A
then-26-year-old Barack Obama walked down the aisle of
Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, knelt
beneath a cross suspended from its rafters, and, as he
later explained it, committed himself to God after
years as a religious skeptic. In those early days at the
self-described unashamedly black church, the future
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate was moved to
tears by a sermon from its activist pastor, the
Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., who he has portrayed as his
spiritual mentor.
Two decades
later, Obama himself would be Wright's topic of the day but
not for reasons either man would have hoped.
At a recent
Sunday service, following media coverage of Obama's
last-minute decision not to have Wright speak at the
senator's presidential announcement last month, Wright
warned his flock not to believe any reports of a rift
between him and the church's best-known member.
"Barack and I are
fine," Wright, 65, on an out-of-state trip, said in a
recorded message played to about 2,000 attendees. "The
press is not to be trusted.... Don't let somebody outside
our camp divide us."
The erudite if
blunt-speaking pastor also said Obama had apologized for
withdrawing the invitation to speak at the February 10
announcement in Springfield, Ill.
Obama had taken
"some bad advice from some of his own campaign people
who thought it would not be a good idea for me to be in
front of the cameras on the day he announced," Wright
said, adding that he and Obama had "moved on." Wright
attended the announcement, but he did not speak.
His impassioned
comments came after some conservatives questioned Obama's
links to Trinity, which embraces what it calls a "Black
Value System." Others criticized Obama for appearing
to distance himself from the church and its leader.
Obama campaign
spokesman Bill Burton said that is not the case. "The
senator appreciates the continued prayers of his pastor,"
Burton said, adding in a statement that the invitation
to Wright was withdrawn because Obama wanted to "avoid
having statements and beliefs being used out of
context and forcing the entire church to defend itself."
Wright declined
to comment. But in an interview with PBS's Religion &
Ethics NewsWeekly recorded just before Obama's
February announcement, Wright said he warned the senator
that their association could pose political problems, partly
because of his history of supporting Palestinian
causes.
Wright also told
The New York Times in an interview
published March 6: "When his [Obama's] enemies find out
that in 1984 I went to Tripoli" with Nation of Islam leader
Louis Farrakhan to visit Libyan leader Moammar
Gadhafi, "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up
quicker than a snowball in hell."
The roughly
8,000-member church has often championed liberal causes,
from gay rights to opposition to the Iraq war. It also
emphasizes its African roots and asks parishioners to
accept the "Black Value System," which includes tenets
such as "commitment to the black family," "dedication
to the pursuit of education," and one that critics
have seized upon--"disavowal of the pursuit of
'middle-classness.' "
Obama seemed to
preach some of the church's teachings earlier this month
at a commemoration of the 1965 civil rights march in Selma,
Ala. He said his generation of blacks needs to strive
for something beyond getting "some of that Oprah
money" and that "materialism alone will not fulfill
the possibilities of your existence."
At Trinity's
lively, music-oriented services, some members wear
African-style dress. A red, black, and green flag of the
pan-African movement stands by the pulpit. On a nearby
plaque, Trinity's motto reads, "Unashamedly Black and
Unapologetically Christian."
For nearly two
decades Obama has identified strongly with Trinity and has
not been shy about discussing his closeness to its pastor.
Wright's use of
"audacity of hope" in one sermon inspired Obama to
borrow those words as the title of his best-selling book,
The Audacity of Hope.
In an earlier
memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama also tells
how he was moved to tears during that sermon by Wright,
an early proponent of the black liberation and black
theology movements that gained ground in the 1960s.
Obama describes
what he calls "a forceful wind carrying the reverend's
voice up into the rafters" and how he "felt for the
first time how that spirit carried within it, nascent,
incomplete, the possibility of moving beyond our
narrow dreams."
The son of a
white mother from Kansas, who was skeptical of organized
religion, and a Kenyan father, Obama was raised in a secular
household. He spent part of his childhood in
Indonesia, where he attended a Catholic school and a
public school where he took Islamic religion classes.
He explained how
his spiritual journey culminated that day he walked
toward the altar at Trinity in a 2006 article on the United
Church of Christ's Web site, writing that as he knelt
beneath that cross, "I submitted myself to [God's]
will and dedicated myself to discovering His truth."
He added that he
was drawn to activist churches like Trinity because in
them "I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to
the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an
active, palpable agent in the world." (Michael Tarm,
AP)
