Trinity United Church of Christ

Trinity United Church of Christ is a predominantly African-American megachurch with more than 8,500 members. It is located in the Washington Heights community on the South Side of Chicago. It is the largest church affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a predominantly white Christian denomination with roots in Congregationalism, which historically branched from early American Puritanism.

The church's early history coincided with the American civil rights movement, subsequent murder of Martin Luther King Jr., and the tumultuous period that engulfed the civil rights movement after King's death due to intense competition among actors over who would carry King's mantle. During that tumultuous period, an influx of radical black Muslim groups had begun to headquarter in Chicago, and Trinity sought to recontextualize Christianity through black theology in order to counter the influence of radical black Muslim leaders, who taught that it was impossible to be both black and Christian.

In early 2008, as part of their presidential election coverage, news media outlets and political commentators brought Trinity to national attention when controversial excerpts of sermons by the church's long-time former pastor Jeremiah Wright were broadcast to highlight Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's pastoral relationship with Wright and the church. Obama responded with a speech, A More Perfect Union, which addressed the criticisms and largely alleviated them from popular political criticisms at the time. On 31 May 2008 Obama severed links with the church, over comments by Wright and visiting priest Michael Pfleger.

Trinity is best known today for its national and international social programs on behalf of the disadvantaged, although in its earliest days such outreach did not figure into its mission.

Patterns of migration among both blacks during the Great Migration of African Americans between 1910 and 1940, and among whites, are an important part of the social context in which Trinity was founded. Another is the threat that radical black nationalism and black Islam posed to Christianity's influence among Chicago blacks, as well as to blacks nationwide. As these movements gained ground among Chicago blacks, Trinity sought to turn the attention of blacks back to Christianity.

Beginning around 1910, the Great Migration of African Americans occurred as many thousands of blacks migrated northward from the south. A great many settled on Chicago's southside. When they arrived, they brought with them the forms of Christianity they had practiced in the South. As elsewhere in the United States, Chicago blacks of the time faced serious discrimination in typically every area of their existence.

In the early 1930s, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad moved his embroiled religion's headquarters from Detroit to Chicago. Mixing elements of the Bible and the Qur'an, Elijah Muhammad taught that Africans were the Earth's first and most important people. He prophesied that a time was coming when African Americans would be fully vindicated, released from their various oppressions, and brought into full freedom within their own geographical state. For this to actualize, however, Elijah Muhammad taught that blacks had to radically separate from all whites. In addition, he proclaimed that blacks needed to live a moral life.

By the 1940s, the Nation of Islam's radical message had drawn in thousands of Chicago's blacks, many who had converted from one of the forms of Christianity their forebears brought northward to Chicago (see Trinity in comparative perspective, below, for a discussion of the various forms).