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...Fred Pope wanted to do was get to Trinity United Church of Christ's 11 a.m. Sunday service. Instead, he was bombarded by reporters seeking his reaction to Sen. Barack Obama's decision to leave the South Side church after nearly two decades. "It's a deeply personal decision," Pope said simply, clutching a Bible in his left hand, walking along 95th Street toward the massive brown sanctuary. Then, Pope stopped, looked to the clear sky, and added, "I'd be disappointed if he stopped believing...
...Pope's statement about Obama's announcement was more than many other Trinity members were willing to divulge. For much of the year, since Obama emerged as a leading presidential candidate, and since clips of longtime Trinity pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s sermons appeared on YouTube, the church has weathered unprecedented scrutiny. There have been bomb threats. Reporters have brazenly called ailing Trinity members at hospices. So it's understandable that many members shooed away reporters - often by raising a hand, as if to say, "Don't even go there." In one incident Sunday, an 18-year...
...Inside the church, Wright's successor, Rev. Otis Moss III, didn't directly mention the Obama episode during his morning sermons. In fact his only oblique reference to Obama came during the call to prayer at the altar: "Every Christian is part of our family. Whether they're physically with us or not - they're part of our family...
...Obama claimed that allowing Trinity to get back to tending to its family was a key part of why he was resigning his membership - as much as what his association with the church was doing to his presidential aspirations. After all, Obama's stunning rise to the brink of being the Democratic presidential nominee has cast an unusually harsh light on his place of worship. Trinity's roughly 8,500 members makes it among the largest congregations in Chicago - and the largest in the United Church of Christ, a predominately white protestant denomination. When Wright assumed leadership of Trinity...
...Friday, Obama and his wife, Michelle, wrote a letter to Trinity's new pastor, Moss, announcing their resignation from the church. On Saturday, in a question-and-answer session with reporters in Aberdeen, SD, Sen. Obama explained that in the wake of Wright's NPC appearance, he and his wife had prayed for guidance on how to handle their relationship with Trinity. Obama told reporters he suspected that "it was going to be very difficult to continue our membership there as long as I was running for President. The recent episode with Father Pfleger," he continued, "just reinforced the view...