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Trinity United Church of Christ

Trinity United Church of Christ is a predominantly black church with more than 10,000 members, located in southeast Chicago. It is the largest church affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a predominantly white Christian denomination with roots in Congregationalism, which branched from American Puritanism.

In early 2008, as part of their 2008 U.S. presidential election coverage, news media outlets and political commentators, particularly conservative ones, brought Trinity to national attention when sermon clips by the church's 36-year pastor Jeremiah Wright were broadcast to highlight Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's relationship with Wright and the church. Obama responded with a speech, A More Perfect Union, but the relationship continued to attract attention and controversy.

Although the church and Wright were well-known within religious circles before the 2008 presidential politics coverage it received, they also enjoy a place in Chicago history. After the height of the U.S. civil rights era, Trinity countered the influence of radical black nationalist groups that had headquartered in the city at the time by providing blacks with a culturally relevant form of Christianity. While the church continues this tradition, it is now well known for the breadth and diffusion of its many ongoing social programs on behalf of the disadvantaged, although there were times in its early history when such outreach did not even figure into its mission. Comparatively with other mainstream American black churches of the early twenty-first century, Trinity's membership and influence is larger than most, and has been categorized in scholarly sources as within "The Dialectical Model" of black churches.

1972 to early 2008: under Jeremiah Wright

Jeremiah Wright interviewed for the Trinity pastorate on 31 December 1971. Jordan recalls that Wright exuded excitement and vision for the church's new mission statement, and that Wright's response to the question "How do you see the role of the Black Church in the black struggle?" indicated he was the only possible candidate for Trinity. With the church also impressed with Wright's educational credentials—Wright held graduate degrees in English studies and Divinity and was studying for a doctorate in religious history—he was shortly confirmed as the new pastor.

Jeremiah Wright controversy

Because of the recent controversy, Jeremiah Wright is today considered the most visible adherent of black liberation theology.

In March 2008, the national news media publicized short excerpts of some of Wright's sermons in the context of a Trinity parishioner, Barack Obama, having become a leading candidate for the Presidency of the United States. The sermon excerpts were widely played and criticized in the media. Obama denounced the statements in question, but in the wake of continued questions about his relationship with Wright he gave a speech titled "A More Perfect Union", in which he sought to place Rev. Wright's comments in a historical and sociological context. In the speech, Obama again denounced Wright's remarks, but did not disown him as a person. The controversy began to fade, but was renewed in late April when Wright made a series of media appearances, including an interview on Bill Moyers Journal, a speech at the NAACP and a speech at the National Press Club.

In the National Press Club appearance, Wright said that the criticism of his comments and theology was "an attack on the black church" and repeated controversial remarks echoing AIDS conspiracy theories and praising Louis Farrakhan. After this, Obama spoke more forcefully against his former pastor, saying that he was "outraged" and "saddened" by his behavior and describing his comments as "a bunch of rants that aren't grounded in the truth." Trinity United Church has through its years of operation had several high profile members, including Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, who was a member from 1984 until 1986, a major reason for her leaving, according to a Newsweek article, being Jeremiah Wright's "more incendiary sermons."

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