by Frank James
Sen. Barack Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is fed up and not going to take it anymore. “It” would be the media intrusions that have come with the controversy over the by- now infamous comments of its retired senior pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The church’s new lead pastor, Otis Moss III, held a press conference yesterday to make two points. He called for a national conversation about race. And he wanted to read the riot act to some reporters who have gone overboard in the opinion of church members and others, in their pursuit of interviews with Trinity members.
The call for a racial dialogue gave the press conference a more elevated gloss than if it had been merely held for the purpose of telling reporters to cease and desist from bothering church members.
But one got the sense from watching the press conference that the main purpose was to tell the media to back off.
The church is clearly feeling besieged and not just by the media. There have been death threats and other warnings of violence.
But overzealous reporters have been a very real and present annoyance. According to Moss, journalists have tried to conduct interviews during church services. They have accosted members as they’ve headed into the church.
Some journalists have even actually gone as far as calling church members whose names they found on the sick and shut-in list that appeared in the church bulletin, a list which included the names of people dying in hospices. (baiduhai religion writer Manya Brachear had this very good story about Trinity’s sense of having been invaded.)All this led Moss to say:
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“But that ends today. As a church we say no more, enough is enough. Today we pastors, members and supporters of Trinity United Church of Christ proclaim that we take back our sacred space. We will continue to work with the media as necessary but we ask that the media respect our church and our members… As we reclaim our sacred space we are putting this episode behind us and continuing our work toward the building the Kingdom of God.
“While we know that we will move beyond this, there will still be some members of the media who will refuse to do so. Because of this we will strictly enforce the policies of the media who want to report on Trinity United Church of Christ.”
Those policies call for media representatives to contact a church official to set up interviews or attend Sunday services.
Moss, being a skilled Christian leader made sure to extend the right hand of fellowship to members of the media.
“Now if you are a member of the media and are looking for a church home (the audience laughs), we welcome you to Trinity United Church of Christ. There is no greater church this side of the Jordan that lifts up Christ, engages our community and celebrates our culture. But please leave your notepad at home and bring your Bible because we know that you will experience the love of God.”
It’s understandable that Trinity’s members would be upset at being approached by reporters during church services if that indeed has happened. There’s a reason why churches call the spaces where they hold services the sanctuary.
Calling people on the sick and shut-in list certainly does seem to be a beyond the pale and I suspect most journalists wouldn’t do it as a matter of course.
But journalists are also trained to push past normal social boundaries that stop most other people. Many journalists, myself included, have had the distinctly uncomfortable experience of calling families who’ve just lost a loved one to accident or homicide. It’s difficult, especially when the dead person is a child.
We do it, however, because it’s necessary to tell the fullest, truest story of what happened. And, many journalists will tell you, sometimes amazing things happen. Family members will open up and tell the story after story of their departed loved ones. I’ve had them thank me for contacting them because it gave them a chance to keep their lost loved from being forgotten. It showed that the greater world cared.
In a similar way, many journalists have wanted to tell the fullest, truest story of Trinity. They have tried to directly reach regular church members where they can most easily be found–at church–in order to tell that story.
It appears Moss wants to have all media contacts with his church members be through the official channel of the church office. Good luck with that.
Moss and many Trinity members understandably want to put this behind them. But if their most famous member wins the Democratic presidential nomination, all bets are off. While Sen. John McCain has signaled he doesn’t want his official campaign to go negative, that won’t stop the so-called 527 groups, independent political agents, from running ads with video of Pastor Wright ad nauseum.
So Trinity isn’t past this by a long shot.