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 ...