KELLY HUDSON: Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's black South Side. More than 30 years ago, in response to the Black Power movement, Trinity decided to embrace its African heritage along with its Christianity. It called as its pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a young black activist from Philadelphia.
Reverend JEREMIAH WRIGHT Jr. (Senior Pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ): They said, "Are we going to be a black church in a black community? Or are we going to continue to be a white church in blackface?" I said, "The greatest need is for kids who have not been taught their story. To go back to Deuteronomy 6, you must teach your children their story. Who's doing it?" Nobody was.HUDSON: So Wright started to teach what became known as "Africentric Christianity." Under his leadership, Trinity has grown to 5,000 members, the largest congregation in the predominantly white United Church of Christ.
Africentric Christianity is partly about identifying an African presence in the Bible, but it goes much deeper than that. Africentric Christians are seeking to affirm their African heritage in the context of Christianity.According to University of Chicago theologian Dwight Hopkins, Christianity was historically used as a tool to oppress blacks.
Dr. DWIGHT HOPKINS (Professor of Theology, University of Chicago): In order for an African or an African American who is enslaved to become a Christian, they have to say this, "Who is your heavenly master? Master Jesus in heaven. Who is your earthly master? Master Smith on the plantation. What color is Jesus? Jesus is a white man just like Master Smith." Literally. HUDSON: In the 1960s, Pastor Wright, a Baptist minister's son, objected to the Christian church's response to racial turbulence. He had experienced racism first hand from white Christians and indifference to racial injustice from members of his father's Pennsylvania congregation.
Rev. WRIGHT: I come home for the summer, and the black students from the schools in the South, we setting up the picket lines in Woolworth's in Philadelphia, and my father's members are walking across the line, telling me, "That's not our problem. That's a Southern problem." [I thought,] This is Christianity? Is this the church? I don't want to be a part of this. I do not want to be a part of this. I do not want to be a part of this. This is hypocrisy.HUDSON: Several years later, Wright accepted the call to Trinity in Chicago and began his African-centered ministry. Pastor Wright says there were many early African Christians.
Rev. WRIGHT: A lot of Africans and European Americans don't know that you were Christians before slavery; is very important to find out, yes, Africans were Christians. We honor who we are as African Americans, and the strides and victories and successes we have had in this country, but our story does not begin in this country.
SHIRLEY BIMS ELLIS (Center for African Biblical Studies): We are definitely the people of God and we are the first people.HUDSON: Shirley Bims Ellis heads the Center for African Biblical Studies at Trinity.
Ms. BIMS ELLIS: We're trying to now read the same Scripture that we've been reading for years and hearing for years with changed lenses from Eurocentric to Africentric. This of course is not intended to mean that black is better; it is intended to show blacks who we really are.
JILL NEISH (Director, Intonjane Ministry): We teach them how to be a strong African-American woman, how to cope in today's society with a biblical and scriptural background as well.
Unidentified Man (Church Member): I feel that I had been lifted up spiritually. When I got off the plane and I actually set foot on the African continent, that was a whole new experience that I had never felt before.
Dr. HOPKINS: One of the incentives for Africentricity is to pass on the positive, holistic black values, African values to a younger generation. A lot of people who were part of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and early '60s and part of the Black Power and black consciousness movement of the 1960s and 1970s are now all middle-age and older adults, and we have children.
Rev. WRIGHT: I see linkages being formed across the Indian Ocean, across the Atlantic Ocean, across people of faith, of African descent; I see that growing and -- not within my lifetime, or 50, 60 years from now -- an amazing new church where, where differences are affirmed and, and diversity is affirmed and embraced and not hierarchically arranged again as this is superior, this is inferior, this is high church, this is low church. No, no, I see, I see Christianity becoming exciting as people embrace it while not giving up their culture.
