As Obama seeks re-election, his former church expands its vision

“In our heart of hearts, that’s exactly what we intend,” said Michael Bennett, a longtime member of Trinity and the former executive director of Egan Urban Center at DePaul University. “It will probably end up even better than we currently conceive.”

Though it has been planned for decades, Moss said the latest vision for Imani Village has grown out of the Green for All movement, a nationwide crusade to alleviate poverty by harnessing the energy of the green sustainable economy.

Founded by Van Jones, Obama’s former environmental czar, Green for All emphasizes the importance of educating minority communities that, organizers say, historically have been victims of economic and environmental injustices and left out of the quest for a solution.

Green for All initiatives include tapping alternative energy, training ex-convicts for green jobs and urban agriculture. The Imani Village enterprise will include all of the above and then some.

“You have this hip-hop generation of pastors who perhaps have their ear closer to the ground when it comes to things like Green for All,” said the Rev. Ambrose Carroll, a Berkeley, Calif., pastor who has led the Green for All charge among faith communities. “The church ought to be a part of that conversation (about healing the environment), sometimes even in the forefront.”

Bennett, a sociologist by training, echoes Carroll’s sentiment. The church is the most democratic institution that African-Americans own, and one of the few that they trust, he said. For that reason, Imani Village is an enterprise he expects the community would get behind and trust to help revive the city’s Far South Side.

“Since it’s a project of the church, it’s not your typical for-profit, entrepreneurial development,” Bennett said. “It has some ethical and moral underpinnings about health care and food service and education and senior citizen housing. There’s more to it than the bottom-line profit motive, and I think the church is an appropriate institution to initiate it.”

In many ways, finally bringing Imani Village toward fruition symbolizes Trinity’s renewal four years after Obama’s first presidential campaign.

Almost immediately after Moss took over as pastor in March 2008, snippets of Wright’s old sermons were taken out of context and circulated on the Internet, igniting a national debate on religion and race. Conservative pundits bashed the church’s Black Value System as anti-white and hateful. Media swarmed the church on Sundays. Picketers fired insults at the faithful as they made their way inside to worship.

With more than 6,500 members, typically packed worship services thinned out, as more members stayed home to watch worship on the Web. Some contemplated finding a new church.

In the last two years, however, Trinity has welcomed 2,000 newcomers to the pews, many of them under the age of 40 and first-time churchgoers, Moss said.

“I think we’re still healing today,” said Deacon Rochelle Francis, who has attended Trinity for more than 20 years. “What it has helped us realize is we won’t let anyone define us. We’re going to do what we need to do.”

Church leaders say the blueprint for Imani Village, already on the drawing board in 2008, addresses what they need to do, which is serve the needs of the community.

Bennett cautiously predicts the project will get off the ground by the end of 2013. By then, according to attorney Pat Eggleston, Trinity’s nonprofit corporation intends to apply for up to $30 million from the surrounding Stony Island/Burnside Tax Increment Financing district. That district was recently extended to 2034, according to the city.

The corporation has already bought the first 27 acres for $8 million, provided by Trinity, Eggleston said.

Bennett said he hopes Imani Village becomes an anchor to stimulate the economy in the deindustrialized area, which offers limited access to healthy foods, jobs and education.

Emphasis will be placed on living off the land and “ownership.” Children will be able to walk to school at Kwame Nkrumah Academy and play sports in a professionally certified arena. Residents will grow their own food. Mom-and-pop retailers on site will buy it.

The church now offers cooking and nutrition classes to teach the importance of locally grown, fresh produce.

“You never met Jewel, and you don’t know Osco. But you do know the farmers down the street,” Moss said. “You can do everything you need to do in this area.”

The Rev. Victor Roland, associate pastor of Lilydale First Baptist Church, where Obama once knocked on the door as a young community organizer in the Roseland neighborhood, has long admired Trinity’s practical ministry. He believes some churches can be “too heavenly minded to do any earthly good.” Trinity does not fall into that category, he said.

“There’s more to being a Christian than (being saved from) just my personal sin and guilt,” said Roland, who attended a recent seminar at Trinity on healthy eating. “There are a number of things we need to be saved from. This church is leading this movement to save us from killing ourselves from within.”

———

WRIGHT STAYING OUT OF LIMELIGHT

Since retiring from Trinity United Church of Christ in 2008, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., 70, has kept a relatively low profile. He has declined most interview requests, including one for this story.

Wright has since moved from his historic home in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood to a new million-dollar mansion along the golf course of Odyssey Country Club in Tinley Park.

In 2010, he published a history of Trinity United Church of Christ titled “A Sankofa Moment.” The word “sankofa” comes from a proverb meaning: “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”

Wright now spends his time guest preaching at revivals, teaching and leading study tours to Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean.

— Manya A. Brachear