Word: pastorate
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When Sen. Barack Obama severed ties with his Chicago church, most political observers saw the move as a way for the candidate to insulate himself from the controversies stirred by its retiring pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. But Trinity United Church of Christ does not have that kind of insulation. According to sources within Trinity, Wright, 66, who began the process of retirement two years ago, is resisting fully relinquishing his duties as senior pastor, hanging on to power in the church he helped build...
Wright was officially to have stepped down last Sunday, June 1. And from the pulpit at 7:30 a.m. that day, Wright's hand-picked successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, preached what should have been his first sermon as senior pastor of Trinity, one of the Chicago's largest congregations and among the most influential religious institutions in America. Instead, on church bulletins on June 1, Moss was identified simply as "pastor" rather than "senior pastor," even as Wright assumed the title "pastor emeritus." Indeed, Trinity members familiar with the developments say that on May 27, Moss was summoned...
Sunday June 1 lacked the fanfare that often marks the official start of a pastor's tenure. In fact, Wright didn't even show up, for reasons church officials have so far declined to explain. From the pulpit on Sunday, Moss didn't address the unseen drama, and later that evening he left for a vacation. "He has inherited this mess," one Moss supporter observes, "and his priority is to help a congregation heal and move forward. Hopefully Wright will let him do that." "The church is splitting," says one Trinity member. "It's sad, because this is a case...
...answered at this time." When asked to help clarify points for the sake of accuracy, Hammond-Miller responded, "That's your problem, not mine." When queried by TIME again on Wednesday on the same issues, Hammond-Miller said, "They're not responding to those questions. That's the pastor's choice...
...accepting the Trinity job, Moss apparently bypassed an opportunity to assume leadership at his father's church. Moss moved his wife and two children to Chicago, where he was to serve as an associate pastor at Trinity during the two-year transition. By most accounts, Moss quickly energized Trinity, particularly with his easy, unself-conscious references from the pulpit to both hip-hop culture and deep biblical scholarship. However, in an August 2007 Cleveland Plain Dealer article, Moss seemed to foreshadow his troubles in Trinity. The generation gap plaguing such institutions, Moss said, is "a gap of language, values...