He gave me four hours of his undivided attention and counsel. I expected 30 minutes at most from a man who was so highly in demand. I once scheduled a meeting with him to seek his perspective on issues of life and ministry that I was struggling to reconcile. He preached my ordination and installation as associate pastor at Covenant. I knew Wright as the man who had been my mentor and pastor since I arrived in Chicago in the fall of 2002 to begin formal training for ministry at the University of Chicago Divinity School. I knew Wright as the vessel whom God had used to call me into the ministry as a junior in high school. “Millions of Americans were introduced to Wright as an angry Black caricature of a man they never had met before and did not know.”īut hundreds of thousands of us knew Pastor Wright and his ministry well. Millions of Americans were introduced to Wright as an angry Black caricature of a man they never had met before and did not know. Thomas has outlined in painstaking detail, the sermon snippets were taken completely out of context, and few in the media encouraged anyone watching to view the sermons in their entirety, or to consider the man’s track record as a minister and community activist. It was just days later that ABC’s Good Morning America began to run snippets of Wright’s most controversial sermon excerpts, wondering aloud if “the reverend could become a liability?” Other news media outlets quickly followed, fabricating a narrative that Wright was an anti-American, anti-Semitic Black boogeyman who hated white people and peddled in outlandish conspiracy theories.Īs Frank A. I was in the sanctuary of Trinity for several of the services in the last week of February that marked Wright’s departure from Trinity, as Otis Moss III - a prince of the pulpit himself - prepared to take over following a carefully designed and lengthy transition period. After more than 35 years serving as senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Pastor Wright finally bid adieu to the church he had built from less than a hundred members to well over 6,000, with countless ministry initiatives that had impacted the city of Chicago, but also the nation and the world.
Barack Hussein Obama battled his Senate counterpart (and former first lady) Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
The spring of 2008 marked the beginning of the most historic presidential primary season this nation has seen, as then-Sen.
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