Barack Obama Racist Black African American Trinity Church

IS TRINITY A RACIST AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCH OR A "WARM AND ACCEPTING" CHURCH COMMUNITY WHERE ALL RACES ARE "ENTHUSIASTICALLY WELCOMED"

Congregants Said Trinity Was "A Warm and Accepting Community." The New York Times reported, "On blogs and cable news shows, conservative critics have called it separatist and antiwhite. Congregants respond by saying critics are misreading the church's tenets, that it is a warm and accepting community and is not hostile to whites." [New York Times, 4/30/07]

Religion Historian: At Trinity, "My Wife And I On Occasion Attend, And, Like All Other Non-Blacks, Are Enthusiastically Welcomed." University of Chicago's Martin Marty, a historian of modern Christianity. wrote, "Trinity is the largest congregation in the whole United Church of Christ, the ex-Congregational (think Jonathan Edwards) and Reformed (think Reinhold Niebuhr) mainline church body. Trinity's rubric is "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." So far as I can tell Trinity shapes a kind of ellipse around these two "centers," neither of which makes sense without the other. This you would never know from the slanders of its enemies or the incomprehension and naiveté of some reporters who lack background in the civil rights and African-American movements of several decades ago — a background out of which Trinity's stirrings first rose and on which it transformatively trades...More important, for Trinity, being 'unashamedly black' does not mean being 'anti-white. My wife and I on occasion attend, and, like all other non-blacks, are enthusiastically welcomed." [Martin Marty, 4/2/07]

Keywords: Barack Obama, Racist, Black, African American, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago, Religion, Christian, Faith, Race, Africa

TRINITY TENETS ARE "TAKEN DIRECTLY FROM SCRIPTURE" AND EMPHASIZE "COMMITMENT" TO GOD, COMMUNITY, FAMILY, WORK, SELF-DISCIPLINE AND SELF-RESPECT

Obama Says Black Values System Must Be Understood as a Whole. "Obama said it was important to understand the document as a whole rather than highlight individual tenets. 'Commitment to God, black community, commitment to the black family, the black work ethic, self-discipline and self-respect,' he said. 'Those are values that the conservative movement in particular has suggested are necessary for black advancement...So I would be puzzled that they would object or quibble with the bulk of a document that basically espouses profoundly conservative values of self-reliance and self-help.'" [Chicago Tribune, 2/6/07]

Obama Says Argument Against "Middleclassness" Taken Directly From Scripture. "In his published memoirs, Obama said even he was stopped by Trinity's tenet to disavow "middleclassness" when he first read it two decades ago in a church pamphlet. The brochure implored upwardly mobile church members not to distance themselves from less fortunate Trinity worshipers. 'As I read it, at least, it was a very simple argument taken directly from Scripture: 'To whom much is given much is required, Obama said. [Chicago Tribune, 2/6/07]