Africentric church: a visit to Chicago's Trinity UCC

Christian Century, May 29, 2007 by Jason Byassee

INDEED, TRINITY IS a complex place. It incorporates not only the classic texts of black theology but shows the influence of the Pentecostal tradition's emphasis on spiritual gifts and healing and the black church's emphasis on personal revival. At the service I attended the music leader dragged out the last hymn, slowly intoning "there's still one more" as the congregation waited for a last soul to join the dozen or so already assembled at the front, seeking salvation.

At the same time, Wright pushes back against prosperity preachers like T. D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar. Such "prosperity pimps" preach that capitalism is "synonymous with Christianity" (Blow the Trumpet in Zion), he complains. Wright also counters the black church's traditional conservatism on issues like homosexuality and gender. Trinity has a singles class called "Same Gender Loving," and Wright has encouraged women into pastoral ministry throughout his career. Trinity's own disavowal of middleclassness sits uneasily with its thousands of middle-class to upper-class members, whose BMWs and Audis create traffic jams on 95th Street every Sunday morning and evening.

Wright's particular genius is his ability to hold all these emphases together. He's a black pastor of a black church that is the largest congregation in a mostly white denomination. He's the spiritual shepherd of black nationalists and Christian pacifists. He remarked in one sermon that both his "intellectual friends" and his "nationalist friends" wish he wouldn't talk so much about heaven, since Christian talk of heaven seems to denigrate the quest for justice on earth. His litany in response ran through the whole of the scripture in the best tradition of black preaching: "If I drop heaven, I'm going to lose the first verse in my Bible. ... If I drop heaven, I'm going to lose two of my Ten Commandments. ... If I get rid of heaven, I'm going to get rid of what happened when Jesus was baptized.... If I drop heaven, I'm going to have to stop praying my favorite prayer, 'Our Father.' ... If I drop heaven, I'm going to have to do away with the Second Coming; I'm going to have to get rid of Pentecost. I'm going to have to throw Revelation out of my Bible.... Don't make me drop heaven" (What Makes You So Strong?).

I asked Wright what response white churches should make to his Africentric gospel. He referred to a crash course on inner-city ministry he used to teach to white seminarians. He would close the course by telling them that the final exam was this: when their friends or family or parishioners exhibited racism, the students should speak up. If they didn't, they failed the course. And only they and God would know.

One of the actions for which Wright has been criticized politically is a trip he took to Cuba in the early 1980s. His Spanish-language translator for the trip was a young woman who needed his sermon manuscript in advance, since she had never learned a religious vocabulary. He didn't have a manuscript to send, so when he met her, he instructed her in the basics of the faith. During his sermon, he realized that the congregation was reacting to the translator--waving handkerchiefs, shouting, "Go ahead, baby! Go ahead, baby!" Wright realized that "she wasn't translating one word I was saying. She had accepted the Lord Jesus Christ and was over there praising him" (What Makes You So Strong?).