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Date published: 1/27/2007
By MANYA A. BRACHEARCHICAGO TRIBUNE
CHICAGO--When he took over Trinity United Church of Christ in 1972, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. was a maverick pastor with a wardrobe of dashikis and a militant message. Six years later, he planted a "Free South Africa" sign on the lawn of his church and asked other local religious leaders to follow his lead. None took him up on the invitation. The sign stayed until the end of apartheid, long enough to catch the eye of a young Barack Obama, who visited the church in 1985 as a community activist. Obama, not a churchgoer at the time, found himself returning to the sanctuary of Trinity United. In Wright he found both a spiritual mentor and a role model. Wright, 65, is a straight-talking pragmatist who arrived in Chicago as an outsider and became an institution. He has built a congregation of 8,500, including the likes of Oprah Winfrey and hip-hop artist Common, by offering an alternative to socially conservative black churches that are, Wright believes, too closely tied to Chicago's political dynasties. Obama also came to the city as a young unknown. Emerging from relative obscurity with his win in the Democratic primary race for a U.S. Senate seat, he found a growing audience by preaching the politics of social justice and common ground. He has encouraged Democrats to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of Americans. Now, he is positioning himself as a presidential candidate who can unify the American people. Obama says that rather than advising him on strategy, Wright helps keep his priorities straight and his moral compass calibrated. "What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice," Obama said. "He's much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I'm not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that's involved in national politics." The rebellious son of a Baptist minister, Wright was hired by Trinity United when he could find no Baptist church to take him. The congregation on 95th Street, then numbering just 87, had recently adopted the motto "Unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian." They did not mind his fiery red Afro and black power agenda.
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