Consider a Church,
Not a Sound Byte
Rev. Nelson's Reflections on Jeremiah Wright and Trinity UCC
Consider a church…Consider a church that sponsors assisted living facilities for seniors and day care for children; that provides affordable health care and has ministries for people with HIV/AIDS, hospice training and active prison ministries. Consider a church that annually provides thousands of dollars in scholarships to enable poor young people to go to college, has after school tutorial and computer programs for kids, sponsors domestic violence programs and provides scholarships for a number of its college graduates to attend seminary. This is a church where both welfare mothers and gang members have been given hope and found their lives turned around. It has also voted to be “Open and Affirming” which means that all people are welcome to full participation in church life without regard to race, gender or sexual orientation. I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a church I would like to know more about, a church that has taken seriously the life and teachings of Jesus. Oh, did I mention that it is a large, predominantly African-American congregation?
You might have already guessed that I am speaking of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the largest church in the denomination and the church in which the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright preached and taught for over thirty years. Yes, the same Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Barack Obama, (and Oprah Winfrey) who seems to have been in the news lately. I should tell you that the church I serve, The Community Church of Sebastopol, is also a member of the United Church of Christ, and I have heard Rev. Wright preach on several different occasions. We don’t know each other, but he is one of my colleagues in ministry.
It saddens me to see so many years of dynamic ministry – Trinity now has over 8000 members – reduced to a handful of sound bytes on Fox News. Reflecting on the recent attacks on Rev. Wright, Trinity, and the wider United Church of Christ, our church president, the Rev. John Thomas, has said, “What’s really going on here? First, it may state the obvious to point out that these television and radio shows have very little interest in Trinity Church or Jeremiah Wright. Those who sifted through hours of sermons searching for a few lurid phrases and those who have aired them repeatedly have only one intention. It is to wound a presidential candidate. In the process a congregation that does exceptional ministry and a pastor who has given his life to shape those ministries is caricatured and demonized.” When I consider the hateful and hurting nonsense that preachers on the religious right have been allowed to get away with for years – how many Republican candidates have kneeled and kissed the rings of the Jerry Falwells, Pat Robertsons, and James Dobsons? – I am saddened and angered that such a fury has been unleashed against Rev Wright, his church and his – my – denomination.
Yes, I was startled by the stark and startling language of Rev. Wright. It is not language that I would use, and many of the sound bytes I found both insensitive and inflammatory. Although it is interesting that we have perhaps been given a glimpse into how a community that for generations has faced prejudice, oppression and poverty has a very different view of what the dominant culture defined as a national crisis. And considering how the world has turned against us and our foolish arrogance since the events of 9/11, it would seem that some of Rev. Wright’s comments were not too far off the mark.
And so, even though l cannot endorse some of what my colleague said, I do affirm his life-long commitment to justice, his refusal to go along with our fatal fascination with wealth, consumption and violence, and the fact that for his entire ministry, Trinity United Church of Christ has been a beacon of hope on the gritty and mean streets of South Chicago. Forget the sound bytes. I’ll take the ministry.