.”

Obama Communications Director Robert Gibbs confirms that the Democratic frontrunner has resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ. This comes well after the candidate weathered the Reverend Wright storm, and just days after news broke that Father Michael Pfleger, standing at Trinity’s pulpit, accused Senator Hillary Clinton of acting entitled to the presidency because of her race.

On April 29, when Obama cut ties with Reverend Wright, he was asked if he would continue to go to Trinity. His response - “I still very much value the Trinity community. I’ll be honest, this obviously has put strains on that relation, not because of the members or because of Reverend Moss, but because this has become such a spectacle.”

The candidate will hold a media avail following his town hall in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

“We have had a rough couple of weeks, I won’t deny that,” Barack Obama admitted to reporters today in Indianapolis. Since Reverend Wright’s public resurfacing last weekend, Clinton has been closing the gap in national and state polls while Obama has been putting out the flames of controversy.

It’s true that most voters don’t ask Obama about his former pastor - and today he noted if he talks about those issues important to Americans, “I think we have a terrific chance” of winning the Democratic nomination. In the meantime, he’s still facing questions from reporters about the effect his former pastor’s is having on his campaign.

When asked if he’d be upset if he lost Indiana “by a hair” because of Reverend Wright, Obama grinned. “I don’t think that what happened with Reverend Wright was helpful. Right? I don’t think there’s any denying that,” he said. “This will be something that they factor in to the mix. How it plays itself out, I can’t tell….I don’t spend a lot of time doing is obsessing about what ifs and should have beens. What I’ll do is we’ll see what happens on Tuesday and then we’re gonna keep on going to the next contest,” he shared.

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