A young Barack
Obama was searching for answers, and perhaps a place to
belong, when he decided to visit a fast-growing church
recommended by friends. What he heard left him in
tears.
The Reverend
Jeremiah Wright preached that day about suffering -- about
the seemingly endless problems of the world and of
individuals. But he also talked about the importance
of hope, the audacity of believing things can be made
better.
''Hope is what
saves us,'' Wright said.
That message
moved Obama to embrace Trinity United Church of Christ,
along with its philosophy of translating faith into action.
But it's a side of Wright that has been overshadowed
by his inflammatory remarks about everything from race
relations to the September 11 terror attacks.
The furor over
Wright's remarks has provoked the greatest crisis for
Obama's presidential campaign thus far, but Obama has
refused to leave Trinity or sever his ties with
Wright, saying there is much more to Wright and the
church.
Asked Wednesday
on MSNBC's Hardball if he thought the questions
about his relationship with Wright were unfair, Obama said,
''I think that's fair game in the sense that what my
former pastor said was offensive. I think that in
politics, whether I was white, black, Hispanic, or
Asian, somebody would be trying to use it against me. I do
think that it is important to keep things in perspective.''
Trinity is a
predominantly black congregation in a mainline, mostly white
denomination -- the United Church of Christ. Its 8,000
members include politicians, doctors, lawyers, and
other leaders on Chicago's South Side.
The rapper
Common, the former director of the Illinois Department of
Public Health, the former director of the state Department
of Professional Regulation, and at least one state
representative are members of the church. Oprah
Winfrey has attended services there.
The church offers
a long list of services -- housing and employment
programs, scholarships, a ministry to people with HIV/AIDS
-- that mesh well with Obama's political philosophy.
''It's his deep
faith in God and his desire to be an agent of change in
the world. That's kind of the Trinity mantra,'' said the
Reverend Michael Pfleger, a priest at a South Side
Roman Catholic church.
Obama, 46,
eventually joined Trinity and was baptized there. Wright
performed his wedding ceremony and baptized Obama's two
daughters. Years later, he took the theme of Wright's
sermon as the title for a book, The Audacity of
Hope.
Most Americans
know Wright only from video excerpts of sermons in which
he says God should damn the United States for its racism,
accuses the government of spreading AIDS and suggests
the September 11 terrorist attacks were retribution
for the country's past wrongs. Obama's long connection
with Wright has raised doubts among some voters about
Obama's beliefs and judgment.
His Democratic
rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, said she would have left
the church if it had been her pastor saying such things.
Obama denounced the most inflammatory of Wright's
comments, which he said he didn't know about until
recently. But he acknowledges, without providing any detail,
hearing Wright make other controversial remarks.
In response to
the controversy generated by Wright's remarks, leaders of
the national United Church of Christ and the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA are
calling for a nationwide ''sacred conversation'' about
race. United Church of Christ leaders are also asking
ministers in the church's 5,700 congregations, seminaries,
and other ministry settings to preach about race on
Sunday, May 18.
Obama argues it
would be wrong for people to judge Wright solely on a
handful of remarks. He has tried to place Wright's comments
in the context of anger from a black man who came of
age in a time of segregation and civil rights turmoil.
In his first
book, Dreams From My Father, which includes Obama's
account of his tearful visit to Trinity, Obama described the
impact of working closely with South Side churches as
a community organizer in the late 1980s. A religious
skeptic, he was moved by their devotion and by the
support that churches provided their members.
Friends urged
Obama to consider joining a church, often mentioning
Trinity. Mike Kruglik, a coworker at the time, said joining
helped Obama connect to the local pastors who were
vital to his organizing efforts and that Trinity,
where many professionals were doing community work, was a
logical choice.
''It was very
well within the mainstream of the community. It wasn't
radical at all,'' said John Owens, another organizer who
worked with Obama at the time.
Jerry Kellman,
who hired Obama as a community organizer and is now a lay
minister for Chicago's Catholic archdiocese, said Trinity
offered a kind of home for Obama, particularly after
he got engaged and was planning a family. Its members
ranged from the wealthy and well-educated to families
just scraping by, he said.
''When Barack
joined the church, he wasn't giving his allegiance to
Wright. He was joining a community,'' Kellman said.
Trinity, like
other United Church of Christ churches, relies heavily on
the membership to make decisions through boards and
committees, he added. Even as senior pastor, Wright
did not single-handedly control Trinity's direction.
Trinity was an
early leader in ministering to people with HIV and AIDS.
It offers housing and employment programs to people in need.
It has scholarship programs and services for cancer
patients, domestic abuse victims, drug addicts, and
more.
Members are
expected to volunteer for one or more of these ministries.
They usually announce their choice on the same day they're
baptized, said Jane Fisler Hoffman, a United Church of
Christ minister who joined Trinity.
''There's this
kind of constant encouragement to live your faith, learn
your faith,'' she said.
The church
proclaims itself ''unashamedly black and unapologetically
Christian.'' It supports charity work in Africa, gives some
of its ministries Swahili names, uses Africa-themed
decorations.
People familiar
with Trinity compare its emphasis on African culture to
the way some Catholic churches play up Irish or Italian
roots. And they emphatically reject the accusations in
widely circulated e-mails that the church is
separatist or turns away white members.
''That's such a
bunch of hooey,'' said Hoffman, who is white.
She tells the
story of a group of young Germans visiting the church.
Wright met with them before the service and prayed with them
in German, she said. Later, he delivered part of his
sermon in German and the choir sang in German.
''To me, it's a
testimony that this is not a church that rejects people
of other cultures and races,'' she said.
She and others
say Wright is far from the hothead he may appear to be in
video excerpts. They describe him as a serious biblical
scholar who thinks carefully about issues.
''Wright is one
of the most respected pastors in the African-American
church in the United States,'' said Kellman, who
nevertheless says Wright ''blew it'' in a few sermons.
Pfleger, one of
Chicago's most outspoken members of the clergy, said
Wright and Obama are similar in their intellectual approach.
''They examine things, they study things. They are not
quick to make judgments,'' he said.
Wright's sermons,
even when they included strong critiques of racism and
inequality in America, were always grounded in the Bible,
church members said. Wright sometimes used harsh,
painful language, his supporters acknowledge, but
mostly he was well within a black tradition of emotional
social commentary.
''It's just
speaking a different language to a slightly different
culture,'' said Dwight Hopkins, a Trinity member and a
theology professor at the University of Chicago, ''and
I can see how someone in the suburbs in the high
Episcopal church would see those snippets as angry.'' (Karen
Hawkins, Christopher Wills, AP)
