Eventually a pretty woman with a brisk, cheerful manner came up and introduced herself as Tracy, one of Reverend
Wright’s assistants. She said that the reverend was running a few minutes late and asked if I wanted some coffee. As I
followed her back into a kitchen toward the rear of the church, we began to chat, about the church mostly, but also a
little about her. It had been a difficult year, she said: Her husband had recently died, and in just a few weeks she’d be
moving out to the suburbs. She had wrestled long and hard with the decision, for she had lived most of her life in the
city. But she had decided the move would be best for her teenage son. She began to explain how there were a lot more
black families in the suburbs these days; how her son would be free to walk down the street without getting harassed;
how the school he’d be attending had music courses, a full band, free instruments and uniforms.
“He’s always wanted to be in a band,” she said softly.
As we were talking, I noticed a man in his late forties walking toward us. He had silver hair, a silver mustache and
goatee; he was dressed in a gray three-piece suit. He moved slowly, methodically, as if conserving energy, sorting
through his mail as he walked, humming a simple tune to himself.
“Barack,” he said as if we were old friends, “let’s see if Tracy here will let me have a minute of your time.”
“Don’t pay him no mind, Barack,” Tracy said, standing up and straightening out her skirt. “I should have warned you
that Rev likes to act silly sometimes.”
Reverend Wright smiled and led me into a small, cluttered office. “Sorry for being late,” he said, closing the door
behind him. “We’re trying to build a new sanctuary, and I had to meet with the bankers. I’m telling you, doc, they
always want something else from you. Latest thing is another life insurance policy on me. In case I drop dead
tomorrow. They figure the whole church’ll collapse without me.”
“Is it true?”
Reverend Wright shook his head. “I’m not the church, Barack. If I die tomorrow, I hope the congregation will give me
a decent burial. I like to think a few tears will be shed. But as soon as I’m six feet under, they’ll be right back on the
case, figuring out how to make this church live up to its mission.”
He had grown up in Philadelphia, the son of a Baptist minister. He had resisted his father’s vocation at first, joining
the Marines out of college, dabbling with liquor, Islam, and black nationalism in the sixties. But the call of his faith had
apparently remained, a steady tug on his heart, and eventually he’d entered Howard, then the University of Chicago,
where he spent six years studying for a Ph.D. in the history of religion. He learned Hebrew and Greek, read the
literature of Tillich and Niebuhr and the black liberation theologians. The anger and humor of the streets, the book
learning and occasional twenty-five-cent word, all this he had brought with him to Trinity almost two decades ago. And
although it was only later that I would learn much of this biography, it became clear in that very first meeting that,
despite the reverend’s frequent disclaimers, it was this capacious talent of his-this ability to hold together, if not
reconcile, the conflicting strains of black experience-upon which Trinity’s success had ultimately been built.
“We got a lot of different personalities here,” he told me. “Got the Africanist over here. The traditionalist over here.
Once in a while, I have to stick my hand in the pot-smooth things over before stuff gets ugly. But that’s rare. Usually, if
somebody’s got an idea for a new ministry, I just tell ’em to run with it and get outta their way.”
barré
(Barré)
#1