{"id":196896,"date":"2008-03-16T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-17T04:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/03\/16\/will-the-trinity-united-church-of-christ-in-chicago-please-stfu\/"},"modified":"2008-03-16T23:07:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-17T04:07:00","slug":"will-the-trinity-united-church-of-christ-in-chicago-please-stfu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/03\/16\/will-the-trinity-united-church-of-christ-in-chicago-please-stfu\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago Please STFU??"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, Obama&#8217;s church has <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2008\/03\/obamas_church_pillorying_wrigh.php\">Just put out a press release<\/a> (below), condemning the contraversy regarding Reverend Wright as an &#8220;an attack on the legacy of the African American Church&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>This is ill conceived for a number of reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It serves to keep Rev. Wright&#8217;s statements alive.<\/li>\n<li>It is a &#8220;crying racism&#8221;.  The statements made by Dr. Wright are clearly not acceptable under normative standards of political discourse.<\/li>\n<li>It undermines the message of the church, and its most prominent member.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, please, follow the advice of Abraham Lincoln, &#8220;Better to remain silent and be thought a fool then to speak out and remove all doubt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);font-size:130%;\" >Statement from Trinity United Church of Christ<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">\u201cAN ATTACK ON OUR SENIOR PASTOR AND THE HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCH&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Chicago, Ill. (March 15, 2008) \u2014 Nearly three weeks before the 40th commemorative anniversary of the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.\u2019s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">\u201cDr. Wright has preached 207,792 minutes on Sunday for the past 36 years at Trinity United Church of Christ. This does not include weekday worship services, revivals and preaching engagements across America and around the globe, to ecumenical and interfaith communities. It is an indictment on Dr. Wright\u2019s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound bite,\u201d said the Reverend Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">During the 36-year pastorate of Dr. Wright, Trinity United Church of Christ has grown from 87 to 8,000 members. It is the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ (UCC) denomination.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">\u201cIt saddens me to see news stories reporting such a caricature of a congregation that has been such a blessing to the UCC\u2019s Wider Church mission,\u201d said the Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, in a released statement. \u201c \u2026 It\u2019s time for us to say \u2018No\u2019 to these attacks and declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Trinity United Church of Christ\u2019s ministry is inclusive and global. The following ministries have been developed under Dr. Wright\u2019s ministerial tutelage for social justice: assisted living facilities for senior citizens, day care for children, pastoral care and counseling, health care, ministries for persons living with HIV\/AIDS, hospice training, prison ministry, scholarships for thousands of students to attend historically black colleges, youth ministries, tutorial and computer programs, a church library, domestic violence programs and scholarships and fellowships for women and men attending seminary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Moss added, \u201cThe African American Church was born out of the crucible of slavery and the legacy of prophetic African American preachers since slavery has been and continues to heal broken marginalized victims of social and economic injustices. This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached the Christian tenet, \u201clove thy neighbor as thyself.\u201d Before Dr. King was murdered on April 4, 1968, he preached, \u201cThe 11 o\u2019clock hour is the most segregated hour in America.\u201d Forty years later, the African American Church community continues to face bomb threats, death threats, and their ministers\u2019 characters are assassinated because they teach and preach prophetic social concerns for social justice. Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>H\/T, <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2008\/03\/obamas_church_pillorying_wrigh.php\">TPM<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, Obama&#8217;s church has Just put out a press release (below), condemning the contraversy regarding Reverend Wright as an &#8220;an attack on the legacy of the African American Church&#8221;. This is ill conceived for a number of reasons: It serves to keep Rev. Wright&#8217;s statements alive. It is a &#8220;crying racism&#8221;. The statements made by &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[977,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presidential-campaign","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}