Trying Times for Trinity

Friends of the church like to speculate about what, exactly, drew Obama in. Hopkins thinks it's the erudition of the preachers. "Historically, African-American churches have had a strong anti-intellectual bent. There's a saying, 'Too much learning blocks the burning.' Trinity has the learning and the burning." But Melissa Harris-Lacewell thinks it's something else, a connection to the black experience that Obama lacked as a child. "I really see Trinity for Barack as being part of his continuing adult choice to be a black man," says Harris-Lacewell, who attended Trinity for a time and is now a professor at Princeton.

In the lobby before the 11 o'clock service on a recent Sunday, people mingle, chatter, hug and kiss. In the sanctuary, the 300-member gospel choir is overpowering; the soloists outclass anything on "American Idol." When Moss, who is 37, starts preaching, the congregation rises to its feet. On this particular Sunday, Moss exhorts the congregation to pause when it can and, like Moses' sister, Miriam, praise God for its blessings. "Excuse me," he shouts, "I just have to praise the Lord." A generation younger than Wright, Moss does not have the same rough edges. A former track star, he peppers his sermons with references to athletes and hip-hop artists; his mission, he says, is to reach out to the young people on the South Side who are unchurched.

Neither Moss nor anyone connected with the church will distance themselves publicly from Wright—nor will they rebuke their pastor for praising Farrakhan. (Last week, while commentators were calling Wright a "racialist," the black church community stood by him. "Some of us wish we had the nerve that Jeremiah had," says James Forbes, senior minister emeritus of Riverside Church in Manhattan.) Last fall, in an article in a magazine linked to Trinity, Wright lauded Farrakhan as a giant of the African-American religious experience. On the South Side, where all religious leaders are committed to keeping black men off drugs and out of prison, they have to work together, explains Moss. "We approach all people with unconditional love," Moss tells NEWSWEEK. "[Farrakhan] is a neighbor in our community."

Trinity members point out that Obama is not the first presidential candidate to have an alliance with a controversial minister, nor is he the first to have a connection, however tenuous, to Farrakhan. In 1996, while running for re-election, Bill Clinton sent out a mass mailing to friends and prospective donors—including one to the Nation of Islam. In it, he invited Claudette Muhammad, who at the time was chief of protocol, to be on his steering committee. "It is my way of saying thank you for your past friendship and it is my way of asking you to join me in this new campaign," he wrote. Muhammad reprinted the letter in a memoir; a spokesman for Clinton declined to comment.

A member of Trinity since she was a teenager, Speller, of the Chicago Theological Seminary, is anguished over the scrutiny her church is facing. When asked whether there's a double standard at her church about hate talk—is hate talk OK when directed at some groups, but not at others?—she pauses. The context here is Farrakhan, but in light of Wright's video clips, her answer fits: "Is there an assumption that because of the hate talk, nothing good can come from him? And if there is that assumption, is it a fair assumption?" Fair or not, it's one Barack Obama is going to have to contend with.

With Richard Wolffe, Elise Soukup, Suzanne Smalley and Karen Springen

© 2008