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...Trinity United Church of Christ vibrated with cheers throughout the four-hour Good Friday service. When the last of seven guest preachers, Rev. Rudolph McKissick, Jr. unleashed his anger against the recent media storm that catapulted Trinity to global notoriety, the crowd rose to their feet. McKissick thundered: "Fox News, CNN, ABC ... they're so stupid that they don't even know the word 'damn' is not a profanity but a Hebraic proclivity, meaning God's curse will fall on all those who defy his love. They know not with whom they are messing. Jeremiah Wright might have retired...
Pastors and congregation members alike had reason to think that. Media outlets had brought cameras, flashbulbs and crass questions to Trinity's doors for days and shocked the congregation with commentary that branded Rev. Wright Jr. a leader of a "black supremacist cult." The day's overwhelming message: This church will continue its ministry work - no matter who's watching or what they say. And it brought shouts and tears from the pews...
...African-American rappers that glamorize violence and sexist barbs in the name of "keeping it real" were the subject of vitriolic tirades, too. "Why, they're no better than prosperity-pimping preachers!" shouted Father Michael Pfleger, a popular white Catholic priest, whose messages have raised eyebrows among his own Church's leaders...
With outreach programs and ministries, Trinity succeeds in providing more for the South Side than any other church, government or private institution. Rev. Luke Watson, another Good Friday speaker, credited Wright for guiding him away from life of crime, which started early with an absent father and a mother addicted to crack. "I was like that thug, the criminal next to Jesus," Rev. Watson said. "I thought, what's that guy doing here? He ain't done nothing. I'm the real sinner." Wright had taught him that God loves sinners, too. "I learned that I wasn't born...
Trinity's own Roman-like architecture is unfamiliar for a church, which might explain why some outsiders found it cultish and strange. The congregation meets in a theater-in-the round, designed after secular buildings like the Parthenon and the U.S. Congress. Stained-glass windows flanking the entrance feature images of African-American leaders, not saints: W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. There is also a glass sculpture of a man resembling Obama. Above it, light streams through block-lettered words: "VOTE. We need YOU." For now at least, Trinity may offer the only refuge...