I am very frustrated with dailykos members. They know almost nothing about mainline Christian denominations in this country. Not knowing much about an important cultural force in our society is tantamount to someone living in an Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist country and not knowing much about their religious traditions. That is not very likely to happen...
At any rate, to remedy this lack of knowledge of Barack Obama's denomination - the United Church of Christ (UCC) - of which his congregation Trinity UCC is member church in South Chicago, here is a bit of information. It is based on two set of comments I posted a while ago on dailykos but almost no one seems to have noticed.
First of all, Reverend John Thomas, President of the UCC, gave a very forceful statement on the Jeremiah Wrigh controversy, which was released on March 17th. Here is a link to that statement on UCC's website, which unfortunately hasn't got much coverage in the mainstream press:
http://www.ucc.org/...
Here are some excerpts from Rev. Thomas's statement:
Over the weekend members of our church and others have been subjected to the relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ for thirty-six years and, for over half of those years, pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family. These video clips, and news stories about them, have been served up with frenzied and heated commentary by media personalities expressing shock that such language and sentiments could be uttered from the pulpit.
One is tempted to ask whether these commentators ever listen to the overcharged rhetoric of their own opinion shows. Even more to the point is to wonder whether they have a working knowledge of the history of preaching in the United States from the unrelentingly grim language of New England election day sermons to the fiery rhetoric of the Black church prophetic tradition.
Rev. Thomas then wonders what may happen next - whether similar attacks on other sermons from the pulpit will be scrutinized of other church leaders in our country that are associated with presidential candidates:
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. You don't have to be an Obama supporter to be alarmed at this. Will Clinton's United Methodist Church be next? Or McCain's Episcopal Church? Wouldn't we have been just as alarmed had it been Huckabee's Southern Baptist Church, or Romney's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?
Here is a final excerpt:
We might like to think that racism is a thing of the past, that Martin Luther King's harmonious multi-racial vision, articulated in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and then struck down by an assassin's bullet in Memphis in 1968, has somehow been resurrected and now reigns throughout the land. Significant progress has been made. A black man is a legitimate candidate for President of the United States. A black woman serves as Secretary of State. The accomplishments are profound. But on the gritty streets of Chicago's south side where Trinity has planted itself, race continues to play favorites in failing urban school systems, unresponsive health care systems, crumbling infrastructure, and meager economic development. Are we to pretend all is well because much is, in fact, better than it used to be? Is it racist to name the racial divides that continue to afflict our nation, and to do so loudly? How ironic that a pastor and congregation which, for forty-five years, has cast its lot with a predominantly white denomination, participating fully in its wider church life and contributing generously to it, would be accused of racial exclusion and a failure to reach for racial reconciliation.
On a related matter, the UCC has recently been contacted by the IRS inquiring about their non-profit tax status since they had invited Barack Obama (a UCC church member) to speak at their General Synod meeting in Hartford, CT, last summer. Luckily for the UCC as a denomination, the very best tax lawfirms in the country have agreed to represent them pro bono, recognizing the blatant political nature of this harassment
Incidentally, UCC members make up some of the stalwartest pillars of our society in many parts of this country - it is just not a well known fact. Trinity UCC in Chicago happens to be one of few predominently black congregations (with over 6000 members) within the denomination, which for the most part is overwhelmingly white.
Background Historical Facts on the UCC:
- The United Church of Christ is one of the most established mainline Protestant denominations in this country. The UCC is the successor denomination to the Congregational Church, the Protestant denomination of the early pilgrims, who came to New England on the Mayflower. The UCC was founded some 50 years ago by merging the Congregational Church with three smaller Protestant denominations.
- Many of the finest colleges and universities in the US were founded by the Congregationalists, e.g., Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Amherst, Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, Beloit, and Pomona.
- During the early colonial period, no town in the State of Connecticut could be incorporated without the presence and blessing of a local Congregational Church.