Trinity United Church of Christ

The large church near here has been one of the most influential Black congregations in the United States for more than half a century, and for a period in two thousand and eight it became one of the most discussed institutions in American politics.

Trinity United Church of Christ was founded on December third, nineteen sixty-one, as the first Black congregation in the United Church of Christ denomination. Its early membership was mostly teachers and professionals, and for its first decade it was a relatively conventional middle-class Protestant church. That changed when a young pastor named Jeremiah Wright Jr., who had studied at the University of Chicago Divinity School, began building the congregation in the nineteen seventies around the theology of Black liberation, an approach to Christianity that took the experience of Black Americans as its interpretive center.

Under Wright's leadership, Trinity adopted the motto 'Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian' and grew into one of the largest churches in Chicago, with more than eight thousand congregants attending Sunday services by the two thousands. The church ran social programs, a food pantry, and education initiatives, and it became a community anchor for the South Side neighborhoods around it.

In nineteen eighty-eight, a twenty-six-year-old community organizer named Barack Obama walked down the aisle, knelt under the church's cross, and committed himself to Christianity. He had been attending services for several months, and a sermon by Wright had moved him to tears. Obama remained a member for two decades. During the two thousand and eight presidential campaign, controversial sermon clips featuring Wright drew national attention, and Obama eventually resigned his membership. He had by then been a United States senator and was months away from being elected president. Trinity continues as a congregation of several thousand on Chicago's South Side.