BELIEF WATCH
Lisa Miller
The House That Wright Built
Some women became possessed by the Holy Spirit, keening as their sisters encircled them, cooling them with paper fans.
It's just a church. It's a two-story yellow-brick building in a crummy but not terrible Chicago neighborhood. There's red wall-to-wall carpet throughout, and high behind the altar are two modest stained-glass windows. There are three services on Sunday and Bible study on Wednesday nights. The pews are filled with "church ladies" in sweater sets and heels. On a typical Sunday, there's praise and tears, and lots of hugging. There's communion, an offering and an altar call. This is Trinity United Church of Christ, the church where Barack Obama found Jesus, the controversial house that Jeremiah Wright built.
Churches are like families, and Trinity was already in the throes of a difficult generational transition—the 66-year-old Wright had just had his retirement bash—when the video clips of his offensive sermonizing found their way into the news. In response, the Trinity family closed ranks and decided to manage the crisis from within. Joan Harrell, the recently hired "minister of communications," was brought aboard early. Dwight Hopkins, an erudite and unflappable professor at the University of Chicago, was asked to help the white press understand the black church. DVDs of Wright's sermons were taken off the bookstore shelves and the weekly church bulletin disappeared from the Internet. From the outside, this siege mentality seemed odd—"if you're not hiding, why the lockdown?"—but church members insisted it was for their own protection. All was well, or at least stable, until Wright's public murder-suicide attempt, in which he used rhetoric to assassinate the character of his most famous congregant and reveal the ugliest side of his own.
In the pews, the reaction was anguish and anger; divisiveness occurred even within families, even, as one member said, "within one person's heart." "There are factions of people who feel that Reverend Wright should just shut up," explained Jeff Johnson, a Washington journalist who is close to some Trinity members. "There's a faction who believes in what Wright has been preaching for years. I know that there's a faction who wish it would all go away." The leadership endeavored to smooth things over, encouraging congregants to fast and pray, and on a recent Sunday leading a "unity" march during which members walked around their church seven times, singing "We Are Trinity!" to the tune of "We Are Family!"
Obama's primary win last Tuesday went a long way to mending hearts, but Hopkins believes the real healing began the Sunday before, when Wright's successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, offered a prayer for the church's two most famous men. He could no more choose between them than he could between his two favorite authors, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, he said, and he exhorted his congregation to look within themselves for the Christian love that would help them overcome their bitterness. Worship at Trinity is more straitlaced than in many black churches, but on that Sunday the Holy Spirit was very much in evidence. After Moss's prayer, the massive choir sang the gospel anthem "I Need a Miracle," and throughout the church, like isolated thunderstorms, women became possessed by the Spirit, keening and rocking as their sisters encircled them, crooning and cooling them with paper fans.
For now, Wright is lying low—"resting" at home, Hopkins says, but controversy continues to swirl around him. Northwestern University has announced it will not give him an honorary degree as planned. Right-wing blogs are busy painting Moss as a kind of junior Wright, which will doubtless cause future trouble for Obama. In the meantime, the only image most people have of Trinity is its incomprehensible senior pastor. Those who imagine that the Democratic nominee was converted to Christ by a left-wing hatemonger need to paint in their minds a fuller picture: a young man, intellectual and searching, in prayer at Trinity and awash in the music.
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 05/14/2008 3:43:20 PM
Comment: OK. Chalk up another NEWSWEEK scribbler in the Can For Obama. Can you people tell us something that we do not already know?
Posted By: Mwalimu @ 05/13/2008 11:39:35 PM
Comment: For all the critics of Rev. Wright, I have one question. Have you ever taught school? If you have, then you know that the lecture (AKA the sermon) is an extremely ineffefctive teaching method. You are lucky of your students retain only about 10% of what you tell them. Furthermore, the attention span of the average adult is about 17 minutes - probably less if you've been struck by the Holy Ghost. Why a preacher, like Rev. Wright, foolishly believes that he can preach 'til Kingdom Come and expect is congregation to remember anything he's said is really beyond me. From a strictly pedagogical standpoint, you're expecting way too much from the Holy Ghost.
So if Barack Obama is not able to retain all the hate-white rhetoric Rev. Wright spews,that's not Obama's fault - it's Rev. Wright's - for foolishly believing that he is above the laws of common educational psychology.
In any rate Obama is no different than the average church-goer. As a church goer myself, I believe in judging a church goer by what he or she does - not by what his preacher says.
Incidentally, Rev. Wright is not the only preacher with nutty ideas about 9/11 or AIDS. REv. Roertson also believes that we brought 9/11 on ourselves because of our moral depravity (namely permitting gays and lesbians to live rather than burning them to the stake. Remember the Bible tells us that we should not permit a witch, a gay or lesbian to live. Also a number of evangelical preachers including John Hagee and James Dobson believe that gays cause and spread AIDS. John McCain is doing everything he can to get their support.
Do I need to say anything more about Rev. Wright. He has gotten far more attention than he deserves.
Posted By: American Life Observer @ 05/13/2008 4:02:18 PM
Comment: NEWSFLASH: There is no way on God's green earth that Rev Wright could have grown a church from 87 to 8000 members spouting off fringe/strange conspiracy beliefs at each and every of the 3 sermons on Sunday. There are many topics within the Bible to pontificate upon to keep people coming back in droves and obviously there was good fruit or the church would not have continued to expand or considered him worthy of the gifts they bestowed on himt hrough out the years. One of the wonders in life is how God uses even broken vessels with "weird" or "offensive" ideologies to get things done in his Kingdom here on earth.
Wright may have his not-so-conventional ideas which may or may not line up with all of the word of God, but I can assure you people like Obama go to churches like Trinity because the actual word of God is taught, the pastor is for the most part erudite and challening in his sermons, and there is a vertical outreach to others who are not as well off. The parts that are less palatable are just tuned out, much like most catholics practise some form of birth control and do not adhere to the concept of birth control being a sin. It is ridiculous to think that during all 3 sermons every single Sunday, Rev Wright only talked about a white government inventing AIDS for blacks. He thinks it's plausible, but he is entitled to his opinion.
There was very little actually wrong with most of what Rev wright said when he made his rounds. People were horrified because he said Obama is a politician, but he was not exactly wrong. Much as I like Obama myself, he and Rev wright have 2 very different missions and they are each required byt heir Maker to be responsible for their individual callings. I think people don't realize that as a preacher, Wright's first mandate is to fight for his faith and as the leader of an 8000 person congregation, we are requiring him to give Obama special treatment at the expense of all the other members, which is not fair.
As for the handwringing going on about Black Liberation Theology, the fundamental message has everything to do with God identifying with the oppressed and the oppressed moving past victimhood. They choose to do so by seeing themselves as beautiful, even though different in skin tone, not deficient. The oppressed believe in self-help, which many whites keep telling blacks to do, until blacks actually attempt to do so, then all of a sudden, the schizophrenic whites get intimidated and start saying we are separatist etc. You want your cake, but you want to eat it too, under very specific conditions.