Africentric church: a visit to Chicago's Trinity UCC

Christian Century, May 29, 2007 by Jason Byassee

ONE OF THE BRIGHTEST points in Barack Obama's rising political star has been his ability to talk about Jesus without faking it. Beginning with his rousing "Audacity of Hope" speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and continuing with his book of the same name, Obama has shown that he can speak about his Christian faith in ways that are authentic and broadly appealing.

Little wonder that his enemies have tried to turn that strength into a liability. Right-wing bloggers and TV pundits have been targeting Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and its pastor, Jeremiah Wright, complaining that its self-proclaimed Africentric Christianity is separatist or even racist. Obama's campaign has itself pulled back a bit from being identified with Wright. In February it revoked an invitation to have him give the opening prayer when Obama announced his run for the presidency.

Africentrism (that's the term Trinity prefers to Afrocentrism) is wholeheartedly embraced at Trinity. One of the church's mottos is "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." Its choir is regularly decked out in brightly colored African dress, as is Wright when he preaches. The church emphasizes its connection to the African diaspora: it sponsors trips to western and southern Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin American countries with significant African populations. Julia Speller, a leader at Trinity and author of Walkin' the Talk: Keepin' the Faith in Africentric Congregations, notes in her book that the church offers courses in Swahili and that its youth programs, Intonjane and Isuthu, take their names from Swahili words for coming into manhood and womanhood. The congregation celebrates the Kwanzaa holiday and Umoja Karamu, a Thanksgiving Day service that narrates the story of the black family from its West African origins to today with dancing, drumming and storytelling.

Bible courses at Trinity emphasize the African roots of Christianity, focusing on the account of the Exodus and such passages as the psalmist's promise that Ethiopia would stretch out its hands to God (Ps. 68:31), and the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. In his preaching Wright goes out of his way to describe Moses as "an African prince" and his wife as a "raven-black" beauty. He declares that Jesus himself had "nappy hair" and "bronze skin" (he cites Rev. 1:14-15). Otis Moss III, who will succeed Wright upon his retirement this summer, says that the church is proud of its "Africanity," proud that "when we talk about Sudan, we have Sudanese present."

African Americans have generated distinctly black forms of Christianity since they arrived on these shores. The significance of these forms has been appreciated in mainline seminaries and churches for at least two generations. Trinity is well within the mainstream of the black church, and is remarkable in the mainline world only for its size and influence and for its handful of celebrity members, like Oprah Winfrey and hip-hop artist Common.

Critics have pounced especially on the church's "Black Value System," by which members affirm their commitment to God, the "black community," the "black family" and the "black work ethic," and disavow "the pursuit of 'middle-classness.'" One hatchet-job report in Investor's Business Daily, pointing to the Black Value System (a statement written not by Wright but by church members in the early 1980s), concluded that there is "little room for white Christians at Obama's church." Black conservative pundit Erik Rush said the church has embraced "things African above things American," and he claimed that this should be as alarming as a Republican presidential candidate "belonging to the Aryan Brethren Church of Christ." Tucker Carlson of MSNBC described Trinity as having a "racially exclusive theology" that "contradicts the basic tenets of Christianity." Scan Hannity of Fox News confronted Wright on TV and asked how a black value system is any more acceptable than a white value system. Hannity also suggested that Trinity's emphasis on black values contradicts Martin Luther King's famous hope that people would be judged "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Such charges are really aimed at Obama, rather than Wright or Trinity. By trying to link Obama to black radicals, they attack one of Obama's political assets: his seeming ability--shared by Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan--to "transcend" race. Because Obama is able to do this, he invites the white support that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson lack (which perhaps explains the decided coolness of some black leaders toward Obama's candidacy).

WRIGHTS CRITICS completely ignore America's history of racism as well as the impact of the civil rights movement and the struggles of the black church to communicate the gospel's relevance in the black community. Perhaps, as one blogger suggests, the attacks on Wright and Trinity are not even "meant to stand up to scrutiny." They are merely designed to tie Obama to images of "the black bogeyman." As with the Swiftboating of John Kerry, it does not matter that the claims are false as long as they are out there.