The Rev. Otis Moss III will never forget the day he took over as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. It was Palm Sunday 2008 and he and Rev. Jeremiah Wright had been working on a seamless transition for nearly two years.
But instead of a smooth transfer of power, that was the day Fox News released snippets from sermons of Rev. Wright that would rock the Obama presidential campaign.
The most controversial was from July 2003: “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America’? No, no, no, not ‘God Bless America,’ ‘God Damn America.’”
Rev. Moss recalled, “The day I took over, all the media stuff blew up that day – the exact day. That’s why I remember it so well.” On a recent Sunday, Moss was finally installed as pastor of the 7,000-member church on Chicago’s South Side.
“It has strengthened the church,” Rev. Moss said, reflecting on the past year. “We have learned that the media can be utilized for the expansion of the gospel. At the same time, if one is not trained, familiar with nor understands the function of the media, it’s a double-edged sword.”
Moss, the son of a prominent Cleveland minister and civil rights icon, believes much of the controversy over Rev. Wright could have been avoided if journalists covering the story had been familiar with the black church and the way black preachers communicate.
“I think there’s an intellectual laziness on one level,” he said.
“We have reporters on television who specialize in medicine, we have reporters who specialize in law, but when it comes to talking about Trinity or Pastor Wright, we never saw anyone on television who had a theological background.”
He named one exception: Roland Martin, who is married to a minister.
“He was the only person who could speak authoritatively about African-American church history and the continuum of African-American theology,” Moss said.
“We bring a very unique cultural and theological viewpoint to the table that’s not rooted in New England nor is it rooted in Ireland or France. It goes back to our continuum on the shores of West Africa. Many reporters were completely dumbfounded to enter into a world in which they knew nothing about.”
Moss believes the controversy over Rev. Wright, who had served as Barack Obama’s pastor, was politically motivated.
“This was not about information,” Rev. Moss stated. “This was a political ax to grind – ‘What can we find on an African American? Let’s deal with his church.”
Moss said it was unfair to hold Obama responsible for the words of Rev. Wright.
“You have never witnessed, for example, someone who is Catholic being held to the words of a bishop, archbishop, monsignor, or the people,” he said. “No reporter would dare touch that – they would be thrown out of the newsroom.”
That wasn’t the only thing that bothered Moss.
“What bothered me the most was the reduction of his ministry to a sound bite,” he said. “Here is an individual who is part of a denomination that is 98 percent European, specifically German and Swedish, in terms of its history. He helped that denomination move into the area of diversity.’
Moss plans to build on Wright’s legacy by expanding educational programs, placing a greater emphasis on green technology and leveraging the internet to spread the gospel.
Rev. Moss is trying to put his first day on the job behind him.
“It was like lighting a match to dry brush. It just exploded from there. Everybody and their mama became interested in Trinity,” Moss said.
“They were harassing our elderly members, looking for negative things said about Pastor Wright. They were looking for negative things said about President Obama. It became bizarre, almost like another world.”
Now, he’s trying to get back to his original world of ministering to needs of God’s children.