Reporter’s Notebook: Obama Church Keeps Up Defiant Image
Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago still bore Rev. Wright's name on its marquee as of Easter Sunday. (FNC/Jeff Goldblatt)
A few reporters attended Easter services Sunday at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago to see, among other things, whether the fiery sound bites from Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. speak to the church’s true nature.
If the church once passed under the radar, Sunday’s Easter sermons underscored that those days are over.
I arrived early, and at first glance it seemed the most unusual thing about this 8,000-member congregation on the South Side of Chicago is its most famous member, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The Chicago church is in many ways like any other urban mega-church. The sermons are rousing and participatory. The congregation is massive — cars lined the side of the street for blocks Sunday to attend the sunrise Easter service.
Congregants are dressed to the hilt. And the church bookstore is stocked with clever knick knacks like Bible Monopoly and candy called “Testamints.”
But since the release of details about Wright’s sermons and his ties to Obama, something more is going on here.
The congregation is defiant, basking in the attention it has received while being egged on by the church’s spiritual leaders. Wright’s successor, Rev. Otis Moss III, used Sunday’s Easter sermons to compare media focus on Wright to the Romans’ persecution and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
“Trinity, it may seem, we are being crucified sometimes,” Moss said toward the end of his afternoon sermon, using Jesus as a metaphor in his third sermon of the day, and warning that with attention comes visibility.
“I want to let you know, we’re in high demand! Our stock just went up!” he shouted.
Rollicking in its newfound fame, the church’s leaders and its congregation are both accommodating and firmly suspect in their reception to strangers.
Church members on hand Sunday were assigned to deal directly with reporters, ushering them to their seats and answering basic questions. I arrived shortly after 6 a.m. for the sunrise service and was told to check in at the front desk.
A media liaison greeted me and asked that I make sure I didn’t have any recording devices. I didn’t, and jokingly told her, “You can frisk me.”
She did.
She found my BlackBerry and cell phone — neither of which can record a sermon — and made me remove the batteries and put them back in my pocket. (It turns out she’s also a police officer, but being frisked in church is jarring nonetheless.)
After attending the 6 a.m. service, I hovered outside waiting for the next service to start. Here and there, I asked a congregant if I could to speak to them to find out what the church’s followers feel about Wright’s inflammatory statements and the media coverage of them.
The answer every time was “No.”
We love our church, and we don’t want anything taken out of context, one lady told me, declining to speak on the record. She said the pastors told her not to talk to reporters.
Inside, most members smiled at us, and some wished us a Happy Easter. A few gave stern glances and one woman shook her head at us in the bookstore, a clear “shame, shame” in her scowl.
We were granted one carefully controlled interview with a prominent member of the congregation, Dr. Linda Thomas, who teaches theology and anthropology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. During the session, we were not allowed to leave the room without notifying one of the ushers.
Thomas, who has been with the church since 1997, scolded the press for its treatment of Wright.
“The media has used sound bites without giving the entire sermon,” she said. “You have to have the context. The media has not served the public well in only using sound bites.”
Thomas said the church will not distance itself from Wright, and the pastors keep an empty chair in the pulpit in his honor.
“He is our pastor,” she said.
Trinity United does not hide the fact that it is committed to confronting issues of racial inequality. A plaque behind the front desk reads “unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian.”
The bookstore also carries writings about and by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, black liberation theology scholar James Cone and yes, Obama’s “Audacity of Hope.” (Outside, men peddled Obama pins and Obama T-shirts.) A portrait of Frederick Douglass hangs in the upstairs library.
The pastors spoke urgently Sunday about facing the recent attention head on, and even standing as an example. During service, one of the pastors referred to a “passion that demands confrontation,” a line that might describe the church’s approach to the attention it has received.
You should be sure to go back on all holidays this church holds sacred, and wear devices that can make noise so you can be sure to disrupt the sermons even moreso, than just your actual vulture/paparazzi-like presence.
Geez. What did you expect? The media’s made a zoo out of these people’s church. Whether or not you agree with the church, these people go there for religious reasons. You were there to make a mockery of it on Easter Sunday. I’m sure you weren’t there to get their side of the story, anyhow. Can you name anything positive from the experience, or are all the people you met terrible monsters? I doubt it. But I’m sure it’s all you’d write about. Hmmm…I wonder WHY they’d be wary of you?
They frisked him? Incredible?
For all of you that keep asking why this is news and saying “shame on you Fox” for reporting it:
#1 - This is news because Senator Obama has very close ties with this radical church, its radical pastor, and their radical beliefs. Senator Obama is running to be the next President of the United States of America. His views and associates SHOULD be news!
#2 - Thank you Fox, for not giving Senator Obama a free ride like the rest of the press has done. I’m sorry if folks don’t like the news because it’s taking Obama off his pedestal.
I, for one, want to know every possible thing I can about every candidate, including who they CHOOSE to associate themselves with for over 20 years.
Obama can denounce his pastors words all he wants, it really doesn’t mean much because it’s a little too little a little too late. Words do mean something….just ask Obama. Didn’t he say that in one of his “oh so motivating speeches?” If he really did not agree with the types of crazy ranting coming from his church and pastors, last I checked he could have chosen to go to a different church. This is still America after all. He could have chosen a different pastor to marry him and baptize his children, etc. He would not have written a book based on one of Rev. Wright’s sermons. He says he is like “an Uncle”. They are that close.
If, in fact, we are getting these “snippets of hate” out of context, then by all means, show us the entire sermon so we can put them in context.
Obama claims to want to unite our great country. This proves that he can’t, because he can’t see past the bigoted hatred coming from his own church.
To compare Rev Wright to Jesus Christ on Easter is just simply disgusting. They are just digging themselves in deeper and deeper. Maybe, if for their Easter worship, they would have focused on the meaning, instead of making the comparison they did, this would not be news!
At a minimum, let’s put the racial stuff aside for a moment……the types of views that this church teaches are anti-American. Do we want an anti-American president? Not me.
You Obamafiles have to face the truth.. The so-called “Reverend” is nothing but a black Elmer Gantry. He was/is using his position to lead a bunch of sheep around by the nose.. The church is nothing but a tax-exempt slush fund for its officers.. There is no TRUE Christian preacher who would say anything even approaching the hate-filled, bigoted sermons of Wright..
He was not taken out of context.. There is NO context in which that sort of inflammatory speech can be correct …
For all of you who condemn this black church, remember “people in glass houses, shouldn’t cast stones”. Those of the moral majority were once lead by a once very opinionated leader. How many of you left your Baptist church because of this one leader. Hmmmmm….?:
Per Wikipedia:
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Falwell said on The 700 Club, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’” Fellow evangelist Pat Robertson concurred with his sentiment. After heavy criticism, Falwell apologized,[26] though he later said that he stood by his statement, stating “If we decide to change all the rules on which this Judeo-Christian nation was built, we cannot expect the Lord to put his shield of protection around us as he has in the past
Indeed Wright’s comments were taken out of context, but not other sermons. The problem is how the media - all of them manipulate the truth. It’s propaganda, plain and simple and we the American people do not know what the truth is. Just like some of what Wright said, Bill Clinton’s remarks were taken out of context because the response was specific to McCain and Clinton being the finalists (not Obama) and the misinterpretation of Geraldine Ferraro’s comments. The problem is the media AND the candidates are distorting the truth.
Unfortunately, it makes it that much harder for us to try to sort everything out. But it is the media’s role to inform in an impartial way. And for the pundits and so call experts, there should be a disclaimer as to who they support so people can judge those viewpoints.
The anchors also twist things around - and it is so evident in ALL the news/entertainment stations.
I have always said one of the reasons America and I found Barack Obama appealing is that he offered us a way to put behind us the racial divisions of the past. And I always said that if his candidacy somehow got mired in those racial divisions, it would fail. I didn’t think it would happen, but it has. Sadly Mr. Obama’s association with Rev. Wright, plus his response to the media explosion that association created, has increased racial division and put Mr. Obama in the position of both rejecting and defending Pastor Wright. Obama is now caught up in the old-style politics of racial division. I had hoped for something very different.
There are quite a few people who regularly criticize Fox .. If you don’t like the coverage, can’t get your comments posted, or are frustrated in other ways, why do you keep returning to this blog ?? Each of the news and/or opinion media have their own ways of presenting material.. Personally, I don’t care for the worsening left-wing bias that is so obvious with the Big 3.. So, I no longer watch them…
I recently heard the entire sermon where Wright’s hateful remarks on America were made and have come to believe and understand that the sermon was indeed taken out of context. Wright was trying to show how governments are always inevitably wrong. However, he went to the extreme in my opinion.
What I do not like about this reverend and his church is the anti-white hatred that he preaches. He is stereotyping all whites into one hateful and evil group. As I am white, I do not like this kind of rhetoric and will not accept anyone who is affiliated with this kind of church.
You can be sure that I will not be voting for Obama. Too bad. I thought he might be the kind of man this country needs to bring it together. But alas, he is just another false profit who speaks with words that distort the truth. Because he belonged to that hateful anti-white church for 20 years, and still belongs to it, I really don’t see how any white person can vote for Obama. I’ll bet previous states who gave their delegates to Obama wish they hadn’t!
Anyone running for the presidency- especially someone relatively unknown like Barack Obama- should expect close scrutiny, and it is the job of the media to assist in that scrutiny. We as voters have a right to know the candidate’s background including his (or her) close associations. To denounce Fox’s coverage of the Pastor Wright’s racist and anti-American rhetoric is to denounce the appropriate role of the press in a free society. This is not just some casual association - Obama and Wright - and it is difficult to imagine what context could possibly justify Wright’s hateful, divisive and untruthful pronouncements. Maybe those who claim that he has been quoted out of context should fill in the blanks for the unelightened among us. I wonder, what would the good members of this Chicago church have to say if a white conservative candidate for the presidency was shown to be a twenty year member of a church that regularly preached white supremacy? Sorry, but Obama’s repudiation of Wrght’s more controversial comments now is just not good enough. The voters have a right to an explanation of his long association with this church and its pastor.