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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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Barack Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.