Obama's church

Trinity United Church of Christ is big on social and political activism, plus big on controversy for its favorite son | Daniel James Devine

CHICAGO— The choir won't stand still at Trinity United Church of Christ, which Barack Obama has attended for 20 years. In dashikis and outfits of variegated patterns and colors—black stripes, radiant yellows and purples, networks of green and pink—150 singers are clapping, swaying in unison, and singing, "The Lord is blessing me, right now, oh, right now."

Congregants in the packed double-decker auditorium are themselves clapping, swaying, and singing, barely noticing the woman in a black suit who has volunteered to step-dance backwards down the aisle. "He woke me up this morning, He started me on my way . . ."

At over 6,000 members, Trinity is the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ (UCC). The church, in a low-income neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, advertises itself as "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." Longtime pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Trinity's shepherd since 1972, when the church had only 87 members, is retiring this year, so John Thomas, the conspicuously white president of the UCC, came to the Feb. 24 service to honor Wright: He sat on stage and appeared to enjoy himself throughout three hours that featured 10 choruses and hymns, prayers and calls to worship, and later, a troupe of 18 teenage dancers.