Obama; his Church, our People.

[Tom Rinaldo]

I fully accept and understand that Barack Obama has remained a member in good standing of Trinity Church for twenty years, even though some pretty outrageous things have been said there from time to time from the pulpit. I can also understand why Obama did not always make it a personal priority to loudly confront and counter such statements within that congregation whenever they have been made. Barack Obama differentiated himself from those sentiments by the choices he made in his life beyond that congregation, and he was open about those choices and the values they reflected to the people he knew within it.

As an aspiring politician with national ambitions I could not understand it had Barack Obama joined Trinity Church six years ago, because being a member there now complicates his journey forward, since his membership in Trinity in ways undercuts his chosen message and the mission he has embarked on for service to America. An important element of Barack Obama's political agenda is an effort to help lift America beyond the racial divide that has haunted our nation since its inception. Trinity straddles that divide, and sometimes it deplores that divide more than it transcends it.

But Obama did not join Trinity Church six years ago. He did so when he was in his twenties, when he was trying to put together the pieces in his own mind of faith's role in an unjust world, and of the role racial pride plays in a world where racial pride leads some people to oppress others, and where victims of that oppression often internalize a second class racial identity as a result. Trinity Church represents an extended family to Obama now and he coexists in congregation with them in a generally loving spirit.

I do so with my own extended family also, both biological and otherwise. I hold my closest friends to moral values consistent with my own, but I am more forgiving of others with whom I still share some forms of community. I hold to my values and seek to influence my larger community through my practice of them, but I don’t openly combat every instance where my values are affronted. Clearly I coexist with some prejudices around me, and why I do so is complex to understand and describe. Mostly I think it’s because I know society won't be changed by constantly being in each others faces condemning each other for being less than perfect. I respond directly to the worst instances of prejudice I witness, but I witness more than I respond to directly.

Most people aren't mean spirited, most people aren't haters, though some mean spirited things get spoken by all of us at times. Anthropology, sociology, history and psychology teach us that people have always been tempted to divide into us vs. them; there has always been a clan mentality that serves to unify some of us to defend against whatever uncertainty "others" who are "not us" may wish upon us. But people have also always shown a generosity of spirit that offers hospitality to strangers in our midst once the fear of a possible threat has dissipated.

I fully believe that the Trinity Church congregation is no more prejudiced at root than any community that I myself belong to, I even suspect they may be less so. Their sin if any might be that they openly attempt to process the questions of race and inequality in America, and those are questions that are damn hard to process. Ultimately it's like asking, why does evil exist? There is much to be angry about in this world and rage is unhealthy to suppress. Rage can also be unhealthy to release. No one said this was easy.

What all of this says to me now, what the sum of Barack Obama’s life circumstances and life choices to date now tells me, is that he is the American leader best positioned to break the silence concerning the racial divisions that still exist in America. They can’t simply be ignored. As a society we do so only at our own peril, at the expense of our own healing. Barack Obama is the son of a black father and a white mother. He loves his family, all of his family. Together our people form an American family, one in need of a family reunion, or more accurately, one in need of a more perfect union.