CHICAGO (AFP) — The balcony of presidential hopeful Barack Obama's former church bounced under the weight of its clapping and swaying congregation as they opened Sunday services with a rousing rendition of God Never Fails Us.
Few were willing to tell outsiders whether they thought Obama had failed them for quitting the congregation in the face of growing controversy.
"We all love him, that's all I can say," one woman said of Obama as she walked to her car.
"I wish they would leave him and my reverend alone," another woman who declined to give her name told AFP.
Many parishioners bristled as they walked past the reporters and camera crews that lined the street outside Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side.
"Here's another one!" exclaimed one smiling man. "Heathens! God bless you all."
But inside the sanctuary, they welcomed a half dozen mostly white reporters with handshakes and hugs.
There was no mention of Obama or politics from the pulpit.
Reverend Otis Moss III, who officially took the helm of the church Sunday, devoted his first sermon of the day to the link between love and liberation and his second to what it means to be on the edge of greatness.
A charismatic preacher whose rich voice washes like waves over the rows of pews and lifts his congregants out of their seats, Moss does not even mention the man who sparked the controversy: the now retired Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Wright, who built the church from 87 members in 1972 to some 8,000 today, has been vilified after tapes surfaced of old sermons in which he said the United States brought the September 11 attacks of 2001 upon itself and exhorted blacks to sing "God damn America" over racism and allegations that AIDS was spread by the US government.
In the wake of the scandal, the church asked its parishioners to show their support for Wright with ten weeks of prayers and fasting.
On Sunday, Moss instructed the parishioners to open their program to the page describing the fast and pull out a pen.
"Put down there, I can eat," he said with a smile. "Fast is over y'all."
In announcing his resignation from the church he had belonged to for 20 years late Saturday, Obama said he had been struggling for weeks with the decision and did so with "some sadness."
Obama had initially stood by the man who officiated at his wedding and baptized his daughters, using the row to make a wider statement about race in America in a well-received speech in March.
He repudiated his former friend a few weeks later when Wright made a series of incendiary media appearances.
The final straw came this week when a guest priest used the Trinity pulpit to mock Obama's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
"The recent episode with Father (Michael) Pfleger reinforced that view that we don't want to have to answer for everything that is stated in a church," Obama told reporters in South Dakota Saturday.
"On the other hand we also don't want a church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes," he said, praising anew the largely African-American church's work for social justice.
The official church reaction was summed up in six conciliatory sentences:
"Trinity United Church of Christ was informed that Senator Barack Obama and his family will no longer be members of our church. Though we are saddened by the news, we understand that it is a personal decision. We will continue to lift them in prayer and wish them best as former members of our Trinity community."
"As in the Prayer for the Ephesians, our entire Trinity family asks that the nation entrust Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha to God's care and guidance, so that Christ may continue to dwell in their lives, in their hearts and in their work. We ask now for God's peace to be with them."
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
